Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

Exploring the Supervision
Process Across Diverse Contexts:
Collaborative Approaches
Table of Contents
Introduction . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 2Sabine Little and Michelle Golledge, University of Sheffield
Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisorand Hearing Postgraduate Researcher .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 6Victoria Crawley, York St John University
Dai O’Brien, York St John University
Decentered Doctoral Pedagogy:
A Co-autoethnography of Collaboration and Critical, Agentive Induction . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 20
David Hyatt, University of Sheffield
Sally Hayes, The Open University
A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision
Relationship.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

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Ken Ikeda, Otsuma Women’s University
Sumire Shiba, Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education
Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review
in a Foreign Land. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 47
Stachus Peter Tu, Hiroshima Shudo University
Jim Ronald, Hiroshima Shudo University
A Student and Teacher Supervising a Student and Teacher: Examining the Trajectoryof a TESOL Master’s Dissertation. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 62
Theron Muller, University of Toyama
Tracy-ann Tsuruoka, University of Birmingham
Review of “Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectives of International Students
and Their Supervisors” by Nigel Harwood and Bojana Petrić .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

76

Jang Yuan Chao, University of Sheffield
Reflecting on the Supervision Process across Diverse Contexts and in Our Own. .  .  .  .  .  . 79
Alison Stewart with Mao Goto and Zhou Xiaotong, Gakushuin University
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

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INTRODUCTION
Sabine Little and Michelle Golledge, University of SheffieldIt was in 2006 that Sabine began working with a group of students on a “Student Ambassador Network” which would have considerable input into learning, teaching, and scholarship at her institution. Over the four years that the network ran, conferences were organised, an online student journal was born, and a large number of resources were created,
all through student-staff collaborations. The work was highly regarded, however, when plans
began to edit a book on staff-student partnerships in higher education (Little, 2011), no publisher wanted to commit to a volume that would be co-edited by a student and a member ofstaff. Instead, all chapters within the book were co-authored by students at varying stages ofundergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and staff members working with them. Throughout
the work on the volume, as well as during the work on the Student Ambassador Network, andduring the work on this issue of the Learner Development Journal, an important realisation
keeps raising its head: while staff members remain (more likely than not) constant, student
lives are transient by their very nature (Little, 2016), and their engagement with any Higher
Education institution is, compared to the length of some publication schedules, fleeting. This
necessarily means that a partnership between staff and students evolves as it goes on - thesechanges are not necessarily better, nor worse, but have allowed author pairs, at our insistencethat papers should be collaboratively authored, to explore such relationships over time. Our
own relationship as editors evolved throughout the work on this issue, too. When we proposed the call for this particular issue, Michelle was in the middle of her (part-time) Masters
in Education; however, by the time you read this, she had completed her studies, and ourrelationship had evolved into a more collegial one, where our work was bound by a mutual
enterprise, rather than a relationship where one person (Sabine) would ultimately grade thework of the other (Michelle).
Since the book was published in 2011, several works have dedicated themselves to student-staff/staff-student partnerships and collaborations, typically in the area of teachinginnovation (see e.g., Brown, 2019; Dickerson, Jarvis & Stockwell, 2016; Cook-Sather, Bovill &Felten, 2014). The supervisory relationship in particular has, however, received comparatively
little attention, with the notable exception of Harwood and Petrić (2016), whose book is reviewed by Jang Yuan in this issue.
Michelle has been an educator for over fifteen years and has spent the last four years teaching in international schools in Germany. She made the decision to broaden her horizons by
combining her work in school with a part-time iPGCE course at the University of Sheffieldback in 2017, culminating in the award of a Masters degree in Education in 2020. Studying
has been a boon to Michelle’s practice as a teacher as she has been able to incorporate manyideas which she has learned on these courses, which she would not have otherwise had theopportunity to do.
During her time at Sheffield, Michelle was presented with her first opportunity to write acollaborative research paper together with Sabine and three other undergraduate students.
After publication of this paper, we then decided to collaborate in editing the issue of the journal which you now see before you. The opportunity to share the hands-on experience of apractitioner in the school system combined with the perspective of an academic in the field
has led to a very fruitful collaborative relationship, emphasizing the benefits of combining
very different working experiences and perspectives.

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Exploring the Supervision Process Across Diverse Contexts: Collaborative Approaches

As an educator, Michelle feels that it is her responsibility to help students learn from theirown experiences and from the experiences of others. She tries to help her students facilitate
learning that students are unable to do by themselves. This means she has to create affordances for learning, situations that the students by themselves would not typically, if ever,see as opportunities for learning. As a teacher she is part of their experience, their guide, andbecause she is part of their experience, they are part of her experience and learning is something they share together in a collaborative manner.
The Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines collaboration as: “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavour”, accompanied by the vision that true collaboration eventuates when all research parties involved carefully apportion
responsibilities within the same project of research, for the purpose of full realisation of their
combined effort. Each of the collaborators are expected to contribute significantly towards the
project, by putting to the fore their contributions in line with their strengths, diverse skills,
and abilities. Within academic research, the term “collaboration” is predominantly thought
to mean an equal liaison between two academic faculty members who are in pursuance ofsignificant and beneficial research. Today, however, a great number of collaborations involve
researchers whose status varies considerably, and can involve several other people including
post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, or undergraduate students within academic research. It is therefore clear that academics collaborate in many ways, and that the practice oflabelling a person an “academic” might need to become more inclusive and flexible.
It was this variety of collaborations that we wanted to encourage, specifically, we wanted
to draw out those voices that not only facilitated collaboration, but also questioned the implied (and sometimes imposed) hierarchical relationships inherent in supervision. We wanted to create a forum where supervisors and supervisees alike were able to explore what theybrought to the table in a supervisory relationship, and we wanted to encourage author pairs toengage sensitively and thoughtfully with their own and each other’s position.
This edition of the Learner Development Journal was designed to elicit research collaboration and knowledge sharing between supervisor and supervisee. A peer review process wascreated, enabling this relationship to flourish and consequently to showcase the fruits of intermutual, diverse and internationally minded partnerships. These international partnerships
allowed for a more global perspective on collaboration.
The result is a volume which shows a wide variety of supervisory relationships, and a considerable spread and depth of issues raised. Victoria Crawley and Dai O’Brien explore aspectsof British Sign Language, identity, and professionalism, in their thoughtful discussion arounda supervisory relationship where both were occupying multiple roles. David Hyatt and Sally
Hayes engage in a co-autoethnography as they critically explore ways to decentralise traditional doctoral supervision processes. Ken Ikeda and Sumire Shiba use language skills as alens through which they discuss notions of expertise and connectedness. Stachus Peter Tu
and Jim Ronald examine the complexities of navigating the ethical review process in culturally unfamiliar context, and Theron Muller and Tracy-ann Tsuruoka play with the notion of“teacher” and “student” in a supervisory relationship where both roles are occupied by eachof the authors. We are particularly grateful to Alison Stewart, Mao Goto and Zhou Xiaotong for
agreeing to provide a reflective conclusion to the issue.
In exploring the notion of collaboration (and especially noting the aforementioned issueof student transience), considerations around co-authorship and ownership are worth mentioning. While academics are notoriously busy, engaging in scholarship and publishing work
is clearly part of our job description, and thus provide a “constant” in the ever-increasing
demands of our professional lives. The same is not necessarily true for all students once they
have completed their studies. On top of this, the past 12 months have given the world chalLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 20203

Sabine Little & Michelle Golledge

lenges incomparable to what many of us would call our own “living memory”, and, as such,priorities necessarily shifted, reformed, and evolved over the process of bringing all the articles in this issue to completion.
Ponomariov and Boardman (2016) explore the concept of co-authorship, and the level ofcollaboration involved in co-authored work. They offer an interesting analysis and critiqueof how co-authorships are constructed, and a variety of their constructs are mirrored in thewriting practices of author dyads in this volume. While we do not seek to offer the same levelof analysis, it is a fact that the supervisory relationship is somewhat unique, and yet, we positthat few supervisor/supervisee pairs have available to them the requisite time to truly reflect
on this relationship, and how it changes over time, rather than primarily ensuring that thestudent submits the required work necessary to meet pre-determined educational targets.
With this volume, we wanted to give supervisors and supervisees the opportunity to engage
in an “arrest of experience” (Oakeshott, 1933): the stepping out of “our everyday experiencesof people, objects and places”, subjecting them “to different sorts of examination” (p. 324).
These “arrests of experiences” are contained in this volume. Collectively, they offer a fascinating insight into this complex relationship, and how mutual respect, together with reflection, facilitate understanding and collaboration.
All articles in this issue benefited from the Learner Development Journal’s Open Review
policy, where reviewers and authors collaboratively discuss the paper over an extended periodof time. We would like to thank all the authors, as well as the reviewers (Alice Chik, Katherine Thornton, Louise Ohashi, Fumiko Murase, Thomas Bieri, Tanja McCandie) and the Learner
Development Journal steering group (Darren Elliott, Alison Stewart, Tim Ashwell, and Dominic Edsall), for their invaluable input, patience, and expertise, along with Malcolm Swanson
for the layout, and all translators and others who helped with logistics—like many authors
involved in the process, we were both at the giving and the receiving end of the ouroboros-style, never-ending cycle of learning and development.
—Sabine and Michelle

References
Brown, N. (2019). Partnership in learning: how staff-student collaboration can innovate
teaching. European journal of teacher education, 42(5), 608-620. https://doi.org/10.1080/0261
9768.2019.1652905
Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., & Felten, P. (2014). Engaging Students as Partners in Learning andTeaching. A Guide for Faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dickerson, C., Jarvis, J., & Stockwell, L. (2016). Staff–student collaboration: student learningfrom working together to enhance educational practice in higher education, Teaching in
Higher Education, 21(3), 249-265. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1136279
Harwood,N., & Petrić, B. (2016). Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectives of International
Students and Their Supervisors. London: Routledge.
Little, S. (2011). Staff-student partnerships in Higher Education. London: Continuum.
Little, S. (2016). Promoting a collective conscience: designing a resilient staff-student
partnership model for educational development. International Journal for Academic
Development, 21(4), 273-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1209505
Oakeshott, M. (1933). Experience and its modes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ponomariov, B., & Boardman, C. (2016). What is co-authorship. Scientometrics, 109(3), 19391963. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2127-7

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Learner Identities and Transitions

Author Bios
Sabine Little is a lecturer in Languages Education at the University of Sheffield, as well as
Deputy Director for Learning and Teaching in the School of Education. She is a strong believer in working collaboratively with students on learning and teaching development, and has
focused efforts on this for over 15 years. With a research background on multilingualism andidentity, her students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, which sparked an interest in
the focus of this journal issue.
Michelle Golledge has been teaching English for over 15 years and is currently an English as
an Additional Language (EAL) teacher at the International School of Ulm / Neu-Ulm in Germany. During her studies at the University of Sheffield, Michelle deepened her research interest into language and identity and completed two research projects within the field of Third
Culture Kids and teacher identities. Her research interest continues to be focused on language,
including raising cultural awareness in the classroom. Michelle received her iPGCE in 2018
and received her Masters degree in Education in 2020 from the University of Sheffield, England.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

5RESEARCH PAPER
Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision
Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor andHearing Postgraduate Researcher
多言語・多文化な指導とは：聴覚障害を持つ指導教員と持たない院生のケース
Victoria Crawley, York St John University
Dai O’Brien, York St John University
YouTube Link for British Sign Language translation of this paper									—https://youtu.be/T36k5OJMlhk
This paper examines the dynamic in a PhD supervision relationship, where the supervisor is deaf and the supervisee hearing. There are four main discussion areas in this paper. The first is English as the lingua franca of academia
in the UK, and the subsequent impact this has on the supervision relationship. Secondly the issue of power fromthe perspective of student and supervisor, but also from the perspective of deaf and hearing, sign and speech,
BSL/English interpreter and deaf client. Thirdly the issue of giving feedback, and how the dynamic of the interpreter/client relationship influenced the feedback provided in this supervision. Finally, we discuss the difference
between UK deaf cultural norms and academic cultural norms. In conclusion, we suggest that that research withminority culture members should not focus only on subordinate roles such as PhD students, but explore how minority culture members can inhabit senior roles in ways that bring their cultural capital to bear in beneficial ways.
本稿は、博士課程 における聴覚障害のある指導教官と障害のない院生のダイナミクスを４つの側面から検証する。一つ目は、英国における学問の共通言語が英語であることの影響。二つ目は、「指導教官と院生」、「聴覚障害の有無」、「手話と口語」 、「イギリス手話通訳者とクライアント」という視点からの力関係。三つ目は、イギリス手話通訳者とクライアントの関係が、この指導におけるフィードバック及ぼした影響。そして４つ目は、英国の聴覚障害者の文化とアカデミック文化の違い。マイノリティ文化を背景に持つ人々と共に、また、その人々を対象に研究を行う場合、院生など一般的に弱者と捉えられる側だけに焦点を当てるのではなく、マイノリティな人々が、文化資本を有益に利用し、どのように指導的な役割を果たすことが打きるかをも探求すべきことを提唱する。

Keywords
deaf, sign languages, supervision, PhD, minority culture
聴覚障害、手話、言語、指導、博士号、マイノリティ文化A

s we move further into the 21st century, more and more of the academics working in
the fields of Deaf Studies and Sign Language Linguistics are themselves members ofdeaf communities1. Kusters et al. (2017a) describe the range of academic subjects pertaining to the deaf experience, researched by deaf academics. Deaf Studies itself is attracting more interest from both deaf and hearing scholars, as are interpreting studies and sign1.

We capitalize the D in Deaf for the field of Deaf Studies. However, in other contexts we use the lower-case d.
This is in contrast to the traditional d/D distinction in Deaf Studies, in which Deaf is used to show membership of Deaf communities and deaf is used to show audiological deafness. This distinction has been increasingly problematized in recent years. See Kusters et al. 2017a for in-depth discussion. In this paper, we aretalking about signing deaf people who identify as members of deaf communities.

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Victoria Crawley & Dai O’Brien

language linguistics. It is important that deaf academics are represented in this growth, andKusters et al. (2017b) demonstrate how a published volume can be produced by solely deaf
academics. These areas of study, therefore, are inevitably becoming multilingual and multicultural. This paper shows the relationship between a minority culture (deaf) supervisor who
is supervising a majority culture (hearing) student. We explore how this multilingual, multicultural contact in a PhD supervision relationship can illustrate how deaf and hearing people
can work productively together in roles or relative power positions that have been unusual in
the past.
The rise in numbers of deaf people working as academics is not only in fields directly related to Deaf Studies or sign language linguistics. Many deaf people work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects2. The growing number of deaf academics
should therefore be reflected in growing numbers of deaf post-graduate degree supervisors.
These opportunities for supervision should not only be in subjects related to deaf lives andsign languages (following the rule of ‘nothing about us without us’ common in disability
studies and related fields) but in whichever field the deaf academic choses to specialise. Hearing British Sign Language/English interpreters who study to doctoral level mostly stay within
the field of interpreting. The PhD which is at the centre of this paper is also about interpreting.
While there may be overlaps with the study of World Englishes, or English as a Lingua
Franca, when dealing with signed and spoken languages, in that British Sign Language (BSL)
users may have differing proficiencies in English, and BSL users when conversing with eachother in written English (texting, emailing etc) will create their own version/s of English.
However, it remains that a person who is deaf, while able to be fluent in written language, is
not able to access spoken language in the same way as a hearing person3. A speaker of a different spoken language is able to access the sounds of another language and has the capacity
to become fluent in that language. Hearing people, while able to learn signed languages, will
never fully understand the deaf lived experience (Sutherland & Rogers 2014, p. 270). Thus, theconjunction of signed and spoken languages is different from spoken to spoken or signed tosigned languages. There is the continued need for interpretation by (mostly) majority language speakers.
The issues to be covered in this paper will highlight the majority/minority dynamic within the supervision relationship. Often research into the supervision of minorities shows thesupervisor to be from the majority culture (for example, see Kidman 2007, Berryman et al.,2017, Kidman et al. 2017). Some research describes minorities supervising minorities (forexample, see Hohepa, 2010). While these studies are essential to understand the power andcultural dynamics between student and supervisor, they only show part of the picture. They
neglect what might happen in situations where the cultural capital brought to bear by thestudent may outweigh the cultural capital brought to the relationship by the supervisor, either
in relative fluency in spoken English, or in different cultural values which may not sit wellwith academic values. There has been very little research into the way in which this particular supervision context plays out, although we do engage with some of the existing literature
below. It is hoped that this article will help to explore this context in more depth.
This is a unique reflection on the status of majority and minority cultural membershipwithin this relationship and as such is an important area for study, not only for the explora2.

