Fisheries, wildlife, and conservation biology education in Australia: current challenges and future directions

Abstract

Fisheries Science, Wildlife Management and Conservation Biology are crucial to the Australian economy and society. Australian doctoral education in these fields assumes that students commence with well-developed relevant skills, or acquire them autodidactically or from their supervisors. We believe that such reliance on autodidactic approaches and supervisor direction are no longer adequate, and argue for compulsory coursework within doctoral programs.Currently, most specialised education in quantitative methods, advanced genetic techniques (including population genetics) or human dimensions is provided in short courses or workshops, if at all. Short courses provide advanced technical knowledge (e.g., an advanced stock assessment workshop for fisheries scientists or population viability analysis workshops for conservation biologists), but they are voluntary. Multiple university and multiple discipline consortia could provide the compulsory postgraduate coursework needed for structured development of quantitative skills in Australian PhDs. Online education should be part of the solution, but it is not a panacea because some material should be taught in person for effective learning. Solutions can build on modified approaches used overseas and in other disciplines in Australia. Pollock et al. 414Australian Zoologist volume 36 (4) 2013 2011) and a low academic self-concept (Curtin et al. 2013), are exacerbated by withdrawal from the campus environment and can also contribute to poor progress.While some supervisors counter this with informal mentoring, this is often ad hoc (Fincher 2012) and depends very much on the supervisory skills and commitment of the supervisors (Brew and Peseta 2009). It also assumes the supervisor's competence in all core areas, which may require that the supervisor gain competence in new skills (Mohan and Radhakrishnan 2011). Thus, successful supervision depends heavily on the skills of the individual supervisor. Furthermore, recent research has identified the value of 'collective academic supervision', with multiple supervisors working with students to create the best environment for students to learn core academic competencies (Nordentoft et al. 2013). This can also balance the 'tough love' approach of some supervisors, who deliberately create a critical environment for their students who need to rise to the expectations or leave (Aitchison et al. 2012).Many overseas universities and some disciplines in Australian universities have responded to these evolving requirements for providing fundamental skills to research students with postgraduate courses within higher degrees by research to cover critical learning skills, provide peer-learning interactions amongst students and expose students to a wide range of subject experts (e.g., Maxwell and Shanahan 1997;Sarros et al. 2005;Stephenson et al. 2006; Rolfe and Davies 2009; Chiteng Kot and Henda 2012). These are known variously as researchcoursework doctoral programs (Trigwell et al. 1997), professional doctorates (Chiteng Ko...