Promoting agentive feedback engagement through dialogically minded approaches in doctoral writing supervision
Xiujuan Sun, John Trent
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.