See https://tinyurl.com/Deaf-Docs for a list of deaf people who hold doctorates. This may not be comprehensive as it is “live” and still being updated, but is indicative of how numbers have increased dramatically overthe last two decades.

3.	 British Sign Language is a full, natural sign language in its own right, and not, as many seem to believe, amanual/visual version of English (Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999).

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Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor and Hearing Postgraduate Researcher

tion of deaf supervisors’ relationships with their students, but also for any supervisor who isfrom a cultural or linguistic minority who is struggling to navigate the potential imbalancesof power and capital that their status might cause in the academy.

Who We Are
Vicky—I am a qualified interpreter who has a background in linguistics. My first language is English and I studied French and some Hindi at University. As part of my degree I lived in Rennes
for a year. With a Masters in Sign Linguistics, I qualified as a BSL/English interpreter and had
a break from academia for 16 years (and had two children). For my PhD, I originally had three
supervisors, all of whom had experience of linguistics, but only one who used BSL. When Dai
joined the university, he took over from one of the supervisors due to his experience with BSL andEnglish and also as a user of the services of an interpreter. It was felt that a deaf person would be
the ideal fit with the PhD, given that it was about BSL/English interpreting. BSL is my fourth, but
most fluent language after English and I started to learn when at University in 1989.

Dai—I am a Senior Lecturer in BSL and Deaf Studies at York St John University (YSJU). I am deaf andam bilingual in BSL and English, although I can’t hear beyond background noises and my lipreading is
rubbish. I hold post-graduate degrees in Deaf Studies, Research Methods and Social Work. While myfirst language is English, BSL has been my preferred language for almost 20 years. Having passed my
PhD in 2012 (with a hearing, non-signing supervision team) and taken up my first academic role in YSJU
in 2014, Vicky was my first PhD student. I have since supervised one more PhD student to completion,
in a topic unrelated to BSL or Deaf Studies, again as the only signing deaf person in the supervision
team.

How We Wrote This Paper
This paper was deliberately written as a dialogue. Much of deaf culture in the UK is based ona notion of collective lives, of sharing of information and status (Ladd, 2003). Deaf cultural
spaces, and therefore deaf lives, are therefore often collective, where meanings are created together, in collaboration with one another. Thus, we felt it was culturally appropriate to follow
a style which mirrored those values in the writing of this article. Not only that, but as Vicky
has now graduated from her PhD and is a fully fledged doctor herself, we felt that writing thisarticle as a conversation between peers would be a productive approach. It is also true that as
deaf and hearing people there are some ontological experiences we each have that are uniqueto ourselves and that would be very difficult to combine into a single, co-authored viewpoint.
We follow Lewis and VanGilder (2017) in utilising this dialogic approach to explore our own
feelings and responding to one another’s points of view. The dialogic approach outlined here
is something that is recognised as a useful way of exploring deaf lives and experiences, but as
yet has not been explored in an academic form (although see Kusters et al., 2017a). Below weoutline how we decided to make this collaborative approach work in practice.
We began by setting five questions for each other to answer in a shared online folder. We
also met periodically through the time frame of writing this paper for face to face discussion.
The answers to the questions in the shared folder were added to and built on in response tothese face to face discussions and these became the foundation of this paper. We edited together the written reflections we had made into themes and restructured them to preserve thedialogic structure in a form condensed to meet the word count for this article. We have useddifferent fonts (as above, Dai uses Open Sans, and Vicky uses Palatino) throughout to show
which bits were co-authored and which are the work of a single author. This combination of
face-to-face discussion and online co-production of a written text was a mixture of academic and culturally deaf ways of creating knowledge. Deaf cultures often have a way of telling8

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Victoria Crawley & Dai O’Brien

stories in a cooperative way in order to create and coalesce knowledge about the world in a
way that makes collective sense (Young et al., 2018). This is almost always done in a faceto-face context. It is increasingly common now, with the ease and access of the internet andfile-sharing technologies, for academics to write papers together without ever communicating
face to face or even in real time. This combination of the two approaches brought together its
own frustrations, as sometimes issues easily discussed in BSL were very difficult to translateadequately into English, and similarly some academic English terms proved difficult to translate adequately for the BSL version of this article. Hopefully, by releasing a bilingual versionof this paper, we have overcome some of those translation issues.
The paper is largely organised into four main discussion areas. The first is English as the
lingua franca of academia in the UK, and the subsequent impact this has on the supervision
relationship. Secondly, we will discuss the issue of power, from the perspective of student andsupervisor, but also from the perspective of deaf and hearing, sign and speech, BSL/English
interpreter and deaf client. We will talk about the issues of giving feedback, and how the dynamic of the interpreter/client relationship influenced the feedback Dai gave to Vicky. Finally, we will discuss the difference between UK deaf cultural norms and the academic cultural
norms we have experienced. We will conclude with a summary of what can be learned fromthis supervisor/supervisee relationship and renew our call that research with minority culture
members should not only focus on subordinate roles such as PhD students, but also how they
can inhabit senior roles in ways that bring their own cultural capital to bear in a beneficial
way.
While there were other supervisors involved in Vicky’s PhD, who all played an essential rolein supporting her through the process, they are not the focus of this paper. Dai was the only
deaf BSL user on the supervision team, and it was the relationship between deaf supervisorand hearing student that is the focus here. Therefore, Vicky’s and Dai’s own relationships
with the other supervisors are not explored in this paper.

Vicky’s PhD Project
The subject of my thesis centred around the phenomenon of clarification in interpreting. Outsiders
to the process sometimes believe that knowledge of two languages is enough to be able to interpret
between them. Knowledge of both languages is of course vital; however, it is not enough to be able
to interpret everything that is being recounted in either language. Context, topic knowledge, geographical knowledge, and grammatical proficiency are all needed in order to interpret well. Goffman (1981) wrote about “talk” having three components; thoughts, structure and performance.
A person speaking for themselves has access to all three components. The interpreter only has
access to the words/signs which were produced. They behave more like a listener than a speakerin that they must first understand what was said (to the best of their ability) and reproduce that
understanding in the second language. The interpreter, therefore, does not directly know what wasmeant, they only know what was said, and their understanding of what was said is what they use
as the source message. Before the interpreter interprets what they have heard, they must make aninterpretation of it to themselves before they interpret it into the target language.
Interpreters are well aware of the difficulty caused by only having access to what was said anduse the term “clarification” to encompass all methods used by interpreters to make sure that they
have understood what was said in either language as much as anyone can. In conversation analysis, there is a phenomenon called “repair” (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977) which overlaps
with the processes used by interpreters when they are clarifying. Repair is done by speakers of thesame language when something has arisen in a conversation that is not immediately understoodby the listener. Schegloff et al. (1977) found that if there is a problem with “speaking, hearing or
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Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor and Hearing Postgraduate Researcher

understanding” (Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 361) the most common way that the problem is resolved
is for the speaker to repeat (louder, more accurately, with the correct word this time) the problem
source. For interpreters, who are between the speaker and listener (or the producer and receiver)the process of a person misproducing, mishearing/misseeing, or understanding is confounded by
the belief that interpreters simply need to listen or see to interpret. Therefore, any misproductions
which have been accurately reproduced by the interpreter can be received as if they are correct. An
example could be if a hearing person referred to “a fancy cake for a formal party”, the image thatfirst comes to mind of the interpreter might be a sheet cake rather than a tiered cake because in her
mind that is what a formal, fancy cake looks like. Having used that image of a cake as the translation in BSL of “a fancy cake”, the interpreter represents what was in her mind, rather than what
was in the mind of the speaker. The deaf client, having seen the reference to a sheet cake, might believe that the cake being spoken about was definitely a sheet cake. The cake had only been referred
to as a “fancy” cake. It would come as a surprise to both interpreter and deaf client when the cakein question turns out to be a tiered cake.
My thesis considered real interpreted data and I investigated when and why interpreters mostcommonly clarified, and also how well their attempts to get a clearer understanding were received
by either BSL users or English speakers.

Extracts From the Dialogue
What follows below are extracts from our dialogue that deal with four main topics whicharose, and which we felt were particularly significant for this article. Firstly, we discuss theeffect of English as the lingua franca in UK higher education institutions, and how this affected our supervision relationship. Secondly, we discuss the power relations within the supervision team. Third, we discuss how our academic and professional identities affected how wegave and received feedback during the supervision process. Fourth and finally, we discuss theculture affects, how the deaf culture that Dai brought to the supervision relationship clashedwith or complimented the hearing culture that Vicky brought to the relationship.

English as a Lingua Franca in UK Higher Education Institutions
Vicky—What did you think about English being the main language in supervision sessions, despite the fact that two (myself and one of the supervisors) of the three hearing people were able tosign?

Dai—I found it a bit weird in some ways, but completely expected it in others. When I became partof your supervision team, you had already been on your PhD journey for the best part of a year withthree hearing supervisors. Your supervision team and supervision process already felt well established, and I was a late addition to the team. It would have been, on some unspoken level, a disruptionof or challenge to the university power and status conferred upon those positions if I’d made a big
issue out of the language choice. Or that’s how it felt. The first couple of supervision meetings I sat inon had your full, very experienced supervision team present. So, it was a little intimidating in some respects and difficult to break into a supervision pattern and practice established by experienced, senior
supervisors (Manathunga et al., 2013).
Following on from those issues of power and breaking into established patterns and traditions, thewhole set up of the PhD system in the UK is English dominated. You have to write a thesis in English.
It’s examined in English. There are some examples of PhD theses being written in BSL and examined
in BSL, but these are very much the exception rather than the norm. All the policy and processes wego through on the PhD journey are in English. They could be translated/interpreted into BSL (or another language), but English is always the legitimate language of the academy in the UK. Bourdieu (1992)

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writes about the negative effects that a lack of practical mastery over the legitimate language can haveon other people’s perception of you, whether this mastery is in written or spoken modalities (for English). This filters through everything (including the way we’re writing and publishing this article). Whenthe legitimate language of the institution is so firmly established, it’s very difficult to even think about
challenging it.
Some of this is internalised, I suppose. When you are always the “one who needs interpreters” as
the only person using BSL in a hearing environment, it becomes normal for the interpreters to be
there for you, and it’s sometimes an effort to think critically about the situation, to challenge the taken
for granted assumptions and say “hang on a minute, why am I the minority here?” I don’t think I did
that at all through the supervision process.
But then again, I booked the interpreters, I paid for them out of my Access to Work (AtW) budget4.
If I hadn’t done that, then the non-signing supervisor would not have had access to what was goingon. In that sense, there’s a pragmatic decision to be made. If everyone needs to have access to theprocess, I’m the only one who has funding to make that happen. Should I have insisted that we all use
BSL and the interpreters would be there for non-signers? I remember one presentation you made very
early on in my time as your supervisor where you went to quite extraordinary lengths to make it accessible to me. I was very gratified that you’d made such an effort, but also disappointed in some waysthat you had to put such effort in.

Vicky—At the start of the PhD process, I was surprised how the lack of BSL use affected me.
For the previous 20 years, every working day included the presence of BSL users. I had made apoint not to work as an interpreter with York St John staff. Therefore, after having got used to thelack of BSL users in my first year, the addition of a BSL user as an important part of my team waswelcome, but also came with what felt like new conflicting loyalties. For the last two decades, myprofessional role was to make sure that access was enabled between BSL users and English speakers. Now I was challenged by attending a supervision meeting where I was not only speaking formyself (in either language) but I was torn between aligning myself with three groups of people:
my hearing supervisors, only one of whom I could use BSL with; Dai, who despite being a deaf
person, in these meetings was not my client, but my superior colleague, which represented a bigchange in relationship from “client”; and the interpreters, who were people I had been working
alongside (and was friends with) in some cases for 20 plus years. . I needed to express myself to allof my supervisors, I needed to not consider whether or not the deaf person in the room was following the conversation (and leave that to my colleagues), and I needed to try to be an easy person to interpret for (clear, finishing sentences I start, not speaking too fast or too slowly, not using
language which is too contextually based, and so on). . These conflicting loyalties meant that I wasconstantly monitoring what I was saying and how I was saying it. My main concern was that our
relationship was not growing in the way it could have because I was being interpreted for when
I spoke to you in these meetings. I have complete faith that my interpreter colleagues interpreted
accurately; it was the eye contact (which is an essential part of BSL) and the direct conversations
about my work which were lacking. We got around that by meeting separately, but for me it wasan odd way to interact with a deaf person. I understand that for most hearing people, being interpreted for is the only way they would interact with a deaf person. Almost all of my working life
has meant being responsible for deaf people being able to understand the hearing people aroundthem. Suddenly, in this situation, I became like one of my hearing clients, who needed to be madeclear to a deaf person. That deaf person was also my superior and one of the people I wanted toexpress my ideas to. Not signing felt like I was being rude and was the reverse of how I would
normally interact with a deaf person.
4.	 Access to Work is a government funded scheme in the UK in which disabled people can apply for funding tocover access to their workplace. For deaf people, this is often used for, but in no way limited to, paying for
BSL/English interpreters and other communication support.

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Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor and Hearing Postgraduate Researcher

Power
Dai—Did you feel as though the power balance in the supervision team was disrupted through mypresence? I’m thinking especially in terms of deaf/hearing, particularly with the insight you have ofworking with deaf people for so long in different situations?

