Promoting agentive feedback engagement through dialogically minded approaches in doctoral writing supervision

ABSTRACT

Leaning on a holistic supervising doctoral writing framework, this study sets out to conceptualise and unpack the dialogic feedback experiences sustained within a PhD candidate’s research article writing process. A juxtaposition of multiple data sources uncovers that effective employment of supervision approaches to feedback essentially varies across time and space, which is interlaced with student response dynamics, voices of academic community, supervisor professional experience, and dialogic mediums. The single interwoven narrative affords a nuanced understanding of the decision-making mechanism, practices, and relationship elements constituting supervisory feedback dialogues. It highlights the historically and socio-relationally shaped nature of personal agency through which individuals enact and interpret situation-specific feedback discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral writing
• supervision pedagogy
• feedback dialogues
• feedback dynamics
• individual agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiujuan Sun

Xiujuan Sun is currently a full-time PhD student at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interest lies in the areas of doctoral identities, doctoral writing, and post-PhD careers.

John Trent

John Trent is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the Education University of Hong Kong. His recent research includes studies of teacher identity, discourse analysis, and teacher education.