Remote support for doctoral writing during a pandemic – how different from usual practice?

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Feedback practices, pandemic, remote doctoral students

By Cally Guerin

Like most of my colleagues around the world, I’m working remotely with PhD candidates at the moment. The challenges of unplanned change to working from home have been documented extensively, but I’d like to focus attention on what this means for doctoral writing. I’ve argued elsewhere (Morozov & Guerin, 2019) that much of the advice regarding remote supervision suggests something not actually very different from usual practices, since so many of us in 2020 mobilise the affordances of digital technologies to do this work.

Managing doctoral writing in English as an additional language (EAL): Supervisor perspective

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English language writing skills, feedback on writing, Feedback practices, supervisor feedback

By Susan Carter

It is not new news that it is tough to write a whole thesis in formal academic prose in English when it isn’t your first language—Sabrina Islam’s post last week showed her strategic approaches to managing this massive challenge. She suggested an inclusive set of attitudes and actions that candidates can adapt.

The supervisor perspective matters in amongst practice too. I know that supervisors worry about supporting international or other EAL candidates’ writing because a few years back I did a research project and got data from 226 accredited supervisors. I was curious as to whether the challenges of sustaining doctoral writing were different across discipline, and sort of expected that they would because the prose styles differ between empirical science and Arts Humanities research writers. I didn’t ask about international or EAL writers, but 66 supervisors mentioned them. A few were negative, most felt that it took more work, and a few felt that international students were the best.  Most comments were that the considerable extra time spent on teaching English literacy at the highest level ever demanded of writers, doctoral writing, meant less time for feedback at deeper levels: content, theory, structure, ideas. This post is based on a workshop I host on this topic for supervisors.

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.