Vicky—I think that the power balance had been skewed towards the more senior members of theteam. As a professional in my own right, I found it difficult to be as subordinate as a PhD student
tends to be in these circumstances (Baptista, 2014). My expertise in the field of interpreting felt
unheard/unimportant. When you came onto the team, it felt more “normal”. In my first weeks ofbeing a student it felt very odd not to have any contact with a deaf person. After over two decadesof being with deaf people every working day it was very odd to be surrounded by hearing people
at work. You represented a normality which I needed. Having a deaf person overseeing my work
legitimised it in the eyes of the deaf community. When I had told deaf friends/colleagues that I
was doing research, the first question was to ask who the deaf person was going to be. You became
my safeguard and I was able to be more open with others around me about my work. The factthat you were a sociologist, not a linguist, did not matter. Your presence as a deaf person made mywork more legitimate to my non-academic friends. From being a hearing person working on BSL I
became a hearing person, with a deaf supervisor, working on BSL.
A big difference was that when you joined the team you were a third male in the supervisory
team. The person you replaced was a woman. I did have some trepidation there, as she had felt
like an ally in a male dominated (and possibly old-fashioned) academic environment (Smeby,
2000). But soon after I realised that you had read my work, and you asked to borrow some books
on Conversation Analysis. You invested in my work from the beginning. Before I started the PhD, I
had been advised by other interpreters who had done PhDs that it was better to separate interpreting work from PhD work. As mentioned briefly above, I therefore told the School that I would not
be interpreting for any deaf members of the University for the duration of my candidature, so thatmy role as a student was clear. This became more important when you arrived. It would have been
odd to have you as a client as well as a supervisor. It might also have been difficult to refuse interpreting jobs requested by my supervisor.
As for the power balance in the supervisory team, knowledge of BSL became differently important. Before you arrived, I and one other member of the team used BSL, and the other two were
happy to trust that I knew what I was doing. When you arrived, and the other member left, we
became a majority BSL speaking team. My first thought was that I was going to have to have my
BSL/English Interpreter colleagues in my supervision meetings. Whether I signed or I spoke, themeetings (in which I had often felt vulnerable) would be witnessed by my friends. I also felt anallegiance to their needs because my PhD would eventually end, and I would be back working
with the people I had been working with for over two decades (see Wellington & Sykes, 2006 forthe potential impact of achieving a doctorate on returning to work).
Interpreters are generally reluctant to interpret for hearing people, because the hearing people
can hear the spoken English version of what they have said, and can sometimes react (flinching,eyebrows furrowing, shakes of the head, stopping and repeating what was not signed the way
they wanted to) to the interpreter’s version of what they said. Only people who are very muchpart of the deaf community and have had experience of being interpreted into English are able toignore it. Generally, it is considered by interpreters (at least in my area) to be rude when a hearing person signs for themselves when they are going to be interpreted for into English. One of theissues is that the interpreter will be geared up to be ready to use spoken English for the deaf participants and may not include the hearing person in their visual space as a potential contributor in
BSL. As an interpreter, I have found myself in a room with silence, and suddenly realising that ahearing person was signing for themselves, and I had not seen them start. It is also true that hear12

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Victoria Crawley & Dai O’Briening people may not be as articulate in BSL as they are in English, so are less easy to interpret for
accurately. I did not want to appear unhelpful, or awkward to my interpreter colleagues by signing for myself when they were not expecting me to.
By the time you came into the team, I had become very much aware that the English vocabulary I used needed to become more specific. I was being taught how to be more discerning about
my language choice, and how a slack use of a term may not only make my work less credible, it
might also make it less understandable. The supervision sessions were times when my languagein particular was being assessed, and I did not want to be interpreted for, because the words usedby the interpreter would not necessarily be an accurate depiction of what I had meant; but theywould be the words of the interpreter. I knew that the interpreters would be feeling the pressureof that. They would be worrying about using the right vocabulary, and perhaps feeling out of theirdepth using terminology from linguistics. They were all fully competent, but they might not havefelt that way, so I would in effect become their witness. It became apparent over time that in supervision the words I was using were what the non-BSL user in the team (also the lead supervisor)would be looking for. I did try to sign for myself for a few of the meetings, but it did not work forthe interpreters, and I felt that having no control over the English words being used on my behalf
was detrimental to my progress. There were times when I wished that the supervisions could bedone just in one language, and indeed sometimes I would have sessions with one supervisor who
used English and then with you in BSL. These were often better sessions for me.
The fact that you had a PhD, but only recently, meant that although you were definitely my superior, you were more in tune with what I was going through than the other supervisor who was
further away from his own PhD or had not gone through the process at all (the BSL interpreters andthe third supervisor). Rather than mystify the process, you considered the PhD process as a job to bedone, and a possible hoop to jump through. Further, you made it clear that you wanted to be helpful.

Dai—It’s interesting that you picked up on the fact I seemed to ally myself more with you, as a student,
than with the other supervisors, as academics. Being deaf in academia can really reinforce any sort of
imposter syndrome feelings you have, because there is often no-one else like you in your workplace.
It really makes you feel different and makes it difficult to question the taken for granted assumptionsof what’s going on, because you don’t really feel you have a right to be there. If you feel like this, you’remore likely to believe you’re in the wrong and you need to adapt to the situation rather than vice versa(Parkman, 2016, Kets de Vries, 2005). This fed into the sort of attitude towards English we discussed
above. So, the fact that we could engage in academic discourse in BSL and that I could contribute toyour PhD studies effectively helped to reassure me that I did belong in that context. However, in termsof power relations within the supervision team, I think this would be tricky to deconstruct. I was verymuch the junior supervisor in the team, simply through seniority rather than anything else. It would
be difficult to argue that being deaf played any part in that status.
I’m not sure how it worked between us as student/supervisor. Maybe it unconsciously lessened
the hierarchical divide a little in my mind? Of course, as a supervisor I had some institutional powerover you in the relationship. We can’t escape that, no matter how we dress it up (Manathunga, 2007).
However, I think the seniority thing comes into play here. By the time I started supervising your PhD
I’d only finished my own PhD three years previously, so I was more able to empathise with what you
were going through, I think, because my own experience was so recent. Having said that, my own
expertise that I could bring to the project was solely as a deaf person who spoke BSL and who worked
with interpreters. I didn’t have any academic knowledge of the project, of the methods or the background (although I picked up as much as I could as I went along). As a result, I did feel that I should
focus on bringing as much empathy as I could to the situation, so that I was engaged and responsive
to the situation you were in (Bastalich, 2017, p. 1150). I think I deliberately worked on that basis, as I felt
it was the most important contribution I could make at the time. That was a deliberate effort to level
the imbalance.
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You mentioned the difficulty you had in having interpreters present in the supervision meeting andthe added vulnerability that brought, as a researcher of interpreting, as someone being interpreted
and as an interpreter yourself. I think many people struggle with being interpreted into different languages, because you are never sure whether the interpretation is accurate or not. But having accessto both the source and target languages and understanding the process that is involved in interpretingmust have been very difficult!
Interpreters hold a great deal of power in the client/interpreter relationship because they control
who has access to what information. They are gatekeepers to the hearing world, particularly in acontext like higher education, where so few interpreters are capable or confident in interpreting at therequired level. You can’t afford to annoy or scare off the interpreters who are happy to work in thiscontext, so that power is amplified.
There has been some published work on “trust” being important for deaf professionals when choosing which interpreters to work with (Haug et al., 2017), but for me that’s the wrong word. It’s more
about knowing that the interpreter has the technical ability to work at the required level. Having seen
your initial analysis of the project data, which was in BSL, and having a couple of lightbulb moments ofmy own from this analysis, I knew that you understood the BSL in the data videos and had no doubts
about your ability to work in BSL. From the conclusions you had drawn from this analysis, I also had abelief in your technical ability as an academic. That meant that any criticism or feedback I would give
you would be about your academic work, not your ability as an interpreter, which was a really important distinction considering the topic of your research. Your insights into interpreting practice in yourresearch, and the interactions we had in BSL also gave me confidence that you knew what you weretalking about as an interpreter. That gave me confidence in you as an interpreter as well.
It was really important for me to be able to distinguish between those two roles: Vicky as interpreter and Vicky as post-graduate researcher. Once I was able to make that distinction, I felt much better
about giving you feedback because I knew that it was meant, and hopefully would be taken, in theright way.
Because of my faith in your ability, I was able to keep both of your identities in mind when we
worked together. However, if I had not had that faith in your ability in either role, I think this would
have been very difficult and our relationship would have changed. This could have gone one of two
ways. If I felt that your understanding of BSL was not very good, I may have decided that no matter
what happened in the PhD, I would never work with you as an interpreter because my faith in yourability had been shaken. But would that have been fair? Allowing your professional identity to impingeon our academic relationship?
Alternatively, if I was more impressed with your interpreting ability than your academic ability, I
might have felt the need to hold back from criticising your work or analysis too much because I had
in the back of my mind that I would need to keep you onside in case I needed to work with you as aninterpreter once the PhD was over.
This is potentially a difficult situation for deaf supervisors with interpreters as students, particularly
if the students work in the same area and field as their supervisors. Being able to separate roles as interpreters and clients from students and supervisors is essential, but extremely difficult when considering the potential small size of different fields where it would be difficult not to run into one anotheras either academics or as interpreters/clients.

Feedback
Dai—I think that our situation was complicated somewhat by the fact that we both had dual roles, me
as supervisor, but also a client of interpreters; and you as post graduate researcher but also a professional interpreter. I know that getting and giving feedback to one another as an interpreter/client can

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be something fraught with difficulties due to capital inequality, particularly linguistic capital. Do you
think this was something we were very careful of initially when I joined your supervision team and webegan a new relationship as supervisor/supervisee?

Vicky—It is very difficult for both the interpreter and the deaf client to give each other feedback
because of the implications it may have either way. The deaf community often vote with their feet.
Living a life where so many things are a fight, avoidance as an emblem of dissent is understandable. An interpreter may end up with no work, and the client may end up with no interpreter.
Sometimes the feedback may be given in a form of a parable, “I knew this interpreter once who…”. It is important to always listen to that and look honestly at my own behaviours. Sometimes it
is appropriate to say to the deaf client using this parable that I am aware that I have also made thesame mistake. This could end up with an open discussion about the “right” way to behave whilst
enabling everyone to save face. But not many interpreters would tell a deaf person that their hearing aid is very noisy with feedback or tell them that the reason they keep making mistakes in their
voiceover is because the deaf person is wearing a really loud shirt. The first instance is a demonstration of hearing privilege (only the hearing person can hear the feedback from the hearing aid),
and the second could be construed as the interpreter dictating what the deaf person should wear.
When you joined the team, we did not have a relationship as client/interpreter, but only as supervisor/supervisee. The feedback you gave me was detailed and specific. You gave me suggested
ways to rephrase, and so the emphasis of the feedback was on what I had done, not what I had
thought. Discussions in the supervision sessions were often more about my thinking, and therefore
I could defend my decisions face to face and we could work together to produce English versionsof my ideas. There was only one time when we disagreed with each other completely, and that was
about my including issues of power in my thesis. It is an area of theory that I am not well versed
in and I did not want to weave a new thread into the thesis so late in the day. You understandably
wanted me to talk about the power relations between deaf and hearing people and interpreters
and their clients. I decided not to include it, but we agreed that it might be one of the things I
would need to add in the corrections.
On a related note, it was odd at first to be corrected on my English by a deaf person. As an interpreter, I am often asked by deaf clients to check over their English, and part of my understandingof an interpreter’s role is to be good at English. Although it is becoming more common for deaf
people to be fully bilingual, my experience of working with deaf people so far has been that they
may well be cleverer than me, certainly more articulate in BSL than me, but never better at written
English than me. Going to a deaf person for help with my English felt strange at first.

Dai—How does the reluctance of deaf people and interpreters to give each other honest straightforward feedback influence the giving of feedback on written work/research work in this situation?
There’s the assumption again that you, as an interpreter, knew what you were doing. As a deaf person,
I had some uncertainty about what I could offer. That also overlaps with the power consideration, I
think. Interpreters are often seen as experts in everything, because you appear to know/be able totalk about everything and anything, even though we know you’re just “saying what they said”. I’ve had
conversations with interpreters where they have explained this appearance of knowledge is all part ofgiving a good interpretation, but it’s difficult to separate the appearance from the fact at a gut level.
This assumption that you were the expert already made it quite difficult for me to see what I could
offer in terms of feedback.
This assumption of expertise leads to many deaf people (I think) being unwilling to criticise or give
feedback to interpreters in a constructive way for fear of being caught out. We don’t actually knowwhether the information that has been passed on to us is correct, or if the way the interpreter is behaving is appropriate for the situation (Huag et al., 2017). I think that following from this, instead of giving feedback on how/why something was signed or how/why the interpreter behaved in a certain way,
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Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor and Hearing Postgraduate Researcher

deaf people can be reluctant to give detailed, specific feedback, because we are never sure whether
we’re right or not. This comes as well from the interpreter being the gatekeeper of knowledge. If theymissed out, or mis-interpreted some important information, we would never know. If they didn’t interpret something, was it even said?
Being asked for feedback on someone’s performance as a sign language interpreter can be especially tricky, because the language is embodied to such an extent that sometimes it does become apersonal criticism or comment on their physical appearance or abilities. How people sign is affectedby their body size and shape, their mobility and so on, so it can be difficult to separate that from theirlanguage skills. I’m not sure exactly how much that applies to what we are talking about here, but it
adds to the insecurity or uncertainty around giving and receiving feedback.
So put all that together and it can be very difficult to offer criticism to someone who works as a BSL
interpreter. That’s not very helpful when you have a PhD student who needs your feedback! So, I think
it was with some trepidation that I started to give feedback on your work. Initially I think I focused
mainly on your writing style, the grammar, the structure of your written work, but later on I started togive more feedback on content like, as discussed above, how power relations between interpretersand clients can affect their performance.
I think having clearly defined roles, without also working as interpreter/client during this period,
really helped as well, because that avoided any sort of confusion. I was offering feedback on yourwritten PhD work, and your academic interpretation of what was going on in your data, not on yourprofessional practice as an interpreter.

CultureDai—Information sharing is so important to deaf people because there’s so little access to incidental
learning/word of mouth and so on. Anything you learn has to be shared. A lot of what is shared ispersonal experience. I mean, of course it must be, because there has traditionally not been any accessto literature or other written records in deaf communities. If a student went to their supervisor witha question about something not directly linked to their PhD, a hearing supervisor might flag up someresources for them to read and leave it at that. But a deaf person wouldn’t be able to leave it there.
We might say, read this blog because it mentions something that happened to me in my PhD and thenwe’d launch into a big story about exactly what happened, how we felt, what we did, and so on. We
illustrate the point with personal examples. It’s definitely a deaf culture thing.
There is certainly a feeling sometimes, in common to a lot of other minority cultures, that yourcultural identity is something that you should leave at the door “like a wet umbrella” (Kidman, 2007, p.
165), and you should appear as an unclassed, ungendered, unmarked academic body in a supervision
meeting. However, this is something I’ve found impossible. As Manathunga (2011) says, “culture, politics and history matter in supervision” (p. 368).
It sometimes feels like there is a kind of secrecy around the process of completing a PhD. There isa feeling that much of the time supervisors like to preserve the hallowed mists of academia, making
it into some kind of secret masonic rite of passage (see Lee & Green, 2009 for example), so that only
those with the requisite cultural capital can navigate the process. That’s anathema to the values ofthe deaf community. Sometimes you’ll get deaf people who go through a process of becoming some
sort of “elite” (not just a PhD, but becoming management, for example) and they “become hearing”
by embracing these values. They can be seen as becoming a sort of “petit bourgeois” deaf who stop
behaving like deaf people (Ladd, 2003). It’s been a deliberate choice on my part to try and avoid being
like that.
I think this is something that is positive about deaf values, the egalitarian ethos that everyone isequal, everyone deserves access to information, and it’s something that I’ve tried to bring to my workin a hearing environment. I do the same with my other PhD students, and I’ve done the same with my16

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Victoria Crawley & Dai O’Brien

tutees and dissertation students and will do again. I don’t talk down to them, and I value the information that they can share with me.
Did you find that there was conflict between the more deaf-centred culture I brought to the relationship and the academic-centred culture the other supervisors brought?

Vicky—All of the supervision team shared their knowledge with me, but certainly the manner inwhich it was shared differed. Culturally, the dissemination of information is done in a collegial
way in the deaf community. No one is blamed for having missed information, rather the onus is on
the informed to pass information to others. Academic success is premised on an individual finding things out for themselves. The deaf community aim for the collective to be informed. Equally,
academic-centred culture appears to mystify the process of a PhD, with the end point being veryvague and never definite. Your, more deaf-centred approach was to look at the main criteria (is it
publishable, is it original, and so on) in order to judge if the work was of a PhD standard. I foundthis a more practical and accessible approach.

Conclusion
This is a short snapshot into a student-supervisor relationship that lasted two years, which
has continued to evolve now into a relationship of academic peers, a relationship between
client and interpreter, and between friends. It is not always easy to keep each of those strandsof the relationship separate and we are not certain it is desirable to do so. Outside the pedagogic restrictions of the student-supervisor relationship this complexity is no longer problematic.
There are other deaf PhD supervisors working in academia who have supervised morehearing students than Dai has, but their expertise does not seem to have been committed topaper. Of course, there are many more deaf students who struggle with cultural and linguistic differences with hearing supervisors for their post-graduate qualifications and it is only
fair that the focus is on them to develop skills and frameworks to ensure that their different
cultural capital is recognised and does not get treated as a burden. However, there needs to beattention paid to how to create a hospitable, functional environment for them once they havereached an academic position in the university so that they can continue to be valued professionals in their field and in the wider scope of academia, working with other hearing colleagues, different conventions, ideas, processes and so on.
This article has outlined some of the issues and challenges, as well as the opportunities andlearning experiences, that arose from this particular supervision context. Both Vicky and Dai
were pushed out of their comfort zones and into their respective and collective zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) in several different aspects of their academic and professional practice. Learning on Vicky’s part was not limited to her academic development as adoctoral candidate, but also as an interpreter and as an academic colleague. For Dai, learning
was not just about how to develop his supervision, but also how to navigate and build relationships in the largely hearing world of academia.
The issues covered in this paper are not restricted only to deaf academics. There are many
minority academics who wish to value and preserve their own identities and cultures within the academy and not hang them up at the door when they arrive at work. Examining how
such academics can thrive while retaining the integrity of their identities and affiliations,
whether this be heritage, gender, sexuality, disability or class-based, is vitally importantwork to ensure that diversity is respected and encouraged in higher education.

