This study uses academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010) to examine supervisory feedback provided on three drafts PhD theses with particular focus on how the feedback helped the student construct and negotiate voice, agency, and identity in doctoral writing.
Supervisory feedback, the most important source of instruction for doctoral students, is "at the heart of the supervisor-supervisee relationship" (Starfield, 2019, p. 207). It enables doctoral students to understand writing as "a form of learning, as revising drafts after feedback can lead to a process of discovery" (Kumar & Stracke, 2007, p. 462), and helps them learn "over time, how to write the thesis and become an independent scholar" (Starfield, 2019, p. 206). However, to succeed as an academic writer, doctoral students need to take agency in learning (Duff, 2010), and negotiate their identity as an informed, credible, and valued member of their disciplinary community (Paltridge & Starfield, 2019). However, despite its importance, the role of supervisory feedback in scaffolding doctoral learning is under-researched (Starfield, 2019). In this presentation, I would like to share the findings of a case study that explores feedback interactions in an intercultural supervision context between an experienced Chinese PhD supervisor and a Nepali doctoral student (myself) at a university in Hong Kong. This study uses academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010) to examine supervisory feedback provided on two drafts of a confirmation report with a particular focus on how the feedback helped the student construct and negotiate voice, identity, and agency in doctoral writing. Duff, P. A. (2010). Language socialization into academic discourse communities. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 169–192. Kumar, V., & Stracke, E. (2007). An analysis of written feedback on a PhD thesis. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(4), 461–470. Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (2019). Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language: A handbook for students and their supervisors (Second Edition). New York: Routledge. Starfield, S. (2019). Supervisory feedback: Building writing scaffolds with doctoral students. In K. Hyland & F. Hyland (Eds.), Feedback in Second Language Writing (2nd ed., pp. 206–225).
