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

Tags

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

Tags

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

Tags

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.

 

 

When doctoral students can’t develop their writing skills: What helps?

Tags

feedback on writing, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, writing skills development

By Susan Carter

The question in the title is not rhetorical: this post is keen to receive suggestions from both doctoral students and academics on how to help doctoral students learn to control their academic writing.

Here’s an example: explaining the mechanics of writing proved hard in a recent peer review group with one woman who just didn’t get it. Each meeting, she found others’ writing ‘really good’, while agreeing that the formative feedback on her own writing really improved it. Why couldn’t she learn how to give good feedback from receiving helpful feedback on her own work? Why didn’t this help her learn to self review?

This woman was highly intelligent; as such, she trusted her own evaluation that she simply was never going to become good at academic writing. She had tried other writing support before attending our classes. Her writing hadn’t improved, mostly because the instruction didn’t make sense to her. She was sure that she could never write well enough to be published.

After the class, as facilitators we did a post mortem. Could we have managed this better as teachers? We considered whether it was an advantage or disadvantage that the group was small. It had worked well for the others; one student celebrated that understanding the ‘formula’ for a paragraph had enabled her to write more fluidly and produce clearer writing—she rocketed ahead. Others made break-throughs too. That others seemed to be moving ahead happily probably made it worse for this sharp-witted student who seemed unable to revise her own writing.

I have also heard from supervisors who bemoan the fact that, although they try to explain the notion of logical forward progression, the need for a narrative, and for connections, some students continue to lack a sense of how writing structure affects meaning. As a learning advisor, I spend hundreds of hours with students on the other side of the conversation who find supervisor feedback puzzling. (Difficulty may be often due to communication between two people who interpret things differently.) My own approaches include the following:

• always give feedback first on content and then on mechanics;
• praise what works well, dissecting why;
• compare what is not working to what is (‘you do this well over here’);
• scaffold support with English language, not too much at once;
• work with one section and request that the same principle be applied throughout;
• direct students to other resources, e.g., learning centres, guides, digital resources;
• keep exemplars that can be used as models;
• ask students to look for well-written articles and explain why they enjoyed the style;
• explain with metaphors to make writing revision less emotional, more practical;
• set up peer review groups.

Usually, this combination, adapted to suit the situation, keeps my research students progressing in their control of writing—and as I work through these approaches with them, I’m often alerted myself to ways I could write more strongly.

Yet, I am aware from the student in my writing class that some very clued up people simply don’t connect to the workings of language in formal academic prose. Are there alternative ways to explain the points about academic writing that would help someone who really has trouble with language mechanics?

If you are a student, or have a student, with a story that goes “Did not get it until…” I would love to hear from you. Stories could be pastiched together for a sequel post: suggestions based on student experience.

Doing feedback: from zeal to anguish

Tags

feedback and emotions, Giving feedback, pedagogies for effective feedback, supervisor feedback

Associate Professor Sara Cotterall  completed her doctorate in the field of doctoral education in 2011 after a 25 year academic career teaching and researching language education.  One of the publications from her PhD was the fabulous article ‘More than just a brain: Emotions and the doctoral experience’. She revisits some of those themes – albeit from a different perspective – in this blog she’s scribed for us.

Sara dedicates this post to David Hall, “my generous and witty PhD supervisor, who passed away February 3, 2014 in Sydney, Australia.”

“It’s hard for me too!” – I think, whenever I hear doctoral candidates angsting about their supervisors’ feedback.  I find it infinitely more difficult to give feedback on doctoral researchers’ work than it ever was to receive.  Why? Because I am acutely aware of the power of the feedback to disappoint, discourage or depress the recipient.

Feedback stirs up a range of emotions.  Many doctoral students tell horror stories about their supervisors’ feedback practices.  They complain that feedback is late, contradictory, difficult to understand or discouraging. Take the supervisor who repeatedly told a PhD candidate that what he had written was ‘bullshit’ and that he shouldn’t come back until he had ‘an original idea’.  With feedback on doctoral writing, the stakes are high, time is short and emotions are raw. However, PhD researchers seldom reveal those emotions to their supervisors (Cotterall, 2013); instead they share them elsewhere.

Emotions that have been held in check tend to spill over when PhD candidates congregate — feelings of anxiety, resentment, impatience, discouragement, dissatisfaction — but rarely feelings of joy. Sadly, the more positive emotions seem to be quarantined until submission day. During my days as a PhD student our monthly seminars were followed by a shared student lunch where the real issues bothering people always got an airing.  Like the time a colleague from China told me she’d been waiting three months for her supervisor to return her draft chapter and wondered if such a delay was normal.  When I offered to draft a respectful email for her to send her supervisor, she refused, explaining that she didn’t want to jeopardize her chances of getting a recommendation letter from him.

But PhD candidates are not the only ones to experience emotions during the feedback process. When I’m giving feedback on my doctoral researchers’ writing, I agonize over the words I use, producing several drafts and modifying my comments until the last minute. I know how much the wrong word can sting.  This is particularly the case when working with researchers whose first language is not English where nuances of meaning can be ‘lost in translation’. I worry that my feedback will discourage, yet I also want to provide guidance that will help make their next draft communicate better.  At other times I have to check my disappointment when I see that suggestions made previously have not been acted on and the draft remains weak.

Some comments, such as one about the importance of ‘metatext’ (Paltridge & Starfield, 2007) that I wrote on a student’s chapter draft recently, need explaining and the written document is not the most efficient site for that.  The same is true of my observation that a student was depending too heavily on her sources in her literature review without showing how the other ‘voices’ in her text are those of “guests” she has invited to her research “dinner party” (Kamler &  Thomson, 2006).  These kinds of ideas need to be explained, illustrated and discussed. But time constraints mean this doesn’t always happen.

Given these tensions, I can’t help feeling that everything would be simpler if written feedback could be replaced with oral sessions where supervisor and candidate sit side by side working with the text (where supervisor and student are located in the same city).  This would foreground the supervisor’s mentor, teacher and helper roles and downplay their role as gatekeeper.  I suspect that good supervisors (the type who publish on the pedagogy of supervision and contribute to blogs like this) adopt such feedback practices routinely, but there are many who don’t.

Face-to-face feedback has enormous potential, if only the practical issues could be resolved. Given the long-term nature of the relationship between doctoral supervisor and doctoral researcher, I believe it can afford to be more honest.  This means that if it is necessary to comment negatively on something the student has written, the feedback is more likely to be viewed as helpful.

So can the practical problems be solved?  The most efficient way for me to work with a student’s (often lengthy) text would be for the candidate to be physically present while I was reading the draft, so that instead of having to commit my comments to paper, I could talk them through as I went. But since I do most of this kind of reading at home in the evening after work, this is not practicable. What’s more, few doctoral researchers would wish to sit there while their supervisor worked through their draft in real time.

What do others think?  Could/do face-to-face feedback sessions offer a richer environment for talking formatively about text?  Might this diffuse some of the sting of receiving written feedback on drafts?  If so, how could such sessions be set up?  And what other options are available? 

References

Cotterall, S. (2013). More than just a brain: Emotions and the doctoral experience. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(2), 174-187.

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London: Routledge.

Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (2007). Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language: A handbook for supervisors. London: Routledge.