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Multilingual and Multicultural Supervision Meetings: The Case of a Deaf Supervisor and Hearing Postgraduate Researcher

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Manathunga, C. (2007). Supervision as mentoring: The role of power and boundary crossing.
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Manathunga, C. (2011). Moments of transculturation and assimilation: Post-colonial
explorations of supervision and culture. Innovations in Education and Teaching International,
48(4), 367-376.
Manathunga. C., Cornforth, S., Crocket, K., Court, M. & Claiborne, L.B. (2013). Irruptions ofspace and bodies in doctoral supervision. Knowledge Cultures, 1, 60-80.
Parkman, A. (2016). The imposter phenomenon in higher education: Incidence and impact.
Journal of Higher Educational Theory and Practice, 16(1), 51-60.

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Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in theorganization of repair in conversation. Language 53(2), 361-382.
Smeby, J.-C. (2000). Same-gender relationships in graduate supervision. Higher Education, 40,
53–67.
Sutherland, H. & Rogers, K. (2014). The hidden gain: A new lens of research with d/Deafchildren and adults. In H.D.L. Bauman & J.J. Murray (Eds.), Deaf gain: Raising the stakes forhuman diversity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press.
Sutton-Spence, R., & Woll, B. (1999). The linguistics of British sign language: An introduction.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wellington, J., & Sikes, P. (2006). “A doctorate in a tight compartment”: Why do students
choose a professional doctorate and what impact does it have on their personal andprofessional Lives? Studies in Higher Education, 31(6), 723-734.
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17(8), 1001-1010.

Author Bios
Vicky Crawley is a researcher-practitioner British Sign Language / English interpreter. Withan early interest in spoken languages, Vicky discovered British Sign Language at York University when studying French and Linguistics.  She has been an interpreter for nearly 30 years,
and currently specialises in mental health interpreting and VRS/VRI, her academic work centres around interpreting studies and linguistics.
Dai O’Brien is a Senior Lecturer in BSL and Deaf Studies in York St John University. He is deaf
and uses BSL as his primary academic language, alongside written English. Dai’s research
currently focuses on deaf space—how deaf people navigate the largely hearing society inwhich they live. When not working he enjoys being with his family and thinking about doing
yoga.

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RESEARCH PAPER
Decentered Doctoral Pedagogy:
A Co-autoethnography of Collaboration andCritical, Agentive Induction
偏心化された博士課程教育：協力に関するオートエスノグラフィ
共著、そして批判的・行為者的帰納法
David Hyatt, University of Sheffield
Sally Hayes, The Open University
This paper problematizes the traditional relationship between a doctoral candidate and “supervisor” in termsof its power differential, often characterised as an asymmetric, hierarchical expert/novice dyad. Such a relationship can trap supervisory/advisory relationships in a “transmission” or “training” mode, with candidates receiving“instruction” from “experts”. Though a collaborative co-autoethnography, we offer vignettes of our experiences
and reflections on the development of our supervisory relationship, and the impact this has on the productionof doctoral work. We demonstrate how we can rethink, disrupt and disorient dominant conceptions of doctoral
pedagogy, to build a more collaborative, collegial “decentred” approach to “supervisory/advisory” work.
Drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual resources, from cultural sociology, anthropology, organizational studies and education, we argue that the liminal spaces doctoral candidates pass through offer opportunities for relational, productive and decentred pedagogies. Such action possibilities allow supervisors/advisors
to construct new ways of valuing candidates’ expertise, and so facilitate their critical inclusion into the academic
community.
The paper’s significance lies in the theorization of decentred doctoral pedagogy and its presentation of recommendations for doctoral pedagogic practices, that include a range of pedagogical principles and actions that thedoctoral pedagogue might wish to consider.
本稿は伝統的な 博士課程院生と指導教官の非対称的で階層的な、「エキスパート」対「初心者」という二者間の力関係を批判的に考察する。このような子弟関係においては、院生が教官から知識の伝達や訓練的を一方的に受ける形に陥る危険性がある。オートエスノグラフィの共著という共同作業を通して、私たちの指導関係の発展と、その関係性が博士論文にどのような影響を与えたかを振り返る。博士課程
教育に関する一般的概念をどのように壊し、捉え直し、より協力的、平等的な偏心化アプローチとすることができるかを説く。
文化社会学、人類学、組織学、教育学から理論と概念を学際的に応用し、博士課程という 内面的変化が想定される期間が、相関的、生産性の高い、偏心的な教育の機会であることを唱える。この行動可能性(action possibilities) により、院生の専門性を重視する新しい方法を構築し、院生を学界の重要なメンバーとして受け入れることを促進できるだろう。 よって、本稿の意義は、まず、博士課程教育の偏心化理論である。そして、博士課程担当者が検討すべき、教育的原則とそれらに基づく行動を含む実践的な取り組みの提案である。

Keywords
Doctoral pedagogy, power, supervision, repertoire, co-autoethnography
博士課程教育、力関係、指導、レパートリー、オートエスノグラフィ共著

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Traditionally, the relationship between a doctoral supervisor and their students has been
conceptualised as a master/apprentice – expert/neophyte relationship. The supervisor has been constructed as an authoritative figure dispensing factual information andadvice. However, Kamler and Thompson (2008) have argued the “advice” genre often seen in
published works suggesting how students can achieve success in their doctoral studies positions the doctoral researcher as a “diminished scholar”, potentially patronised or infantilised.
Janks and Ivanič (1992) have argued that many doctoral supervisory relationships are characterised by an asymmetry of power-relations between supervisor and student. Indeed, thevery terms supervisor and doctoral student or supervisee are ones which construct subject positions for both parties. Therefore, while we use the terms above for their familiarity in thefield, we feel that the terms advisor and collaborative colleague more aptly fit the interpellations
we aspire to.
In this paper, we aim to trouble the conception that doctoral pedagogies are vehicles fortraining and the transmission of expert knowledge from supervisor to student. Instead, we
contend that doctoral pedagogies should be viewed as productive spaces, or indeed the creation of such productive spaces which aim to provide opportunities to challenge pre-existing
assumptions and consider alternatives to these, with the intention of transformation of understandings within the field. We approach this below in two ways: by offering our theorisations of a proposed shift in the pedagogic relationships of doctoral “supervision” (or arguably
more appropriately reframed as “alliance”); and then after a brief consideration of the methodological and ethical framing of this paper, we each offer a narrative recount of our journeys
towards our new understandings and identities, developed throughout our pedagogical partnership.
Given that we frame this paper methodologically as a co-autoethnography, as discussed
later in the methodology section, it is important that we offer, at this early stage, a sense of
who we are as authors, our relationship and our positionality/motivations in writing this paper. Our professional collaboration began as doctoral advisor and doctoral candidate between
2009 and 2013 and has continued since in a variety of forms including co-authorship. It was
through our original work together on a professional doctorate programme that we both developed our understandings of the advisor/candidate (collaborative colleague) relationship andthat we both came to an understanding that a more decentred conceptualisation of our roles
and identities enabled more collegial and equitable ways of working and alllowed us to understand the identity work implicit in the advisor/collaborative colleague alliance. Such a shift
in our understanding and subsequent practice, grounded in a shift in our identity and power relations, has changed the way we conceive of our relationships and we felt it important
to share the impact and implications of such a pedagogic shift in terms of equity, ethicality,
hierarchy and practice. Reflecting on our joint journey through this process, we have becomeconvinced that shifting from a view of expert/novice to one of academic and intellectual colleagues is a profound ethical and material repositioning with significant pedagogic potential.
Paré (2010, p. 113) argues the role of doctoral pedagogy is in part an enculturation process,through which students “learn more about the community they are joining, its past, its current debates, its cultural and discourse practices”. We see doctoral pedagogies as a route to anagentive and reflexive induction into an academic discourse community. They are pedagogic
opportunities to construct more collaborative, egalitarian relationships “to enhance the value
placed on individuals’ academic contributions and facilitate the process of induction into theacademic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion” (Hyatt, 2005 p. 339).
Our conception of these pedagogies advocates more collaborative supervisory relations (Lee &Kamler, 2008) achieved through careful and reflexive supervision (Lee, 2008) encouraging an
expansion of student research literacies (Green & Lee, 2008). We see these spaces, where stuLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 202021

Decentered Doctoral Pedagogy: A Co-autoethnography of Collaboration and Critical, Agentive Induction

dents are invited into the discourse community (Swales, 1990) through such critical inclusion,
as means by which, as Golde and Walker (2006) put it, one can envisage doctoral education as
preparation of the future stewards of the discipline (though we do provide a caveat here in theuse of the metaphor of stewardship in the current interdisciplinary context - and professional
doctorate context - and in the inherent power structures which are implicit in the notion of“disciplines”).
Our approach to a decentred doctoral pedagogy is thus named for its intention to diffuse
the power from the central authority of the supervisor out to the student community. Pedagogically, the supervisor is seen as someone whose job is not merely to “skill up” learners
but to help them to develop the repertoire of a successful member of the academic discourse
community—or, in relation to professional doctorates, a repertoire which mirrors establishedprofessional norms.
Through our problematization of the traditional view of supervision, we intend to offer anapproach to the development of doctoral repertoires and aim to exemplify this in the narratives of a doctoral student, and of her supervisor, in considering how such a collaborative
supervisory relationship can lead to critical inclusion in the doctoral discourse community. We
will consider the methodological and ethical issues raised in the construction of this paper,
the theoretical resources implicit in this approach, and will describe how the two participant
partners reflect on their experiences of working in this innovative manner. Finally, we willconsider some pedagogical actions that can be co-opted within what we deem to be a decentred approach to doctoral pedagogies.

Co-constructed Autoethnography
Methodologically, we adopt a collaborative ethnographic approach in this article. Lapadat(2017, p. 589) describes such an approach as “a multivocal approach in which two or more
researchers work together to share personal stories and interpret the pooled autoethnographic data, [and which] builds upon and extends the reach of autoethnography and [...] supportsa shift from individual to collective agency.” This is important in terms of reflexivity andits inherent relationality aligns with our narratives describing the inherent relationality of adecentred doctoral pedagogy. Our approach aligns closely with that of Ellis (2004) in whichauthors share “their personal, incomplete and historically situated version of the shared experience, and after which, in collaboration, these individual perspectives are integrated into a
co-constructed narrative” (Snoeren, Raaijmakers, & Niessen, et al, 2016, p. 6).
As we have argued at the outset, doctoral study has been historically viewed in terms ofindividual endeavour, the lone doctoral student. This position is exacerbated in neo-liberal
times with the valorisation of the individual and individualism, echoing the assumptions ofindividualistic and autonomous identity, deriving from the Enlightenment (Eakin, 1999). In
contrast, our work focuses on doctoral pedagogies as being characterised or constituted byrelations and their social, historical, institutional and political contexts – and the power dynamics that circulate within and between these contexts. Such a relational stance is central to
our work—as Papacharissi (2012) puts it:
Understanding “the self” as the intersecting node where many relations meet, we realize how these relations begin to define the self and the subsequent feelings of belonging that may be experienced. For social scientists, the vantage point shifts, no longer
focusing on the individual as the fundamental atom of social life, but on relations as
defining the complexion of the individual self. As a result, we evolve beyond individualism to understand societies as webs of relations rather than as assemblages of connected or disconnected individuals (p. 834).

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Ethically, we acknowledge the problematics of anonymity in co-autoethnography (Lapadat,2017) but believe that, as the only two participants involved in this collaboratively co-constructed article, we have both given authentically informed consent to be so easily identifiable. It is through this acceptance that we acknowledge a shift to joint agency in the writingof this paper.

Theoretical Framing of the Work
Cochran-Smith urges teacher educators to engage in a “rich dialectic” between scholarshipand practice (2003, p. 9), and that is what we have aimed to achieve in our reflections andin the writing of this paper. Our conception of decentred doctoral pedagogy is grounded ina range of interdisciplinary theoretical resources. In addition to the notion of relationality which we have considered above from a methodological perspective, and which has been
employed productively in critical psychology (Gergen, 2010; Murris, 2017), we also draw on
the notions of repertoire and liminality. Each of these have wide purchase in a variety of thesocial sciences.

Repertoire
In one of the most widely cited articles, key to the contemporary view in cultural sociologythat culture is both constraining and enabling, Ann Swindler notes that “…culture provides arepertoire of capacities from which varying strategies of action may be constructed” (1986, p.
284). Within sociolinguistics, Blommaert argues that our current “super-diverse” urbanised
world contains spaces where people from different backgrounds interact in a vast array oflanguages, and through bits and pieces of languages. He describes these different languages
and language fragments as “repertoires”, which he considers to be “the complexes of resources people actually possess and deploy” (2010, p. 102). He notes:
Shifting our focus from “languages” (primarily an ideological and institutional construct) to resources (the actual and observable ways of using language) has important
implications for notions such as “competence […] The question of what it is to “know”
a language, to “speak it well” or to “be fluent” in it will have to be reformulated, andsome existing tools for measuring the answers to such questions (as in language testing schemes) will have to be critically revisited. A clearer understanding of repertoires,
furthermore, may add detail and precision to analyses of communication processes in
the world of globalized communication, where people often communicate with bits andpieces of genres and registers. (p. 102)
Similarly, we argue that, if capacity-building and individual development are the goal as
opposed to summative assessment hoop-jumping, then the repertoire of a successful doctoral student would be informed by the repertoire of a successful academic researcher / research
informed practitioner. We then sought to question what such a doctoral repertoire should look
like.

Doctoral Repertoires
A doctoral repertoire is a patchwork of attributes that a doctoral student needs to be successful. However, these are personal and biographical—they are dependent on who people
are, where they come from and where they want to go. They are “indexical biographies”(Blommaert & Backus, 2011), though are always constructed as a result of relations with others—they represent relational repertoires as others are always implicated in the construction
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Decentered Doctoral Pedagogy: A Co-autoethnography of Collaboration and Critical, Agentive Inductionof one’s own identity. We argue that they should be more than just technical, instrumental and measurable in the ways that they are often reified through Research Council funding
requirements, regularly linked to “human capital development” discourses. Whilst we do
not discount the value of technical skills in certain contexts, doctoral repertoires also include
dispositions, attitudes, experiences, knowledge, ethical orientations, theoretical orientations,
ontological/epistemological/agency assumptions, ideological allegiances, meanings, beliefs,
symbols and symbolic boundaries. These will differ in different contexts/disciplines and intransdisciplinary contexts (e.g., co-production) and, as Blommaert and Backus (2011) argue,
in a super-diversity context, learners engage with a broad variety of groups, networks andcommunities, and their resources are consequently learned through a wide variety of trajectories, tactics and technologies.

Liminality
Another key concept is liminality. The doctoral journey is often metaphorised as a rite of passage. From the anthropological work of Arnold van Gennep (1909) and later Victor Turner(1967), a rite of passage consists of a pre-liminal phase (separation), a liminal phase (transition), and a post-liminal phase (reincorporation). Turner noted that in liminality, individuals
were “betwixt and between”, they did not belong to the society that they previously were a partof and they were not yet reincorporated into that society, and that this was the point where an
identity shift occurs—for us, the necessary identity shift that defines “doctorateness”.

Doctoral Liminality
We understand doctoral liminality to be the middle phase, associated with cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962), namely the psychological stress, conflicting thoughts, attitudes or
behaviours, and the associated discomfort, experienced by someone who is confronted by new
information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. This experience is often cited
as a common element along the doctoral journey (Loyd, Harding-DeKam & Hamilton, 2014)
and yet Golombek and Johnson (2004) suggest that it is precisely this tension which can motivate an individual to engage in professional learning.
During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritualestablishes. A threshold can be viewed as a juncture where various realities can be observed—
therefore a place full of heightened potentialities. Liminal spaces help individuals enact a different way of being in a situation and can open up opportunities to explore the potential forchange/growth. Akkerman and Bakker (2011) describe the boundary crossings that mark thestart and end of the liminal phase as open to four potential learning opportunities: identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation (p.142). Identification involves seeing that
others have differing perspectives and perceptions and the subsequent opportunity throughdialogic engagement to reconcile these is referred to as coordination. Key to the development of a doctoral identity is the next phase of reflection where the learner will view theirown perspectives and positions through the lens of others and the outcome of this process isa personal and professional transformation of identity, often described by successful doctoralcandidates (Dann, Basford, & Booth, et al., 2018).

