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Löfström and Pyhältö (2012), describe the ethical issues in supervision, which are tricky or
challenging to pass through. The investigation compares the kinds of ethical questions and analyses
the views of research scholars and research supervisors. The extent to which scholars and their
supervisors experience similar or different ethical challenges in the supervisory relationship are
addressed in framing research questions.

Goodyear, et al. (1992); Löfström and Pyhältö (2012, op. cit.), and Mahmud and Bretag (2013) have

identified a variety of ethical problems that are likely to rise in the context of supervision. Ethical
problems in research include incapable, ineffective, and inadequate supervision; leaving the student
in a lurch midway; intervention of perception of the supervisor; using obnoxious and manipulative
language; and entering into a two-fold relationship that is likely to impair professional judgment, and
backing fake authorship.

Conclusion

Based on earlier research studies, it can be advocated that the quality of supervision depends on
the supervisor’s ability to meet the needs of a research scholar. The mutual understanding of role
expectation is crucial to the success of the supervisory process. There is no perfect style or method of
research supervision, it has to consider the connection between the style and quality of supervision,
role expectation of the scholar and academic staff, field of research study, and various other relevant
characteristics.

Research recommends that the match and association between the research scholar and his or her
academic environment is important. However, there is scope for future research to explore the match
between the ethical issues rooted in supervision as identified by research scholars and research
supervisors.

The extent to which a research scholar depends on her or his research supervisor for guidance,
inspiration, problem solving, research preparation, and communication, has a significant effect on the
relationship between supervision quality and style of supervision. Finally, therefore we can state that
the supervision strategy should be suitably based on an understanding of the role expectations of the
individual research scholar and the needs arising from those traits, which need fine tuning with the
style and strategy adopted by the research supervisor.

We can learn a lot about the supervisor/ mentor and research student/mentee relationship from our
ancient guru-shishya model. We have excellent examples from our epics that present different shades
of the supervisor-student relationship, and we may be able to cull aspects that are ideal and those that
we need to be cautious about. Although we are living in a vastly different era, there are some valuable
lessons that we may learn and adapt to the contemporary context. The guru or mentor is responsible
for creating, “a learning ecology” that is rich and vibrant, and he has to adhere to all ethical principles
related to the research as well as those that involve the dynamics of a relationship.

A positive meaningful relationship between a supervisor and research student not only enhances the
learning process, but also has far-reaching influence on the progressive transformation of research and
practice in institutes of higher education.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges inputs received from Professor Shagufa Kapadia, Faculty of Family and
Community Sciences and Research Team of Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC and Maharaja

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