Introduction: Thesis supervision is crucial for the development of students’ research expertise and communication skills so they can think and behave like members of an academic community (Golde, 2010). However, research on thesis supervision has mainly been conducted at doctoral level in Anglophone context with limited attention on cross cultural aspects. Therefore, this project aims to shed light on undergraduate thesis supervision in non-Anglophone contexts. It explores how thesis supervision is experienced by students and supervisors and how feedback provision and feedback uptake are negotiated and used to develop the students’ drafts. This project is conducted as a part of graduate school education, learning and globalisation programme. It focuses on exploring thesis supervision in Sweden and Indonesia to contribute to the discussion on the complexities of language pedagogy in multilingual contexts as a result of globalisation where English is used as an additional language (EAL) (Bianco, 2018), particularly in the expanding circle (Kachru, 1985). It also illuminates the dialogue on thesis supervision related to the identified needs and strategies of academic writing and publication in the diverse linguistic contexts (Canagarajah, 2022). This project also adds negotiation within the Northern and Southern perspectives (see Pennycook & Makoni, 2020) where Sweden is culturally and geographically associated with Northern context while Indonesia is associated with Southern context.
Method and findings: A multi-case study (Yin, 2018) was carried out to illuminate supervisory practice in Sweden and Indonesia and will be reported in the form of compilation thesis. It involved 39 participants (14 supervisors and 25 students) from one Swedish and three Indonesian universities. Online questionnaire, one-on-one semi-structured interviews, non-participatory observation of video-recorded thesis supervision sessions, and document analysis to students’ drafts were conducted and analysed thematically. The whole project will be seen based on dialogic pedagogical supervision driven by Bakthin’s (1981) dialogism as the main lens.
For the first article, I took inspiration from Gee’s (2014) discourse model and used systemic-functional linguistics from appraisal theory (Halliday & Maythiessen, 2014; Martin & Rose, 2007) to analyse supervisors’ interviews. The findings revealed that supervisors described experiencing (a)symmetrical relationship with students and colleagues and juggling unwanted supervisory roles (i.e being editor, pseudo-debt-collector, and spoon feeder). In the second article, the interview results between supervisors and students focusing on the feedback provision and supervisory priorities were analysed by using Biesta’s (2009) functions of education, Habermas’ (1984) communicative action theory, and perspectives on academic literacy. The findings indicated that supervisors have different priorities in giving content/form-focused feedback. Students reported having difficulties decoding supervisors' feedback and react strategically to the feedback that is phrased as questions. Students' strategic reactions seemed rooted from their lack of feedback and disciplinary literacies. The third article will focus on how feedback is phrased and negotiated between students and supervisors in video-recorded online supervision sessions. I consider doing conversation analysis by using Activity Theory or Social Presence Theory as theoretical framework. Feedback and suggestions on theoretical frameworks and perspectives to analyse supervision sessions (third article) and students’ drafts (fourth article) are most welcome.
Zoom, 2023.
undergraduate thesis supervision, feedback provision, feedback uptake, English as an additional language context