Context
The authors collaborated as part of a taught professional doctoral programme in education.
The programme is constructed around weekend schools which occur three times a year, with

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opportunity for both formal “taught” sessions, seminars, one to one “supervision” sessions
and importantly space purposely constructed to enable peer to peer debate and conversation. The dyadically symmetrical collaboration was initiated by a group of 10 students (one ofwhom was a co-author of the paper) with a shared interest in discourse analytic approaches to policy analysis which was a methodological specialism of the academic tutor (the otherco-author of this paper). The group of students had identified a commonality of need and had
discussed this in a mutually supportive peer grouping and approached the tutor. Together
they formed a non-hierarchical community of inquiry, taking advantage of the affordances
for productive pedagogical space for the joint construction of knowledge in-group collaborations (Malfoy, 2005), specifically in doctoral education scholarly writing groups (Parker,2009). Members of the scholarship group shared and fed back on draft work of all participants, critiqued a later-published framework developed by the academic tutor, presented
their own analysis which was subjected to group critique, presented and critiqued self-selected published articles on a common theme (thus raising overall awareness of the group to
scholarship in the field). This dyadically non-hierarchical approach led to a reconfigurationof relationships between tutor and students. The process is described in more detail in (Hyatt,
2013, pp. 835-836), noting that in:post-session feedback, all the students reported they had found the session valuable,
particularly in terms of the exposure to materials and perspectives they might not haveotherwise encountered, but also in the collegial shared nature of the discussions…andinvolved participants in a community of practice that saw each participant bringing
their contextual expertise to the group, and allowed the other participants to gain access and inclusion to a newly formed academic discourse community, through a notionof critical dialogue and reciprocity.
We now move to each participant’s narrative reflections on this collaborative partnership.

Sally’s Experience
My journey as a doctoral student “started’ as a “nurse educator” and as a reflexive and questioning individual trying to understand the policy and direction of the nursing profession;and could be described as concluding in the production of a thesis that examined the decision
made in 2009 that from 2013 the only route onto the UK Nursing register would be throughgraduate programmes. Six years later, however, I recognise that the journey has not been thatstraightforward. The beginning was not the start, the journey has not ended, and it has notbeen a linear journey. I recognise that the formal period of my registration on my EdD signifies only that—the formality; but has less to do with my ontological and epistemologicalbeing as a “professional”, as an “academic”, as a “student” or as I earlier framed myself - a“reflexive and questioning individual”, simply trying to make sense of my world.
The doctoral research itself in its focus and its execution played out as many things. It
problematised a policy decision, explored the discourses surrounding it and primarily questioned whether the new standards for nurse education are a form of social (re)engineering.
The study drew on both the conceptual tools of Pierre Bourdieu (field of practice, habitus andcapital e.g., 1990) and on his three distinct levels of inquiry; the position of the field within
other fields; mapping the objective structure of relations between positions occupied by those
who occupy “legitimate” forms of specific authority in the field; and by exploring the habitusof the agents.
It identified definitional struggles influenced from both within and outside of the profession, definitional struggles which I think equally apply to the role of “supervision” within the
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doctoral journey. To explore this, I utilised the work of Pierre Bourdieu as a conceptual lensboth to scrutinise and understand the importance of “education” in society, and consideredpedagogic agency (traditionally held by the expert, or in this case the supervisor) holding
capacity (power) to inculcate meaning—the mainstay of processes of imposition of a cultural arbitrary which reproduce power relations that effectively rewrite their own operations(Bourdieu & Passeron, 2000). Alongside the inclusion of ideas, pedagogic action also involves
the exclusion of ideas as unthinkable and this exclusion or censorship is an effective modeof pedagogic action. It also acknowledges pedagogic authority as an arbitrary power, misrecognised by its practitioners and recipients as legitimate or legitimating, with such authority being experienced as neutral or overtly valued and so making explicit claim to educational
legitimacy. Thus embodied, such misrecognition exists in, through, and because of the practices of actors and their interaction with each other and with the rest of their environment. It
is an integral part of behaviour—a doxic experience. Doxa enables individuals, through “habitus”, to relate unquestioningly to their field without any need (or even possibility) of questioning their experience. Certain ways of thinking, being or acting thus become unthinkable(Bourdieu, 1990).
In my experience, however, it is (and was) possible to re-engineer the field through thecritical inclusion of me not as “the student” but as “member” of the academic community;
a community of inclusion and equity of identity and ideas. Equity because we all brought ourknowledge, expertise and curiosities into a democratised space. We were encouraged/enabled
by tutors to use the study schools, and our peer interactions, in part 2 of the EdD experience(the thesis stage) to design our own meaning and focus. Examples of this include consideration of the interrelationship between the nature of this “equitable” knowledge base (epistemological factors) and the creation of academic networks and communities (social factors)
and the creation of this democratic space, positioning us as not only belonging in the academy but also as “legitimate” creators of new knowledge. It also provided space to offer up
my competencies, dispositions and values and to create a rich and liberated, fertile space fordebate and creation with peers - a relational space.
This was especially demonstrated in the creation of a “space”, over several sessions at
various study schools, for supervisors and students to explore Critical Discourse Analysis, inboth its concept and in its approach (these sessions are described more fully in David’s story
below). CDA sits within epistemological paradigms that see “knowledges” as generated andcirculating as discourses. It focuses on the process through which “knowledge” or “what is
known” becomes operationalised in societies and economies as precisely the dialects of discourse.
We engaged in social practices and social events within the context of this CDA space (suchas explicit discussion about the traditional roles and relationships between supervisors andsupervisees with a mutual desire to step outside the confines of these roles) as a facet ofaction, in the construal (representation) of aspects of the world and in the constitution ofidentities. This is where for me, the magic occurred. Identity is not to be found inside a person but rather it is relational and inheres in the interaction a person has with others (Elliott,2005). This conception of self therefore stresses the continual production of identity within
specific historical and discursive contexts - the interrelations matter, and through this kindof practice where ideas and identities are accomplished (become authentic) and can clarify theideologically informed basis of the purpose and methods of social groups (Candlin, 2010), in
this case a mixture of “supervisor” and “students”.
We created different forms of specific authority in the field, we created a different legitimacy. For me as a student of life with unforgiving and relentless doubts of my credibility as an
academic this form of partnership, this form of collaboration, marked a move away from tra-26

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ditional doctoral pedagogic practices and the implications such decentring orientations havefor collaboration, collegiality and professional identity released in me a confidence to “be”.
To publish, to propose, to critique and question and, most latterly and in partnership with my“supervisor”, to co-examine.

David’s Experience
I’ll start by problematizing my own institutional “naming” as a “supervisor”—I don’t feel
my job is to supervise my student (colleague). I’m their advisor, their critical friend, theircolleague, their co-conspirator.
Throughout my academic career, my interests have centred around two key areas: power andrelationality. My current interest in doctoral pedagogy and specifically the “troubling” of thehierarchical relationships between supervisors and supervisees, has developed via an intersection of the worlds of applied linguistics and pedagogy. A hugely formative experience came withmy reading of a story, from critical language awareness scholars Hilary Janks and Ros Ivanič(Janks & Ivanič, 1992), of the international academic who on coming to study for a doctoratein the UK felt diminished by being exposed to a transmission pedagogy and being viewed as alesser scholar receiving knowledge from his betters. Fortunately, despite his disillusionment
and alienation at this state of affairs, he summoned the courage to confront his supervisor withhis concerns and she heard him. So instead of treating him as someone who needed educating,she began to share her draft work with him, treating him as a critical friend, and in doing socreated new identity positions for each of them as collaborative colleagues.
This story brought home to me the agency held by supervisors in reconfiguring their relationships with their students and also the agency held by the students in challenging theirstatus as mere apprentices, in receipt of the transmitted wisdom of their supervisors. This
reconfiguration blossomed when the group of students (including Sally) approached me after a session I had led on Critical Discourse Analysis. They knew they needed to engage witheducational policy analysis but didn’t know how. They felt that CDA might offer them anapproach to resolve their dilemma and asked if we could form a small interest group in aseries of collaborative workshops. We began by each selecting a journal article that adopted a
CDA approach that they felt might be relevant to their research. Then, we each chose a pieceof text to analyse discursively and shared these texts with the group. We each analysed our
texts and prepared a short presentation on our analysis after which the group offered theirthoughts and analyses of the text. We concluded with a critique of an analytical framework I
had devised and which we all had employed, relating it to our own work and suggesting ways
in which it might be improved, enhanced or supplemented and it was in this final activity that our relationship became reconfigured from student/tutor to critical friends and colleagues. The participants reported they valued the sessions as assistive to their analysis but
also in terms of the collective and egalitarian nature of the interactions.
I think this experience helped to define the relationship established during the supervision and, as a result, we have gone on to write together (this being the second article we haveco-written) and to examine doctoral work together. I would like to argue that decentring thesupervisory relationship changes the way we feel about and work with our colleagues/students and this can transform the collegial relationship from something that is usually definedby the timespan of the study to something with far more longevity. Its benefits transcend thetechnical and instrumental achievement of a qualification and can help to construct ongoingand highly fruitful academic collaborations. I remember this experience with this cohort as
being enormously formative in the establishment of my identity as a “supervisor”, and attempt to continue with this approach throughout my academic practice as a doctoral educator.
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And to bring the story full circle, this article in draft form has been shared with the latest
cohort of the professional doctorate programme (and with my co-tutor on that programme),in the hope that they too will read this in a more empowered way.

Pedagogical Implications
The conceptualisation and narratives above have encouraged us to consider how to translatethese theorized experiences into a range of pedagogical mechanisms for doctoral pedagogy
work.
The creation of open discursive dialogic spaces are a central element of our decentred pedagogy for the fostering of doctoral repertoires and negotiating the liminal space of doctoral
studies with its resultant identity transformation. These discursive events allow for the opportunity to have a professional dialogic and relational space in which thinking could be explored (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2009). This can be achieved in a number of ways, specificallythrough the creation of student-determined spaces for authentic dialogue. The type of decentred workshops described in Hyatt (2013) are clearly one successful mode to employ. Similarly, student defined and organized debates, panels, symposia, offer similar opportunities for
identity and perspectival coordination, reflection and transformation.
Repeated presentation and “defence” of on-going research allows students a pragmaticallyexperiential opportunity to prepare themselves for an ultimate viva voce, though in a supportive, sympathetic and sensitive peer environment. Students have reported that the value of this often lies, not in the actual presentation of their work, but rather in the questions
and comments they face, allowing for a dialogic engagement with others’ perspectives and areflexive self-examination facilitated through the prism of alternative conceptualisations of
one’s work. These experiences link closely with the previously discussed Akkerman and Baker’s (2011) coordination and reflection stages.
Drawing on the transformatory experience described by Janks and Ivanic (1992) of a supervisor shifting from presenting her students with completed and published works of herown, to sharing draft work of as yet unsubmittted papers, we encourage supervisors to do
the same. Janks and Ivanic describe this as constructing new subject positions for them both:collaborative colleagues. Students can move to reading in a different way. Instead of requiring the supervisor to explain parts the student doesn’t understand (a transmission pedagogy),
students identify parts of the draft work they felt need to be clarified. The weakness shifts
from the student to the writing and the student moves to reading from the empowered position of a colleague rather than a subordinate.
Similarly, collaborative co-authorship between student and supervisor can reconstructtheir relative subject positions, with the caveat that this needs to be done in an ethical andnon-exploitative manner with the student receiving full credit for their contributions.
Students can begin to see themselves, and be seen by others, as experts, through the production of pedagogic resources, for sharing with peers. One approach to this is the production of short video vignettes in which the students discuss a theory, theorist, methodology, orconcept with which they have become expert through prolonged utilisation and engagement.
In problematising the subject positions created and enshrined through unequal dyadic relations, this paper inevitably invites us to question the prevailing dominant discourses surrounding doctoral pedagogies. Questions we need to begin to engage with at both the personaland institutional level, and indeed when considering global narratives that carry rhetoricaland discursive power, include: should we be supervisors or advisors (or mentors)?; should we
rename our doctoral training centres as doctoral development centres?; should our training
needs analyses be reconceptualised as Doctoral Development Analyses?

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Reflections on the Role of Expertise
In order to be true to our critical and reflexive intentions in this paper, I think it is crucial toclarify what this call for the reconfigured supervisory relationship entails—or perhaps moresignificantly, what it does not entail.
A decentred approach is not a denial of the expertise, experience or knowledge of the supervisor and is not meant to imply that the supervisor needs no knowledge of the field inwhich the student is working. Such expertise can only be of benefit to the student. Similarly,
a decentered approach does not entail a denial of the psychological safety students desire in
feeling their supervisor is “expert”. The growth of a marketised higher education has inevitably led to some institutions viewing doctoral students as another “income stream” andwith this lies the danger of the appointment of supervisors, to take up the slack, who have no
specific knowledge of the area the student is researching. In this vein, the call for a decentred
approach to doctoral pedagogy does not advocate a “sink-or-swim” abandonment of students
but rather entails a structured programme of learning that works from the student’s current
state of knowledge and as such is congruent with a constructivist view of learning.
The collegial approach advocated here does not imply there should be any disregard of theimportance of scholarship, rigour, subject knowledge, originality, significance, or credibility
and for those engaged in a professional doctorate does not imply a disregard or neglect of thedemands of professional practice.
And, crucially, this approach should not be seen as in any way a face-threat to the supervisor, to their sense of expertise, specialism and their pedagogic identity within their role.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have made a call for the disrupting of hierarchical relations between supervisors and doctoral students through a process of critical inclusion, facilitated by decentred
pedagogies. In advancing the cause of more collaborative and collegial working between them,
we advocate a turn within doctoral pedagogies from the transactional to the relational, froma dehumanising technical training to a rehumanising professionalism, from measurement toprofessional friendship and collaboration. This reconceptualisation is aimed at helping students to negotiate their role as experts, while simultaneously aiding supervisors to renegotiate their role as colleagues through a democratisation of the relationship and a diffusion of
the dyadic power differential, within a changed pedagogic context.

