Adaptive master’s dissertation supervision: a longitudinal case study

ABSTRACT

Drawing on supervisor and supervisee interviews, analysis of supervisor feedback on the supervisee’s draft chapters, and departmental supervisory guidelines, this study focuses on the roles a master’s dissertation supervisor plays during the course of supervision. These roles are discussed referring to models of supervisory pedagogy, the teaching, partnership, apprenticeship, contractual, pastoral, and non-interfering models. Supervisee and supervisor agreed that the supervisor aligned with different roles at different times for different purposes, showing this was a case of adaptive supervision. Nonetheless, the supervisor’s feedback indicated supervision was more directive than his interview data suggested, illustrating the need to collect data from multiple sources to capture the complexities of the supervisory dynamic. We conclude that the dangers of departments attempting to formulate homogenized supervisory practices are highlighted by our case.

KEYWORDS:

• Supervision
• international students
• academic writing
• academic support
• dissertations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nigel Harwood http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-4865

Bojana Petric http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6855-3785

Notes

1 We preferred the term non-interfering rather than laissez-faire model as we felt its meaning would be more transparent to interviewees. We added models from Gatfield to Dysthe’s descriptions in an attempt to expose participants to a fuller range of potential supervisory models.

2 Ideally, we would have interviewed Billy repeatedly like we interviewed Jay, thereby obtaining more detailed accounts of the supervisory journey from the perspective of both. However, most supervisors invited to participate in our study either declined or did not reply to our invitations to be interviewed, suggesting we would have recruited even fewer supervisors had we insisted on multiple interviews.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Small Research Grant from the journal Language Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies (online ISSN: 1467-9922). The grant enabled us to offer Jay a fee of £15 per interview and to have the interview data transcribed.