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.

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Supervision: the key relationship to get right as a doctoral writer and researcher

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Researcher identity, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Ian Brailsford.  Ian is Postgraduate Learning Adviser in the Libraries and Learning Services at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. With doctoral advising as his core work, Ian has an insightful approach to doctoral writing and the personal context that supports it.

Postgraduate research marks a transition from structured teaching and learning, with the lecturer deciding the course content, learning outcomes, assignment tasks and schedule, to fully fledged academic independence. To manage this in-between space, universities have for decades adopted an academic apprenticeship model where the less experienced researcher works under the supervision of a ‘master’. When it works well, as it does in most cases, postgraduate supervision is ‘win win’: the emerging early-career researcher is guided through the project to completion and the supervisor, as one experienced academic, Professor Robin Kearns, once put it, gains a new colleague. In an ideal world the balance of power shifts towards the end of the project; the postgraduate researcher becomes the expert and teaches the supervisor about their new-found knowledge.

However, we’re all human.

Doctoral writing and supervisor feedback: What’s the game plan?

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Emotion & writing, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

Last week’s post and its comments provide an entry point to this one. Last week I drew on Peter Arthur’s thoughts on how to teach metacognition, which takes the teacher further than just teaching material, to teaching students how to manage their own learning. Reflection on this topic took me to the fact that, in practice, supervisors are learners too when it comes to the cycles of feedback and revision in doctoral writing.

Revision: Turning literature review lists into logical argument

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argumentation, Precision, structuring argument, supervisor feedback

By Lawrence Zhang and Susan Carter

Professor Lawrence Zhang is a much sought after supervisor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who takes a large number of mainly Chinese doctoral students through to successful completion and employment following that. One comment of his on a student’s oral presentation seemed so helpful and of use to many other students that it triggered this post.

The oral presentation was for the committee who were reviewing at the end of the provisional first year. They worked within the discipline but not within the particular field.

Reviewing the candidate’s PowerPoint, Lawrence wrote in an email:

You have listed all the authors, and this is not as good as what research has been done. Can you list all the challenges that are pointed out by these scholars instead of just name-listing? Your purpose of citing these authors and critically appraising their work is to argue for the validity of your study, especially showing any possible research gap that you intend to fill. In a way, that will be how you will be regarded as making contributions to the existing literature. It is not only about the presentation per se, but instead it is really about the Introduction of the thesis where you have to really spend time presenting your argument systematically and coherently on the basis of what you have briefly reviewed about “the state-of-the-art” in the field on this particular topic or subject. It is not about piling up all the names to impress your reader or your audience, who are more keen to know what these authors have done in terms of how that relates to what you will be doing.

Doctoral writing and feedback: Moving on from negative emotion

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Emotion & writing, feedback on writing, supervisor feedback

By Susan Carter

I’ve just had the amazing experience of getting to know Professor Rowena Murray from the University of the West of Scotland. We spent a pleasant few hours weeding a graveled area around a church hall with the community gardeners in the village of Lochwinnoch.

Talking about our research topics while weeding was a great way for one thought to lead to another, almost like the bramble rhizomes we were pulling out. I’ve walked a supervision meeting, but suspect that there might be other physical activities that both student and supervisor enjoy doing that would allow for the same organic thinking together process.

Weeding allowed time to talk about academic writing and doctoral students.

This post covers one topic that we sifted through and agreed upon: the potential for emotional disturbance in relationship to writing and feedback (see to Sara Cotterall’s earlier post and my own on emotion.) Then we also thought about how students might learn to manage their emotions, and resolve differences between themselves and their supervisors—and then be aware of their own personal development from handling something well recognized as challenging.

Managing writing tension in the supervision relationship

Tags

Emotion & writing, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

We’ve had a useful series of posts on technology for doctoral writing, but this post turns from the technical to the social. Human beings have their own complexities. It isn’t uncommon for tension to arise between doctoral students and their supervisors over the writing processes.

Commonly this occurs when supervision crosses different cultural protocols for talking across hierarchies. Gender, age, experience—even things like whether both have children or not—can cause tensions. Laurie Finke puts it neatly: “Every utterance is always inhabited by the voice of the ‘other,’ or of many others, because the interests of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and any number of other related ‘accents’ intersect each utterance” (Finke, 1992: 13).

Here, though, I focus not on social distinctions, but on difference in approach to practice. I’m drawing on material I have developed for supervisors teams who want support with managing the relationship. The following sets of questions are intended to help students and supervisors identify causes of tension so that they can begin strategizing on how to work around them. Statements in them are similar to ones I have heard expressed by academics and doctoral students: I believe that occasionally quite polarised views are held within supervisor-student relationships, and that these can also cause discomfit. Those who are not so extreme can still their preference tendencies.

Reality check for differences

Writing preferences can be checked with the following:

Main criteria for thesis prose

Clarity is the most important feature of thesis prose.

Clarity is less important than theoretical complexity or creativity or [something else].

Internal thesis consistency (e.g., with use of first person pronouns, register of language etc.)

Consistency right throughout the thesis is essential.

Sometimes consistency rules need to be broken when there are more important issues at stake.

Doctoral thesis length is usually 70 – 100 thousand words

It’s best to take all the words needed to fully explore material and ideas.

It’s best to produce something as direct and succinct as possible to achieve doctoral success.

The thesis must show knowledge of literature and critical analysis of it

It is most important that novice researchers spend as long as it takes to fully understand the literature.

Novice researchers should be discouraged from endless reading because it can go on forever.

Standard of submitted thesis

Each doctoral thesis is its author’s only one: it has to be perfect.

As soon as a thesis is good enough it should be submitted so the author can move on—future publication can be more sophisticated.

Closure on research project

As soon as a thesis is good enough it should be submitted so the author can move on—future publication can be more sophisticated.

Students should submit as soon as possible—they can do more with data later.

Thrill from originality or from using the conventions of research

I most love the intellectual adventure of academia.

I most love the time-honoured security of academia’s well established conventions.

Fast lane or slow lane

Students should progress beyond the doctorate as soon as possible.

Students should experience the doctorate to full satisfaction before moving on.

Plans for after the thesis

Students should be prepared for work as academics after completion of the doctorate.

Students should be encouraged to prepare for a wide range of career options.

Holistic or discrete writing practice

It’s best to work on individual sections of the thesis one at a time.

It’s best to work steadily over the whole thesis, ranging between sections.

Risk taker or risk averse

The best students take risks in thesis writing for the satisfaction of a cutting-edge style.

The best students make choices that ensure safety through the examination process.

With these prompts, student and supervisor can begin talking rationally about why they might both be frustrated. They can consider whether there any other dichotomies are causing tension. The premise is that the conversation deliberately steps back from blame and reaction to objectively diagnose the cause of pain and then come up with a route to alleviating it.

I’m sure there’s scope for further analytical approaches to tension between student and supervisor around doctoral writing. Communication preferences play a role too. Do you have suggestions? Or experiences that identify other tensions that are due to different approaches to doctoral writing?

Reference

Finke, Laurie A. (1992). Feminist theory, women’s writing. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.