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Author BiosDavid Hyatt is the Director of Learning and Teaching for the School of Education, Universityof Sheffield and is also the Faculty of Social Sciences Deputy Director of Teaching Excellence.
He directs the Doctorate of Education (EdD) programme (Thesis Stage) for the School. David isa Senior Fellow of Advance HE and holds a Senate Award for Sustained Excellence in Learning
and Teaching. His research interests focus on Higher Education Policy and Pedagogies, specifically doctoral pedagogies.
Sally Hayes is Director, Students at the Open University and works in the thick of the strategic life of the OU, responsible for engaging colleagues in all corners of the university to enable
them to do all they can to improve students’ success. As an academic she has worked primarily with students at different academic levels within nursing and other health related professions across pre and post registration education. She completed her Doctorate in 2013 which
examined discourses surrounding educational standards in nursing; and has recently been
awarded Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

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RESEARCH PAPER
A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent
Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision
Relationship
修士論文指導中に起こった言語アクセントによるトラウマのナラティブ的探究
Ken Ikeda, Otsuma Women’s University
Sumire Shiba, Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education
This is a retrospective on the relationship between Sumire, a Japanese who wrote her Master’s thesis, and Ken as
her thesis supervisor. This study employs narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly 2000) which involves not only
delving into storied memories, but seeks to get its participants to become vulnerable to each other. It is the latter
purpose that helped uncover Sumire’s trauma - her self-perception of needing to be perfect due to people’s reactions to her American English accent.
This study centers on a portion of an interview-conversation between Sumire and Ken which took place six
months after she had graduated from the Master’s degree program, for the purpose of writing this paper. She
spoke about her lifelong trauma with her English language accent and how she released herself from it. The process involved protracted struggles with how others perceived her but resulted in Sumire becoming a different
person in thought and action. This paper closes with future directions for thesis supervision and narrative inquiry.
本稿では、元修士学生の日本人すみれと、彼女の元論文指導教員であるケンとの関係を回顧した。この研究で使用されたナラティブ的探求手法では（Clandinin & Connelly 2000）単に記憶を掘り下げるだけでなく、参加者がお互いの弱点、または欠点をさらけ出すことが求めてられている。本稿ではこの手法を導入することにより、すみれが他者から受けてきたアメリカ英語のアクセントへの反応から、「完璧な英語話者でいなければならない」という自己への義務感に起因するトラウマを表層化することができた。
この研究は、すみれが修士課程を卒業してから半年後に執筆作業が開始され、論文執筆中交わされたすみれとケンとのインタビューの一部に焦点を当てる。この中で、すみれが幼少期に習得したアメリカ英語のアクセントが生涯のトラウマとなり、そこからどのようにして自分自身を解放したかについて探求する。さらにその過程で、他者からの見立てに対するすみれ自身の葛藤、そして結果的に思考と行動を通じて新たなアイデンティティを獲得することに成功したエピソードを紹介する。この論文の締めくくりに、今後の修士論文指導とナラティブ的探求の指針を提供する。

Keywords
narrative inquiry, language accent trauma, kikokushijo, teaching assistant (TA), co-authorship
ナラティブ的探求、言語アクセントによるトラウマ、帰国子女、ティーチング・アシスタント、共著

O

ur paper is a storied narrative of our Master’s thesis supervision relationship which
was affected by Sumire’s trauma with her English language accent. I learned the importance of this language accent trauma through narrative inquiry which enabled me
to confront my microaggressions with my identity. We close our paper with calls for developing trauma sensitivity in thesis supervision, co-authorship, and other future directions.

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Part 1: Setting the Stage
This part presents (1) a brief explanation of the background to our study; (2) the rationale touse the three-dimensional inquiry space in narrative inquiry, and (3) the field texts used inthis paper.

The Background to this Study
This paper is an attempt to delineate how trauma served as a barrier but later turned into impetus in this three-year thesis supervision relationship culminating in Sumire’s graduation.
The context was in a private women’s university in Tokyo, where Sumire was a native Japanese female student and I an American-born professor. In December 2015, Sumire expressed
her interest to enter both the Master’s degree program in my graduate school and a teaching credential program so that she could be a licensed instructor of English at the secondary
school level. I have supervised many undergraduate theses, but Sumire was my first Master’s
student. She successfully passed the exam to qualify to teach in public secondary schools inTokyo and has been teaching at a junior high school in the city from April 2019.
I regarded Sumire’s sojourn in graduate school as closely resembling my own three years’
experience which resulted in earning an academic Master’s degree in Japanese history and aprofessional degree in library science that qualified me as a university library subject specialist. During my second year, the history professor who served as my thesis supervisor went onan overseas sabbatical. During his absence, I could concentrate on completing my library science course requirements. In Sumire’s case, my university had already permitted me to spenda sabbatical year abroad which coincided with Sumire’s second year, so I assumed a similar
study trajectory for her. After I returned from abroad, I supervised Sumire’s thesis until she
submitted it in February 2019.

Narrative Inquiry as Three-Dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space
Narrative inquiry, as Clandinin and Connelly (2000) explain, is “a process of learning to think
narratively, to attend to lives as lived narratively” (p. 120). Gordon, McKibbin, Vasudevan, andVinz (2007) regard narrative inquiry as an “interpretive and situated research activity, andthe story exists as data or artifact of this engagement” (p. 327). For them, narrative inquiry is
conducted by “(engaging) in dialogue with ourselves and others and the dialogic becomes anopportunity to keep learning and questioning” (p. 349). What distinguishes narrative inquiry from other forms of narrative is its emphasis on “thinking with rather than about stories”(Estefan, Caine, Clandinin 2016, p.16). As they put it, “thinking about stories” separates readers from the stories, which turns the focus toward “knowledge for practice”, whereas “thinking with stories” invites readers to insert themselves into the stories so that they are acted
upon and come to see how other stories are “lived, told, retold, and relived” (p. 16).
Clandinin and Connelly (2000) encourage researchers to engage in a “three-dimensional
narrative inquiry space”, using these terms to help inquirers to look at their selves in three
dimensions: temporal (moving inward and outward of memories, backward and forward),
relational (moving between the personal and social), and place (with a sense of location) (pp.
54-55). Mkhabela and Frick (2016) also recognize these three dimensions in narrative inquiry
as consisting of their experiences interacting in the course of the doctoral journey, their stories’ timing in the past and future; and the locality of their stories, which were used to help
bring out the complexity of the student-supervisor relationship. Operating within these dimensions helps researchers to delve into their storied memories through these various avenues, unearthing revelations and further insights, leading to more investigations. Clandinin
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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationshipand Connelly state that narrative inquiry helps researchers to become aware of being vulnerable and finding puzzles to help flesh out storied memories which connect with larger social
concerns (p. 121-123).
Narrative inquiry has been used to study the storified and lived experiences between supervisors and students in graduate thesis programs. Hussain and Ali (2019) used narrativeinquiry to learn how six international doctoral graduates in China viewed their experiences,
especially how they remained motivated to pursue their degrees in a country foreign to them.
They found their supervisors were able to perceive their needs both socially and academically.
These doctoral graduates categorized their supervisors’ efforts to keep students motivated intheir content and research areas, lab work and toward publication (p. 154). For Mkhabela andFrick (2016), though their backgrounds were dissimilar (Mkhabela as a male Black African
student and Frick as his white female supervisor with a freshly minted PhD), narrative inquiry enabled them to discern their shared space which did not only consist of their South African nationality but more importantly revealed their “mutual academic curiosity” (p. 25) that
helped them understand how their lived stories became a mutual enterprise of learning.
The promise of unearthing rich and penetrating insights through narrative inquiry attracted
the both of us to probe our thesis relationship. Little could we realize how transformative thisanalytic process would be for us.

Field Texts
This paper is primarily based on an extended interview-conversation which took place in myoffice at the end of October 2019, six months after Sumire had graduated from her Master’s
degree program. It is important to state that our conversation took place to address lingering
questions in my mind related to understanding her story after (a) both of us studied 74 email
threads written between January 2016 and March 2019 which we deemed significant, whichwere from the end of Sumire’s undergraduate studies to the end of her Master’s studies, and(b) after Sumire had written some retrospective essays about her three years in graduate
school. Sumire seemed to be aware that these were reconstructions as she called them “essays”, rather than reports. Excerpts from her essays are given to support her interview answers. The emails, essays and the interview-conversations aided in the writing of this paper.
The interview portions are presented here in a linear time-order style from her childhood tothe present but it must be noted that they did not actually occur in this order in the interview.

Part 2: Our Stories
This section centers on Sumire’s two stories about herself: as a thesis writer and her traumatic preoccupation as a not-quite perfect speaker of English. I do much of the telling, inreply to Sumire’s words taken from her essays and an extended monologue in a conversation between us. But I view my position here as story-teller and respondent, in the spirit of“thinking with stories” (Estefan, Caine, & Clandinin 2016, p. 16) to situate my storied memories in reflection to hers.

Sumire as Thesis Writer
Sumire’s essays largely focused on her thesis work, which thesis supervisors tend to view as
the main purpose of students’ graduate work. Here I tell how her thesis developed.
Her Master’s thesis (Shiba, 2019) was a mixed-methods study examining changes in Japanese women’s university students’ motivation by comparing their 3rd year in high school

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and after entering university. She carried out a questionnaire which was conducted with 131
Japanese female university students in a department of English language and literature at a
women’s private university in Tokyo. From this pool she interviewed five students concerning
their survey results. In the quantitative results, she found a two-way repeated ANOVA analysis indicated that there was a statistically significant increase in both intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation between high school and university. From the interviews, she learned students’prioritizing job-hunting as their exit aim could lead them to be more goal-oriented whichmeant they would focus more on a score or certification than enjoying the English language.
The job-hunting could have more influence on students’ motivation than university entrance
exams. The insights she gleaned from her study were: 1) a change in students’ realization ofEnglish learning, which was related to students’ sense of joy in English learning, 2) a difference between continuously improving English as a main tool and not doing so, showed
the influence of job-hunting on students’ motivation and their awareness of English, and 3)
possible recognition of status and grades for learners which revealed their possible feelings
regarding their classmates and perceived self through the status and grading. Evaluation andthe students’ sense of hating to lose to others were discussed to explore actual impacts of
those two elements.

Sumire’s Struggle with Her Accent as Specter of Perfection
In Sumire’s emails and essays, she wrote about her struggles with the idea of perfection –how others regarded her as well as how she regarded herself. This was expressed very vividly
in one part of the conversation we had at the end of October 2019:
Sumire:The students had an image of me being perfect…

Ken:

You told me this in several emails.

Sumire:And I was not perfect.

Ken:

How do you know they thought this about you?

Sumire:They said it to me directly “You’re perfect, you never had any failure, yourEnglish is very good”, but I did not fit in their image. But as a TA, I needto keep their image, I thought I need to protect it, so I tried to be perfect as
possible in the beginning, but I couldn’t and I started to blame myself, why
couldn’t I do this.

As a graduate student, Sumire was allowed to serve as a teaching assistant, or TA, in a
number of undergraduate speaking classes which were taught by instructors whose first language was English.
It seemed to me that she had good memories of herself speaking in English.
Sumire:

I was just a cute little baby. My mother hired a babysitter to take care of me
while she went to language school for 2 months. When I look back at the
pictures, I was with a friend from the local school. My brothers hung out
with their friends at the local elementary school. I remembered I hated going to nursery school. I cried a lot. My middle brother took me to the bus andwe rode on the bus together. I think it was because I didn’t have that manyfriends from Japan. My parents say that “You always spoke English to yourfriends!” but I don’t remember that. But when I look back at the videos, I see
me talking in English. I don’t recognize this little girl.
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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationship

It must have seemed strange to be told by her parents she was always speaking in English
at that age. During our interview, Sumire told me she had lived in Westchester, a suburb on
the north of New York City where many Japanese expatriates reside. Her mother took her
there from Japan within weeks after her birth until she was five years old. The fact that Sumire lived her life in an English-speaking country from such an early age with a duration of
more than a few years confirms what Long (1990) writes concerning the native tongue being
set in young speakers by the time they reach the age of five.
I could see myself in her with regard to my own history with the Japanese language.
Though I was born in Los Angeles, my Japan-born mother told me that I grew up speaking inJapanese. My wife, who is a Japanese native, remarks that my pronunciation doesn’t have thetell-tale pronunciation markers of a person who has learned it as a second language.
Sumire’s halcyon memories of her English-speaking childhood were rudely ended:
Sumire:When I was in junior high school, I hated it. That is my first time to hate mypronunciation. Because whenever I spoke in English in front of my classmates, they said, “You’re like copying the CD sound!” So, I kinda cheated. Yeah. I didn’t speak properly. But every year, once a year, they have thespeech contest. They chose a representative from the junior high school, one
from each year, each grade. Of course, I wasn’t chosen. I cheated.
Of course, (the teachers) knew I have two older brothers. And (my brothers) are really good. They are like native speakers. We have this section ofchoosing at least one student from one school who have been abroad, so likereturnees! They needed one returnee. And when I was in junior high, in thisschool, there are no other returnees, only me. So, they asked me, “You can bekikokushijo? So, can we choose you?” “Okay.” And I told this to my mom, who
said, “Oh, you are going to do the same thing as your brothers!” That is what
I most hated.
But I did. I made one promise with my teacher, that is, I do not want to do itin front of my friends. I remember that my brothers did, they did the speechin front of all students in the school. But I told the teachers, “I don’t want
to do it! I can participate in the contest outside of the school okay, but inthe school, I don’t want to do anything.” Then they said okay. I only need
to attend the contest. After that, even when I entered the high school, I still
hesitated to speak in English. I think that kind of stopped myself speaking in
English. My score was not that good. I was just good at grammar and vocabulary for university entrance exams.

She spoke animatedly about this episode which occurred in the beginning of her study atsecondary school. At the time when she entered her municipal junior high school, students
typically start to take lessons in English language in their first year. Teachers teach with atextbook and use the audio CD provided with it as teaching material. I did not have to ask
Sumire to explain her classmates’ reactions when her teacher required everyone to repeat after the CD. The pain of being identified and stigmatized was likely too visceral.
She accepted her teacher’s suggestion to be present at the speech contest as an observer, albeit as a kikokushijo observer. Kikokushijo are younger Japanese natives who have lived abroad
for a number of years in a foreign country and return to Japan (Kanno, 2000). Interestingly, what she most hated was not the embarrassment of being found out by her classmates to
speak English so much like the voice on the teacher’s CD, but to be told by her mother that36

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Ken Ikeda & Sumire Shiba

she was following her brothers’ actions, when she thought she had decided by herself not toenter the speech contest except as an observer.
I recall having interviewed many years ago a Japanese student at another university in Tokyo. She told me her father spent his one-year sabbatical in Scotland and took his family. She
was then a child but her American teacher criticized her for having the “wrong” accent. She
told me she then concealed her overseas accent by speaking in katakana (Japanese-accented)
English in order to fit in with her classmates. Sumire felt the same pressure to speak in katakana and “cheated” others by pretending not to be good at speaking in English.
Sumire is not alone in experiencing the trauma of speaking in English. I experienced language trauma early in my childhood. My period of speaking Japanese in America abruptly
ended when I was in the second grade of elementary school. At that time my parents had aconference with the teacher. My teacher had told them that I was mixing my English speechat school with my heritage language. The teacher thought the best way to solve this problem
was to forbid us the use of the foreign tongue at home. I was told by my mother that they
could only speak in English with me from that time.
This teacher’s decision had two disastrous consequences. Although I quickly mastered
English, I just as quickly lost the ability to converse in Japanese, which dismayed my motherso much that she enrolled me in a Japanese conversation school. What destroyed our family
fabric was that my father stopped speaking to me altogether. He hadn’t learned the English
language due to growing up in a time when Japan was at war with the United States. When heemigrated to the U.S., he worked all day in the strawberry fields in central California and told
me in his last years he was too exhausted from working to attend English conversation lessons in the evenings. Through the years, he kept silent. I joked with my friends that he lived
up to his name Shizuo, which transliterates as “quiet husband”. I felt I did not have the ability to converse with my father in Japanese. Later, I understood that his decision was due toa self-sacrificing idea to do it “for the sake of the children”. Tragically, this silence between
my father and I lasted for forty years, only broken after my mother had passed away when
my wife then coaxed me to talk with him in Japanese.
Sumire went on to tell me about her speaking experiences after entering this university:
Sumire:In the beginning, I didn’t feel good to speak English with my classmates. …
in the other classes, in the pronunciation lesson, they never hear what I say,they have their headphones on, but they kind of listen to the others. They
ask, “Why is your pronunciation like blah blah blah?” (Sighs) Still it wasstuck with me. I hated it.

The setting was in a language lab, but this episode she recounted showed how people hearmore than what their ears are supposed to listen to. She was already sensitized to what Japanese people said about her accent, so she could not help but pick up on such remarks. Whenthe undergraduate students she assisted as a TA said, “You’re perfect, you never had any
failure, your English is very good”, they attributed her sense of perfection, to the seemingly
beautiful clarity of her English accent. But it was unfair to her to conclude her native-sounding accent as perfect. People regarded her speaking as a god-given gift or a blessing, but for
Sumire, this was a curse.
Sumire wrote about the stress she endured as a TA in more depth during her first year in
the Master’s degree program:

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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationship

Sumire:However, both as the helper and the TA, “her English was great”, “I wanted to be like her” or “her life was like perfect” pressured me lots. Because of
those phrases, I started being sensitive with how I was looked by others. It
also led me to get lost of myself. I cared about reputation too much and got
afraid of going outside. What other people said about me was not actually me,
I thought. These struggles caused me to be too sensitive and I started taking
appointments with school counselor (emails 2016/10/12, 10/31). I rememberedthat I always mentioned “I don’t know who I am” or “I am not a perfect person that my students said”. At the same time, whenever I made a mistake orfelt sick, I blame myself. This negative routine lasted until the end of the firstyear in graduate school and my health condition got worse and worse likegetting fever, having stomachache and staying (in) my room.

