Abstract:
This study was an attempt to examine the supervisors’ and graduate students’ needs for written feedback on thesis/dissertation and juxtaposed them to see how each group views feedback. A mixed-methods design was employed to collect the data. Questionnaires and interviews were deployed to collect the data from 132 graduate TEFL students and 37 supervisors from 10 Iranian Universities. Results indicated that there were similarities (argument, logical order, transition, clarity, and references decisions) and differences (inclusion of information, formatting, grammar, conclusion, introduction, and consistency) between the priorities given by the M.A. and Ph.D. students. Moreover, the findings indicated that the M.A. students’ expressed priorities were not similar to those of the supervisors except in 3 areas (argument, formatting, and grammar). On the contrary, the supervisors’ priorities were close to those expressed by the Ph.D. students in almost all cases. Different factors underlying the perceptions of the students and supervisors were also extracted and presented. Some implications and suggestions for further research are proposed.
Machine summary:
Supervisor feedback is one of the scaffolding tools that graduate students need in order to improve their writing and academic abilities (Cafarella & Barnett, 2000; Hattie & Timperley, 2006).
One of the voids in the literature, which is not well-investigated, is the study of graduate TEFL students’ perceived needs for academic written feedback and the extent to which they are in line with the supervisors’ perceptions.
students of different majors in America and found out that they prioritized the areas as follows: arguments, conclusion, clarity and understandability of the statements, inclusion or exclusion of information, introduction, consistency in the overall paper, logical order of ideas, transition, paragraphs or sections, grammar, formatting, and references.
g. , Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Boud, 1991; Cohen, 1991; Ferris, 2003; Ferris & Goldstein, 2004, Rahimi, 2011), to the best of our knowledge, studies that have investigated the possible differences between graduate students’ perceived needs and their supervisors’ perceptions quantitatively and qualitatively are still sparse.
2. To what extent do graduate students’ perceived needs of feedback on their theses/dissertations match the perceptions of their supervisors?
TEFL Supervisors’ Perceptions of Graduate Students’ Needs (View the image of this page) Arguments and Justifications in My Thesis/Dissertation Conclusion Introduction, Purpose, and Significance of Thesis/ Dissertation Formatting (Tables, Figures, Page Design, Fitting APA Style, Giving Citations, etc.
The second goal of the present study was to examine the degree to which the graduate students’ perceived needs for feedback matched their supervisors’ perceptions.
The last factor affecting the supervisors and students’ perceptions of the need for feedback on theses/dissertations was related to the appropriation of the text.