Handling the loss of innocence: first-time exchange of writing and feedback in doctoral supervision

ABSTRACT

The first time of many significant encounters is the most intense, raising awkwardness, anxiety and hope. This article presents data from doctoral students (n = 80) who described the first time that they submitted writing to their supervisor and received feedback. The first writing/feedback exchange is an initiation into the cultures of academia. Student accounts captured the intensity of the initiation for students, excitement or dread on submitting writing, with increased emotional reaction when going through the feedback process, that liminal first time. Close focus on the first-time writing feedback exchange makes a contribution to the literature on the social interactions of doctoral writing. Data backs our argument that students and supervisors need to carefully manage the first-time exchange of writing. Our findings are analysed thematically and through an autoethnographic lens of the lead author, who was both a research assistant for the research survey and an international doctoral student experiencing the same processes in his cross-disciplinary joint doctorate. We draw on conceptual threshold-crossing theories established in regard to doctoral learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral writing
• supervision
• writing feedback
• threshold concepts
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

John Wei http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9426-2727

Susan Carter http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2498-2814

Notes

1. This project was part of a larger project funded by the Northern Hub of Ako Aotearoa: New Zealand National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence and approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee (UAHPEC), reference number 013694.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ako Aotearoa: National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, New Zealand [grant number 66].