Sumire was tormented by the comments, which were spoken behind her back. Hearing
them made her physically ill to the point of not being able to leave her bed. She sought thehelp of a university counselor. She was able to express her conflicted feelings in an email(1/18/2017). I asked her about it in our conversation, which went like this:Ken:“A tree in my heart is losing leaves and getting poorer and poorer” How did
you learn it?

Sumire:I think I was losing energy. I think I was still taking the counselor. I could
not stand by myself. I still needed the support.

Ken:

So where does this come from?

Sumire:I think I was trying to explain this with my vocabulary. I didn’t take it fromanywhere.

I was sure she had translated “A tree in my heart is losing leaves and getting poorer andpoorer” from a Japanese proverb, but it came from within her and illustrated the gradualdisintegration inside herself. I had assumed that she was not capable of generating her own
metaphor which could be interpreted as a proverb which shows how rare it is to come across
such comments from a L2 user’s perspective and acknowledge their originality. Typically, thefocus is on learners’ poor language skills obstructing getting their meaning across as well as
struggling to display their full set of skills and identity (S. Little, personal communication,
5/29/2020).
Sumire heard the same sort of flattering comments about her English accent from professors as well. As she pointed out in another essay describing her second year in the MA program,…other professors from different departments never give me any corrections
but good comments which were “your English was really good.” It was notcompliment for me at all because I knew that people with this phrase did notactually listen to contents but my English.
I am also guilty of having complimented Japanese students on their language accents. I
recall having remarked to a Japanese student at another women’s university marveling at her“posh” British English accent, I recall she reacted sourly, saying she wished she could lose it,since it marked her as set apart from others.

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Ken Ikeda & Sumire Shiba

I myself only became aware of this glowing reaction Sumire would receive from Japanese
professors about her English accent during her third year of graduate studies. Both occasions
were in front of the entire graduate school community: her thesis proposal, and a precis of
her thesis, both conducted in English.
Sumire explains: Otsuma’s graduate school asks all Master’s students to give presentations
to professors in other departments. It has to be presented publicly since the accountability
has to be shown to all professors. There will be better discussion and arguments if the Master’s thesis is just presented in a department where a student belongs. However, Otsuma’s
graduate school wants to prove that a thesis is admitted by all professors. And then, Master’s
students are officially done with their thesis. I have done it twice in June and February. In
June, the presentation is done with explanations about a thesis and ways of research. In February, the presentation includes the results and discussion sections of the thesis and future
perspectives. At this time, more professors ask questions and they are more likely related tothe discussions.
As I had been away during her second year, I actually was very nervous for her to present
her thesis proposal publicly in front of professors and students. I wondered if she would haveto deal with unexpected and possibly strict questions (and for myself, since I thought I would
have to moderate her presentation in Japanese). Professor X, who served as the secondary
thesis supervisor, thought of the same dire possibility and sought to dissuade her from layingout her thesis proposal to the entire audience.
When Sumire presented her thesis proposal, when it came to the question time, one professor raised his hand and commented that her English was so beautiful to listen to. At the final
thesis presentation, no one asked questions or gave comments, but I heard people around me
whispering the same sort of admiring remarks.
But this was not the reaction of a Japanese professor Y who served as faculty reader of
Sumire’s Master’s thesis. When I asked her in our conversation if that professor ever commented on her English speaking, she had this to say about the time when she was enrolled in
one of his courses:
Ken:

What did Professor Y say about your speaking English?

Sumire:He didn’t say anything.

Ken:So, he’s not the kind of person that says that kind of thing.

Sumire:Yes, so if other students say that, he said “Yes, her English is good, but what
we need to do is to focus on contents. Let’s focus on the topic.” He is moreinterested in what I say. He never mentions about my pronunciation. WhenI said I worry if my English is going lower, he said, “Don’t worry about it.”That’s it.

When I heard Professor Y speaking in English for the first time, I guessed that he also had
been a kikokushijo in the U.S. Sumire told me that he had spent many years growing up in the
U.S. and returned to Japan during high school. I think he knew what it was like to be judged
by one’s accent and would be sensitized.
I was reminded of a recurring misidentification with my own English-speaking ability. I
have been told by white speakers in Japan that I “speak English very well” but I know that is
because I have a Japanese face and name, so I know they view me as a native Japanese. I have
patiently explained that I lived my first 25 years in the U.S., but there always are a few people that do not fully understand, as they then go on to say, “When did you return to Japan?”,Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationshipwhich shows they have not listened to me. I again heard this familiar refrain at the university where I spent my overseas sabbatical, where I was frequently asked by students and staff
about my English (Ikeda 2018). Even if those who asked me did it unintentionally and without
malice, yet as an American-born Asian, I was sensitive about it and could only feel slighted.
Both Sumire and I experienced such microaggressions (Sue 2010) toward language accentsthat were out of our control. That they were embodied in these flattering remarks made us
feel respectively marginalized.
But how much was Sumire’s pronunciation in English simply an obsession? Thankfully, her
pronunciation could be verified, due to a project that I carried out during my sabbatical when
I audited a Master’s program in Teaching English as a Second Language (MATESL) course inteaching English pronunciation to foreign speakers. The project (which Sumire called “Ken’sphonics project”) required recording a nonnative speaker of English and conducting a phonological analysis on a transcription of the recorded language. The course instructor who wasalso the chair of the MATESL program kindly gave me permission to record her speech. Sumire quickly agreed to participate in the project. I felt her keen interest in it when she emailed
me two weeks later and expressed her worry about my lack of reply, wondering if I had foundsomeone else. My recording of her speech using the text on the Speech Accent Archive (2010,
online) was conducted over Skype two weeks later. The phonological analysis revealed that
Sumire had native-like English fluency in her segmentals (vowels and consonants) and suprasegmentals (word stress and intonation).
Soon after the phonological project, Sumire received her test results on an English proficiency exam, which she wrote about in an essay concerning her second year in graduate
school:I decided to take Eiken grade pre-1, which is English proficiency test in Japanto see how my level would be located. Its result provided me lots of confidence because it was official certification showing my proficiency level withconcrete comments. Moreover, in Ken’s phonics project, I received a result
showing how my speaking was. These results with accountability led me tofeel relieved and motivated to improve my English more and more.
The Eiken is a Japan-based English proficiency exam and its pre-1st level is equivalent to a
B2 on the CEFR. Sumire again referred to this official English test result in her essay about
her 3rd year, after achieving her career goal to be a licensed English teacher:
When I found that I passed the exam and could be a full-time English teacher, I felt that there was nothing useless that I did in my MA years. Also, (as) I
mentioned in a report of my 2nd MA year, an official result with accountability encouraged me and gave me confidence.
I found it intriguing that she considered the attainment of this proficiency exam level ofmore importance than the phonological result. When I asked her why she gave more credence
to this, she explained that the exam is assessed by a team of paid professional examiners who
judge on fluency, speaking skills, attitude and pronunciation, whereas my phonological assessment was only checked by the pronunciation professor on my assessment. So in this case,many heads are better than a few.
Sumire felt that she matured a lot as a result of struggling with her own image of perfection
with both students’ and Japanese professors’ perception of her accent. The official Eiken testscore and my phonological analysis boosted her self-confidence. The extent her perspective

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Ken Ikeda & Sumire Shibachanged is evident in this amazing recollection with her junior high school students:
Sumire:So, I’m telling students, now that I’m working for junior high that I also havesomething I don’t understand as well, so, don’t think like I’m perfect. Students are like, why, ‘Teachers are always perfect.’ But I tell them that someof your elementary school teachers also made mistakes, right? They say yeah,
that’s true. So, I don’t hesitate to look for vocabulary in front of the students.
I search it through the iPad and tell them we learned this together. The students tell me ‘You don’t know the pride in yourself’. I tell them that searching for something is not throwing my pride away. If I stop teaching and run
away, that is throwing my pride away.

I recall how her tone brightened as she spoke about how she brushed aside students’ notions of her as perfect, pointing out to them the fallacy of that thinking, having them recall
their elementary school teachers. She demonstrated to them how she learned new vocabulary
together with them. Her students found Sumire’s vulnerability disturbing and irregular. They
told her that she was throwing away her pride, but she pointed out that teachers are also
learners. This showed to me how much she has embraced her new self and wants to impartthat thinking to others.
Along with her self-acceptance, she also possessed a healthy perspective of what it means
to be a teacher:
Sumire:So, the TA experience was good to do it but also learn that I am also a learner.
Maybe I was trying to be perfect. I was forgetting that I am also a learner.

Ken:Could you explain what it means to be a learner?

Sumire:To be a learner means teaching English doesn’t mean knowing everything.
Through teaching, I found what I didn’t understand fully but to find what
about students need to know, also the teachers’ side. I’m also learning at thesame time.

Ken:Sounds so wise.

Sumire:Really? Yay.

Sumire realized a teacher is a learner, which she stated without my explicit suggestion, andit was wonderful to hear her how she was instilling this insight into her learners.

Part 3: Moving Forward
This part explains (1) the major finding in this narrative inquiry-centered paper, which isrecognizing language accent trauma and calling for an expanded understanding of the thesis
supervisor as a trauma-sensitive resource person, (2) Sumire as a co-author (3) future directions, and (4) concluding thoughts.

Language Trauma and Trauma Sensitivity
Reid (2020) explains how the concept of trauma has evolved from its ancient Greek roots
focusing on the physical wound into embracing the “psychological and emotional realities
associated with difficult and painful experiences” (p. 34). Sumire expressed her fears throughLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationshipher essays and the interview-conversation. She became candid to me about how our thesis
relationship was progressing. I have depicted Sumire’s struggles with people’s perceptionsof her accent as a kind of language trauma. In the later stages of writing this paper when I
informed Sumire about how I was shifting this paper to focus on the language trauma aspect,
she shared with me how scared she became of herself during her first two years in graduate
school as she grappled with the specter of perfection. Sumire’s trauma of dealing with her accent which made her stand out like a native English speaker caused me to reflect on my own
experiences with language trauma as a kind of microaggression and join her in spirit.
There is a finding here about how the role of thesis supervisor extends far beyond that of“dissertation commentator” (S. Little, personal communication, 5/29/2020). It is easy to regard the thesis supervisor as a task-bound role, which excludes discussion of painful personal
memories that academicians (Bochner 1997, Ellis 2007) and practitioners (Reid 2020) keep
and live with.
Reid argues for a case for trauma sensitivity in narrative inquiry, as it is “more experiential,
less clinical, and open(s) the possibility of…moving away from a diagnostic, definable, categorizable entity, and moving toward openness to the multiplicity and the complexity of experience” (pp. 38-39). Thesis supervisors could very well fill this role as trauma-sensitive carepersons. Mkhabela and Frick (2016) point out that “mutual kindness is one of the core aspects
that defined our student-supervisor relationship, and that kindness built mutual trust thatfacilitated our eventual progress. A mutual show of kindness provided a strong foundation
for the otherwise rigorous and sometimes harsh academic critique that characterises doctoral
supervisory discourses” (p. 34). Along with kindness comes care. Hussain and Ali (2019) reported that “supervisors were caring which provided satisfaction of work and life. They were
found to care in multiple dimensions: academic care, social care, counseling, close interaction,
financial care, and lowering acculturative stress. The results showed that supervisors empowered the students in many areas including: research area choice, time management, scheduling research activities, research methods, and course selection” (p. 153).
Viewed in this regard with the need for thesis supervisors to provide trauma sensitivity, it isshort-sighted for supervisors to insist that their students address only the thesis-writing aspect of their relationship, which amputates this from other intertwined aspects of their lives.
As Dysthe (2002) points out, “(graduate) supervisors today have very few role models, andthe ones they have are often poor because their own supervisors were either authoritarian or
negligent” (p. 535). This paper does not go so far as to advocate that thesis supervisors become professionally trained counselors, rather, it calls for supervisors and students to engage
in mutual kindness and mutual trust as Mkhabela and Frick (2016) have stated that would
help both to get through the rigors of the thesis journey.

Sumire as Co-Author
Initially I naively thought Sumire could join me as a co-author when we responded to the callfor papers by Sabine and Michelle for this Learner Development Journal issue. Negotiating
our collaboration as this paper developed has been difficult. Sumire was hired as a full-time
junior high school teacher which made it difficult for her to be a co-writer in the orthodox
sense. Thanks to the avenue provided by narrative inquiry to contribute storied memories,
Sumire has responded generously, through her essays and through speaking at length about
her experiences.
Although I have produced the bulk of the meta-writing, Sumire’s imprint on this paper
cannot be denied. Her lengthy oral reminiscences constitute the meat of this paper, which included her stories of trauma with her American English accent that clouded her relationships

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Ken Ikeda & Sumire Shibawith students and professors. These reminiscences which emerged from her essays whichwere in turn embedded in her emails with me show that this paper constitutes her work andnot just her words. Recently, scholarly authorship revolves around whether “someone has
given comments that are indispensable to getting the paper published” (Singh, 2015). Narrative inquiry with its emphasis on the storied memories of all participants in dialogue has
enabled Sumire to work as co-author and thanks to her, I have been able to grapple with myown stories of language trauma.

Future Directions
One thread stemming from Sumire’s stories that invites exploration is the interplay of roles
that graduate students perform outside of their thesis writing situation. Sumire was a student in a Master’s degree program and was also concurrently enrolled in a teaching licenseprogram in which most of her cohort members were years younger than her. She was also
the youngest child and only daughter in a Japanese household and had to endure comparisonswith her older brothers. Our paper refrains from exploring the conflicting images between her
and her parents as to the “proper” role she was to assume as a female.
Her service as a TA for a number of undergraduate classes not only brought her into contact
with students and instructors but also gave her the forum to carry out her data collection ofher thesis work. Although Sumire smarted from students’ offhand remarks about her socalled “perfect” image, she enjoyed rapport with them. She recounted that initially students
were not enthused about completing questionnaires about their language learning motivation (“their faces were like, ‘I don’t want to do this’”). But when they were informed by theirinstructor this came from her, “then they were like ‘Oh, Sumire-san’ and they did it”) She
received back 150 completed forms, which she said “a professor (commented) it was remarkable to get (these) many answers”.
Although not in the narrative inquiry paradigm, Bhabha’s third space theory could provide
insights on how the literature looks at overcoming these so-called walls between Sumire’s
roles as graduate student, teaching assistant, and being a daughter. Williams (2012) writing
as a teacher-educator, states “learning in that (third) space is as much about personal andprofessional identities as it is about teaching practice” (p. 295). Another way to regard identities and the worlds they inhabit can be found in Lemke’s (2010) proposal to view identity
as more as a mercenary and “loose collection of elements” (p. 36) which people use to fulfill roles and interact with others in community (p. 20). Identity, for Lemke, is subjected to“hybridity” which represents the compromises that individuals make with their institutions(each with its own ideas about how the person should be), while dealing with desires, fears,
and the vulnerabilities of our bodies (p. 18). This understanding of identity viewed as a collection of elements and hybridity might help bring out more richly the complexity of stories inthese interactions.
A prominent thread stemming from Sumire’s stories that invites further exploration is theblessing/curse of having a native-speaker accent in one’s L2. I would argue that such positively or negatively discriminatory treatment occurs especially among people who do not havethe physical features characteristic of native speakers of European-based languages, in thisstudy, English speakers of Asian ethnicity. Kikokushijo who form the basis of Kanno’s 2000
study are treated as “by far the best speakers of English around” in Japan, summed up by one
who stated, “here (in Japan) it’s so nice … they look at you with admiration. You feel recognized” (p. 11). Yet for Sumire, such favorable reactions to the way she spoke was opposite ofwhat she desired because too often those who complimented her on her accent did not listen
to what she said. Her remark about how Professor Y was “more interested in what” (italics
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A Narrative Inquiry into Language Accent Trauma in a Master’s Thesis Supervision Relationshipmine) she said is revealing of his stance. As Professor Y was a kikokushijo himself, he understood her situation and diverted the other students’ laudatory attention into focusing on thecontents of the lesson. It would be worth investigating the breadth of experience among kikokushijo concerning how the Japanese perception of their native English accents has resulted
in them being ‘heard’ for their accent, rather than being accepted for what they say.
Alerting home culture speakers of their held assumptions to Japanese and other speakers ofEnglish and how these can be regarded as microaggressions is another line of inquiry. Shim(2017) carried out a study with four white American pre-service teachers on their self-identified microaggressions toward people of various origins speaking English. She found herparticipants expressed positive or respectful attitudes toward those from L1 English-speaking
countries as indicated in their comments about their accents, but harbored negative attitudes
to speakers of other languages. These pre-service teachers expressed surprise when thoseother-language speakers exhibited behaviors they felt were contrary to their held expectations of those language groups. Her participants realized that “engaging in self-identifications of linguistics microaggression on (a) daily basis is uncomfortable but necessary if they
are to become more effective teachers” (p. 13).

