Responding to supervisor feedback: do doctoral students have to agree?

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Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, feedback on writing, Feedback practices, Researcher identity

By Susan Carter

My eight years of being a consultant for doctoral students taught me what supervisors sometimes do not see: that candidates can struggle over whether or not to take supervisory advice. Here, I want to defend two suppositions.

1) It is always wise to pick your battles, and on that assumption, students do well to defer to supervisors when the issues are relatively minor.

2) When writing decisions are important, students need to learn how to refuse advice that they disagree with and demonstrate why.

Because students transition towards independent researcher status when they are able to make decisions and then make them work, academics who support them could initiate talk about how to manage disagreement with supervisors.

Often it is tricky responding to supervisor feedback on writing for candidates who don’t really agree with it. Learning how to negotiate diplomatically is a very useful skill that is not gained lightly. The power differential between student and supervisor can make it quite hard for students to hold on to their own choices. Those who come from a culture where it is inappropriate to contradict a teacher could be advised about Western expectations that there are intellectual benefits to arguing. It’s tricky, though, for many candidates, to disagree.

Doctoral writing: Playing in woods and trees

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argumentation, feedback on writing, Feedback practices, Peer review, Precision, research writing, writing fun

By Susan Carter

Being unable to see the woods for the trees is a metaphor that is sometimes applied to thesis writing for when close attention to detail (the trees) causes an author to lose oversight of the purpose and shape of the whole thesis (the woods). Thesis writers sometimes mention that they pin their research question, or their overall argument, above their desk as a pointer reminding them that when they are focusing on detail, writing should always be within the framework of the big picture.

For a two-hour doctoral writers’ workshop, I drew on the woods and trees metaphor to encourage both an overview of the big picture and attention to detail.

Writing together with your doctoral student

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Feedback practices, writing skills development, Writing together with your student

By Claire Aitchison

You write, I correct, you fix and return

Mostly, supervisors expect doctoral students to write somewhere else, away from them, and then send the written work back so they can then give feedback. Typically, the next step involves the supervisor and student coming together to discuss the supervisor’s feedback. These discussions may involve the student asking for clarification, the supervisor elaborating on their critique, occasionally students and supervisor will debate the feedback and perhaps renegotiate what needs to be done next. And mostly meetings will end with a list of tasks for the student to take away and do—again, on their own—before returning to the cycle yet again. This practice requires the student to be able, and motivated, to get on with the writing between sessions.

Managing supervisor/candidate falling out over doctoral writing

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Emotion & writing, Feedback practices, Researcher identity, supervisor feedback, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

It’s common for supervisory relations to grow tense somewhere during a doctorate. It’s also usual for the parties involved to work through such tension, and move on, that very usual process in most human relationships. Now and then, though, emotions grow intense, and the disagreement between candidate and supervisor threatens to obstruct the doctorate. And while some tensions may emerge from differing personalities, some relate to differences in writing processes or style preferences. A few times I have worked with supervisor/candidate couples in strife, and this post describes my suggestions for managing discord.

Why do supervisors contradict themselves? Development of feedback

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feedback on writing, Feedback practices, supervisor contradictions

By Cally Guerin

One of the ongoing challenges for doctoral writers is the confusion (and frustration) that arises when supervisors seem to change their opinions about what the writing needs. It can look like supervisors contradict themselves if they offer feedback on writing, and then later advise something different. Why does this happen? We need to consider how, just as the writing develops, the feedback itself also develops over time. I think there are several reasons that supervisors’ feedback can change.

“Writing doctoral research”: Learning through peer critique and feedback

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Feedback practices, peer learning, research writing course

Our guest blogger today is Pia Lappalainen. She has a PhD in Science (Technology) and an M.A in English and French Philology, Communications and Pedagogics. Currently a lecturer at Aalto University in Finland, she pursues new pedagogy promoting doctoral-level curriculum design.

By Pia Lappalainen

If doctoral candidates are pained by various aspects of their research process, so are their supervising faculty! While pressure is accumulating for expediting thesis completion and for increasing high impact factor publications, universities everywhere are feeling the strain of fewer resources to support those outcomes. Higher engineering institutions in Finland, too, are struggling with fiercer competition for state- and private-sector funding and the subsequently tighter finances. To survive, Aalto University has taken some drastic decisions, cutting down on post-graduate course supply and contact hours in those courses that survived a recent downsizing. This forces pedagogues to re-think their pedagogical approaches to the already dwarfed course foci and contents. I’d like to share here how we harnessed peer critique as an instrument ensuring sufficient feedback while shrinking teacher contact hours.