Best Practice in Supervisor Feedback to Thesis Students

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Authors Professor John Bitchener, Dr Helen Basturkmen, Dr Martin East, and Dr Heather Meyer.

Publishers: Ako Aotearoa ? The National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence PO Box 756 Wellington 6140 Published December 2011

Design and layout: Fitzbeck Creative

ISBN: 978-0-473-19648-6



This work is published under the Creative Commons 3.0 New Zealand Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike Licence (BY-NC-SA). Under this licence you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work as well as to remix, tweak, and build upon this work noncommercially, as long as you credit the author/s and license your new creations under the identical terms.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary .............................................................................................................. 4 Project aims....................................................................................................................... 4 Methodological approach................................................................................................... 4 Key findings....................................................................................................................... 4

Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 Aims and rationale............................................................................................................. 6 What kind of information is provided in feedback? ............................................................. 7 How is feedback provided?................................................................................................ 8 Methodology...................................................................................................................... 9 Report structure............................................................................................................... 10 Supervisor perspective .................................................................................................... 10 Student perspective......................................................................................................... 10 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 10 References ...................................................................................................................... 10 Appendices ..................................................................................................................... 10

Supervisor Perspective ....................................................................................................... 11 Areas of consideration ..................................................................................................... 11 Method of investigation.................................................................................................... 11

Student Perspective ............................................................................................................ 35 Areas of consideration ..................................................................................................... 35 Method of investigation.................................................................................................... 35 Findings and discussion .................................................................................................. 36

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 43 Key findings..................................................................................................................... 43

References ......................................................................................................................... 48 Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 51

Appendix A Supervisor questionnaire ........................................................................ 51 2

Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D

Student questionnaire ............................................................................ 53 Interview questions ................................................................................ 55 Examples of text analysis ...................................................................... 56

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Executive Summary

Project aims

The primary aim of the project was to investigate what supervisors and thesis students in New Zealand universities identified as best practice in the feedback that is typically given in three main discipline areas: Humanities, Sciences / Mathematics, and Commerce. A subsidiary aim was to see whether or not there are similarities and differences in supervisor and student perspectives within and across disciplines. An additional aim was to identify any differences in the nature and delivery of feedback to speakers of English as a first language (L1) or as an additional language (L2). The final aim of the study was to produce advice on what supervisors and students consider to be best practice in thesis supervision.

An important type of information provided by feedback is that which helps them understand the expectations of their disciplinary community. It `conveys implicit messages' about the values and beliefs of the discourse community, the nature of disciplinary knowledge and student identities in the community (Hyland, 2009, p. 132).

Methodological approach

The study adopted a multi-method approach to data collection in order to triangulate the self-report

data from questionnaire responses and interview comments with evidence of feedback from

samples of students' draft texts. Supervisors and students (but not supervisor-supervisee pairs) were

sought across three discipline areas (Humanities, Sciences / Mathematics, Commerce) from six New

Zealand universities where each of these disciplines is represented. Of the 234 participants sought

for the study (180 students ? 10 from each of the 3 disciplines at each of the 6 participating

university, and 54 supervisors ? 3 from each of the 3 disciplines at each university), 35 supervisors

and 53 students volunteered to take part in the study. Data were collected from open-ended

questionnaires (with separate questionnaires for supervisors and students), follow-up one-to-one

interviews with a sub-set of questionnaire respondents, and samples of written feedback provided

by supervisors in drafts of a student's thesis. Questionnaire responses were analysed by means of

content analysis and the key themes were categorized and,

where appropriate, quantified. These findings were then triangulated with interview data and textual evidence of feedback from students' draft texts in order to establish patterns. Further details are provided in the relevant chapters of this report.

Because different perspectives about what is required or expected sometimes exist between supervisors and students,

Key findings

Isolating the key findings from a study that produces a wide range of findings can be a subjective task. The findings that we present here as key findings are those from Table 28 that were most frequently mentioned by supervisors and students

we would suggest that dialogue between the two parties needs to be established from the very beginning of the supervisory process and maintained throughout.

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