Engaging in feedback communication : longitudinal ethnographic case studies of postgraduate writers in research supervision and writing processes

Abstract

The role of feedback in influencing postgraduate writing has received ever increasing attention. Yet, there is a dearth of research into how feedback offered in a range of micro-contexts collectively influences postgraduate writer/writing development. Drawing on sociocultural and sociohistorical perspectives, the current study explores postgraduate writers’ use of feedback in supervision and writing processes. Specifically, three aspects of feedback communication are explored: (1) negotiation of feedback; (2) revision interconnected with feedback; and (3) positioning prompted through feedback.

To understand the contextualized use of feedback over time, I employed a longitudinal ethnographic multi-case study approach to observe four Chinese postgraduate writers in Arts and Education at a university in Hong Kong. The data collection tools included observations of supervision meetings, in-depth interviews with students, the collection of written drafts with advisors’ (e.g. supervisors and journal reviewers) comments, and the gathering of email correspondence between advisors and students. Qualitative analysis, including discourse analysis and intertextual analysis, was used to examine oral and written feedback practices, and the influence of the feedback on textual revisions.

Three key findings are concluded. The first key finding is concerned with the dynamics of feedback communication which were observed in the multiple purposes feedback served in the negotiated process, and in the power-infused interactions co-constructed by supervisors and students. The postgraduate writers’ critical thinking, self-orientation, and positioning in the target research field were often intertwined, which resulted from productive feedback communication. The second key finding is that postgraduate feedback, especially supervisory feedback, was utilized as a mediational, intertextual source to regulate learning, modify ideas, and represent positioning in writing. Critical engagement in writing required the writers to evaluate and internalize the advice they received over a history of learning. Central to this process was purposive textual planning, which engaged the writers in assessing the connection between their communicative goals and the mediational sources. The third key finding points out that the postgraduate writers’ development was seen in the bolder presentation of their individual academic selves, specifically, in (1) the provision of rich research knowledge in supervisory communication, (2) the evaluation and integration of sources/forms of advice for specific writing purposes, and (3) the contextualization of writing and research work (e.g. focuses).

This study concludes that the postgraduate writers’ development of research knowledge, rhetorical skills, and legitimacy in representing the selves in discourse was facilitated by postgraduate feedback. The current study enriches the understanding of how feedback mediates the situated, sociohistoric reproduction of writing by presenting the inextricable links between feedback and novice scholars’ literacy practices. My new understandings obtained suggest future research should rethink the roles of collaboration, regulation, and reconstruction in shaping feedback communication and guiding the formation of fully-fledged academic writers.