Research suggests that doctoral researchers often don’t understand supervisor feedback on their writing. When they get their text back with its red/blue tracked changes and comments, they don’t always get what they are being asked to do.

I remember that a doctoral researcher once told me that she had spent hours trying to work out what one comment on her text meant.  She was the first person I had supervised so I was a real rookie. I think I had written something like ‘para break here’. She didn’t know what I was referring to. But I bet you’ve guessed it. Para’ is short for paragraph. It’s not an unknown abbreviation, it’s even in most dictionaries as an informal noun. But the problem was not really the word ‘para’. The problem was not really that I was writing in shorthand.

The problem was that the doctoral researcher didn’t have sufficient context to work out what the word ‘para’ could mean, because she wasn’t expecting any feedback about paragraphs. As far as she was concerned her paragraphing was fine. So when she saw a comment that referred to a paragraph it just didn’t compute. Don’t worry – she did eventually work it out. But she also told me about it. And being told was very helpful for me. I understood then that, rather than simply write in shorthand that the existing paragraph needed to be broken up, I needed to have a discussion about paragraphs. (This was just one of the things that happened that made me interested in working on academic writing.)

So that’s an example of a doctoral researcher not understanding supervisor feedback on writing. There are loads and loads of examples in the research and you may well have experienced feedback issues yourself.

Now supervisors don’t intend to mystify the doctoral writer with their feedback. If your supervisor spends time on your text but you don’t get what they are saying,  it’s not because they like spending time making you guess what they are on about. And it’s not because they are stupid that they can’t explain what is needed. And it’s not because they are malicious. No, it’s more likely to be the case that it’s something like

1 they are assuming you already know what they are referring to – you learned it earlier in your academic career, or

2 they are using their own tacit knowledge – that is, things that they have learnt without being formally taught, so while they know what is needed they haven’t yet had to think about how it might be explained in detail, or

3 they are referring to things that are present in all good academic texts and they think that you will recognise what they mean because of all of your reading, or

4 they haven’t had any support or professional development in supporting the academic writing aspect of doctoral supervision, or

5 they haven’t addressed the broader issue, like me, which was in my case about paragraphing in general.

Or combinations of the above. But if asked, again like me, doctoral supervisors are generally able to provide either an explanation or some examples of what to do – or both.

However research into the doctoral experience of feedback on writing suggests that doctoral researchers can feel that it’s not OK to ask questions or give feedback on feedback. They think it’s their fault that they don’t know.

But supervisors don’t really know what doctoral researchers don’t know. Particularly early on in the doctorate or in the early stages of thesis writing. Supervisors may well assume that the doctoral researcher does know what their feedback means. The doctoral researcher already understands the what and how of academic writing, they just need to address a very specific problem – they just need to know where in their text they need to do something different.

So the moral here is obvious. It’s important for doctoral supervisors to look beyond immediate issues in writing and initiate conversations about writing more generally, and their expectations of texts. It is also important for supervisors to ask if their feedback is clear and to explicitly invite the feedback recipient to come back to them about anything that isn’t.

And of course it is equally important for doctoral researchers to ask questions about any feedback on writing that they don’t understand. Even if that takes a bit of courage to initiate the conversation. Perhaps a lot of courage.

The vast majority of supervisors welcome opportunities to help.