Conclusion
This paper has used narrative inquiry to tell Sumire’s and my stories which reveal how various aspects of her self-image were intricately woven with her thesis work, roles and life
experience. These stories centered on her protracted trauma over her American English accent
which pained her as she could not respond to students’ and professors’ perceptions as a ‘perfect’ person. But her passing a high-level English proficiency exam, coupled with my phonological assessment of her accent encouraged her to accept herself as a different person inthought and action.
These stories show healing, growth and transformation, especially for Sumire in her response to comments about her perceived perfection, which has resulted in demonstrating
to her students that teachers are learners too. I hope these stories with their connections tomemories point to connections to our experiences and personal makeup.
I am glad that I could witness her healing while serving as her thesis supervisor and provide encouragement as well as be a sounding board. Thesis supervisors working in cross-linguistic and/or cross-cultural settings should try to establish not only a working relationshipof communication, but also care. They should be on the alert to help their students be open
and forthcoming. For students who either lack the communication skills and the willingness
to convey their apprehensions in a second or foreign language, having them write language
learning histories (Murphey, Chen, & Chen 2005) can help them to present their memories in
the form of stories, which can show agency and autonomy (Carpenter & Murphey 2007).
Narrative inquiry serves as an analytic approach that helps all participants to grapple withserious underlying issues through sharing their stories and confer with each other to help
make sense of their experiences, especially when they are vulnerable. Gordon, McKibbin,
Vasudevan, and Vinz (2007) found their sense of victory in publishing incarcerated youths’
accounts recognizing the enormity of their crimes was upended when their key protagonist
delighted in retelling his criminal acts in a revelatory context. They write, “(Do) we allow
spaces for multiple truths?” (p. 348). We have to admit that even with the use of narrativeinquiry, we may still “get it all wrong” (p. 348).
Narrative allows scholars to recognize their own frailties and show the blur between the
personal and professional spheres. Using the narrative inquiry approach to review Sumire’s
sojourn in graduate school through inquiry spaces in time, relations, and place has been an

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Ken Ikeda & Sumire Shiba

illuminating reflective adventure for me. The more I ponder and reflect, the more interconnections and puzzles I encounter that I must investigate.
I close this paper with a quote from Alan Bochner (1997): “This is the work of self-narration: to make a life that seems to be falling apart come together again, be retelling and‘restorying’ the events of one’s life” (p. 429). The life worth living is the life expressed in
narrative.

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Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative
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Dysthe, O. (2002). Professors as mediators of academic text cultures: An interview study
with advisors and master’s degree students in three disciplines in a Norwegian university.
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others. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), 3-29.
Estefan, A., Caine, V., & Clandinin, D. J. (2016). At the intersections of narrative inquiry andprofessional education. Narrative Works, 6(1), 15-37.
George Mason University. (2010, online). Speech Accent Archive. United States. [Archived Web
Site] https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0004000/
Gordon, E., McKibbin, K., Vasudevan, L., & Vinz, R. (2007). Writing out of the unexpected:
Narrative inquiry and the weight of small moments. English Education, (July 2007), 326351.
Hussain, M., & Ali, H. (2019). How to supervise international PhD students: A narrativeinquiry study. International Journal of Higher Education, 8(5), 143-156.
Ikeda, K. (2018). Stranger in a familiar land: Identities encountered in an overseas sabbatical.
Otsuma Joshi Daigaku Kiyoo (Bunkei), 51, 228-240.
Kanno, Y. (2000). Bilingualism and identity: The stories of Japanese returnees. International
Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3(1), 1-18.
Lemke, J. L. (2010). Identity, development, and desire: Critical questions. In Carmen Rosa
Caldas-Coulthard and Rick Iedema (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested
identities (pp. 17-42). Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Long, M. H. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in Second
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Mkhabela, Z. L., & Frick, B. L. (2016). Student-supervisor relationships in a complex society:
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Murphey, T., Chen, J., & Chen, L. (2005). Learners’ constructions of identities and imaginedcommunities. In P. Benson & D. Nunan, (Eds.), Learners’ stories: Difference and diversity
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Reid, N. (2020). Teachers’ experiences of/with trauma and trauma sensitivity: A narrative inquiry into
trauma stories and stories of trauma (PhD Thesis). Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta
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Acknowledgements
We express our sincere gratitude to the following people: (from Ken) Andy Barfield for his
helpful suggestion to use narrative inquiry for our study; (from Sumire) Hiroaki Nishiyama for his support and encouragement; Sabine doubly for her supportive editorial guidance
throughout, Alice Chik for her peer feedback, and the two proofreaders.

Author Bios
Ken Ikeda has lived in Japan since 1987 and has been at the Department of English Literatureand Language at Otsuma Women’s University since 2009. He teaches English education andmedia representations of Asians. His research interests are in exploring Asians’ English language learner identities and investigating discontinuities in student academic writing. Kenenjoys taking long walks, playing the piano, and writing fiction.
Sumire Shiba has worked as an English teacher at a metropolitan junior high school in Tokyo
since 2019. Her research interest is in English learners’ motivation in their English learning.
She graduated with a MA in English Education at Otsuma Women’s University. Her thesis
investigated the change of motivation among undergraduates using mixed methods research.
Another research interest is exploring English language learners’ identities based on her experiences living in the U.S. in her childhood and her one-year study abroad as an undergraduate in Vancouver, Canada. She likes driving and taking pictures of her friends and nature.

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RESEARCH PAPER
Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting
Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Land
異国での倫理審査体験を通してー研究上の先駆的な冒険
Stachus Peter Tu, Hiroshima Shudo University
Jim Ronald, Hiroshima Shudo University
This article is a reflective account of the experience of two non-Japanese academics in Japan, a postgraduate student and his supervisor, as they undergo the ethics review process at a Japanese university. As we do this, we will
first consider two incidents that occurred during the ethics review process. The first concerns the confusions andmisunderstandings involved in the application to submit research plans to the office responsible for the ethics
review process at the university. The second is about the communication breakdown and related issues that occurred after a senior professor offered assistance to the postgraduate student and his advisor at a crucial stage inthe ethics review process. This is followed by a comparison with the submission, one year later, of another ethics
review application. By reflecting on these events, we found evidence of miscommunication between all parties
involved, attributable to social, relational, linguistic, and cultural factors, but perhaps above all due to a lack ofsufficient communication. In light of this, the paper concludes with guidance for those involved in ethics review applications, especially in cross-cultural settings: lessons for students, supervisors, and ethics review administrators.
本論文は、日本在住の二人の外国人研究者が、所属する大学の倫理委員会での審査プロセスで経験した問題点について記録している。
大学院生とその指導教官が、研究のための倫理審査プロセス中に発生した2つの問題点を取り上げた。一点目は、大学の倫理審査プロセスを担当するオフィスでの研究計画を提出するための申請に伴う混乱と誤解に関するものである。 二点目は、倫理審査プロセスの重要な段階で、同じ審査をすでに経験した別の教授が、大学院生と指導教官に支援を提供した後に発生した問題について論じる。続いて、その1年後に行われた別の倫理審査申請書の提出との比較が行われる。これらの出来事を振り返ることにより、関係するすべての当事者間の誤解の要因が明らかにされた。それらの誤解は、社会的、関係的、言語的、文化的といった様々な要因が関係するが、おそらく根本的な要因は、十分なコミュニケーションの欠如に起因すると思われる。これらの経験を踏まえ結論では、特に異文化環境での倫理審査申請のプロセスにおいて、学生、指導教官、およびオフィスでの倫理審査管理者と、関係する人々すべてが学べる助言を提案する。

Keywords
ethics review, critical incidents, collaboration, supervisor-student relationship, cultural expectations
倫理審査、危機的事例、共同研究、指導教員と学生の関係、文化的規範

T

his paper recounts the experience of a Taiwanese-American doctoral student and his
British-Australian supervisor in applying for approval of a research project by their Japanese university’s ethics review committee. While proceeding through the ethics review
for a research plan is familiar to many university faculty and postgraduate students aroundthe world, a number of factors make this particular experience worthy of attention. First, atthe university that is the scene of this paper, the ethics review committee had only recently
been formed. Second, with the doctoral student and the supervisor both from countries otherthan Japan, familiarity with the administrative culture and language of this part of the university was limited. Combined, these circumstances resulted in various misunderstandings
and troubles, many of which were cultural or linguistic in nature.
While this paper will largely take a narrative approach (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), we will
focus mainly on two critical incidents (Flanagan, 1954) that occurred during the process of submitting a research proposal to the newly formed ethics committee at our university: an interLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 202047

Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Landaction with the staff of the office that served as intermediary between the researchers and theethics committee itself, and an episode with a professor who had already submitted research
to the ethics committee and who offered to help the postgraduate student. Through reflective
interviews with those involved, together with emails exchanged at the time, our goal throughthis paper is for the reader to experience something of the unsettling confusion and conflicting
emotions that we felt at that time. For this reason, our approach will be first to present the educational context and those involved in this experience, then to report the incidents as viewed
by the people involved before seeking to interpret these from a more theoretical perspective.

OutlineThe Background section will describe the human and educational context of this paper: theindividuals involved and the specific context of this story, the university and its newly founded ethics review system. We will then consider the wider context: the challenges of studying
abroad at postgraduate level and the various types of support that may or may not be available to students as they prepare research proposals for submission to an ethics review committee. This will bring us to the two incidents that were pivotal parts of the process application for documents to prepare a research plan to submit to the ethics review committee: theprocess of preparing the required documentation, and the submission and processing of these
documents. These will be reported through email exchanges at the time and retrospective
interviews with the main people involved. As we reflect on the incidents and the interactionsof which they were a part, we will refer to and consider the various social, relational, linguistic, and cultural elements that may give insights into what happened. One year later, as weonce again prepared to submit a research plan for consideration by the ethics review committee, we were given the opportunity to learn from our experiences, to observe how the context
has changed, to change our behaviours, and to reflect on what we have learned. This reflection takes the form of two independently written conclusions by the postgraduate student
and his supervisor, written in recognition that our stances and perspectives will necessarily
be different, and that these differences may provide useful insights. The paper will conclude
with suggestions for postgraduate students, supervisors of such students, and administrators
involved with ethics committee proposals.

Background
First, we need to introduce the protagonists: the doctoral student Stachus Peter Tu and his
PhD supervisor, Jim Ronald. After this, we will describe the setting: their academic environment and the newly established ethics review committee at their university.
Stachus is a Taiwanese-American in his late twenties, studying English pragmatics with his
advisor, Jim, as a doctoral student at a middle-sized provincial Japanese university. At firstglance, as an “Asian westerner”, in Japan most people assume that Stachus is Japanese. He
grew up in the United States and is fluent in written and spoken English and relatively fluent
in spoken Chinese. Having studied Japanese then lived in Japan for around six years in total,
he is also a proficient user of spoken Japanese, sufficient for everyday needs, and while Japanese language courses he took during his Bachelor’s degree help him in his reading of Japanese,
the writing of appropriate, error-free Japanese texts is usually beyond him. Stachus added that
although he may have the sufficient language ability to communicate in Japanese, the majorityof the difficulties he faces are cultural. While he has been in Japan for years, he still lacks theknowledge of “how things are done” in Japan, particularly when faced with new situations.
Jim is an Australian who grew up in England and first came to Japan at the age of 27. He started teaching in the Department of English of this university over 20 years ago, and has been

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supervising postgraduate students at Master’s level for the past few years. Stachus is his first
doctoral student. Like Stachus, he is a fairly proficient user of nonformal, nontechnical spoken
Japanese, but his ability in reading and writing Japanese is significantly lower and might becompared to that of Japanese children in their second or third year of elementary school. Also,
similarly to Stachus, he still struggles with how to deal with unfamiliar situations.
Stachus and Jim get on well and, as well as meeting in an academic context as postgraduate
student and supervisor, meet at church or socially. Despite this, neither of them finds it easy
to talk about continuing concerns or issues relating to the PhD studies, such as what each expects of the other, but recognize this and are committed to improving it. it remains a work inprogress. In fact, the planning and co-writing of this paper has been a vehicle for their development in this area.
This story took place in a small to middle-sized provincial liberal arts university in thewestern half of Japan, with a total student population of a little over 6,000 students. Of these,
there are under 100 postgraduate students studying in a total of six graduate schools that areextensions of five of the university’s six faculties. The vast majority of postgraduate students
are enrolled on Master’s courses, and there are typically no more than two or three doctoral
students in the whole university. If we were to categorize the university as a research-focused or teaching-focused institution, it would undoubtedly be on the teaching side of theline. As an example, although the personal research budget allotted to each faculty member isinfluenced by the amount of research conducted in the previous few years, there is little otherpressure on faculty members to publish.
The university’s ethics review committee was only established one month prior to Stachus’s
initial enquiry, following the university’s addition of a Food Science Department, research forwhich absolutely requires an ethics committee. It was at his PhD program entrance examination interview that Stachus first received information about this, when one professor recommended that for his research he should proceed through the newly formed ethics committee.
Until this time, there had been no formal guidelines or supervision regarding ethical considerations of research conducted with students at the university or by faculty or students of theuniversity. This continues to be true for most research conducted by students at any but thedoctoral level, and, as a rule, by faculty as well.

The Bigger Picture
In order to understand the wider context, we begin by considering the ethics review process
in Japan. Following this, we reflect on the life of postgraduate students studying abroad. After
this, we note the lack of support and guidance available for those who are in Japan. Lastly, we
explain something of the complexity of the teacher-student relationship.
While many other countries may be stricter about research ethics, Japan generally, and theuniversity in this case, has been slow to set up an ethics review committee or even to give any
guidelines on research ethics such as informed consent for research conducted with students.
Although the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology stated
the goal of ensuring that some form of research ethics review committee would be establishedin all universities nationwide by 2015 (MEXT, 2014), to date only national universities andmedical schools have uniformly established ethics committees, paired with systems to educate
researchers regarding the ethics of conducting research. Private universities have shown atrend of being slow to meet this mark (MEXT, 2015).
Postgraduate studies are, for many, a step into the unknown, a journey not shared withmany of their friends or others close to them. Postgraduate studies in a foreign country, dealing with a foreign culture and language, may be a couple of steps beyond that. However, these
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Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Land

circumstances are by no means exceptional, and there are many countries around the world
where international students at postgraduate level may outnumber domestic students. In theUK, for example, over 50% of the 330,000 postgraduate students registered as full-time werefrom outside the UK for the 2017-2018 academic year (Bolton, 2019). In such circumstances,the postgraduate student from abroad may rely on various people or resources for academic
guidance and support. These will include the postgraduate student’s teachers, including his
or her supervisor(s). Peers also play an important role, particularly those one or two years
ahead who have already gone through what the student is facing, and especially those following the same course of studies and with a shared language and culture. Other sources of help
may include university non-teaching staff, with or without specific responsibilities for postgraduate or international students. Paper or online guides, lists of frequently asked questions,even videos on Youtube may also be valuable support as a postgraduate student applies to theuniversity’s ethics review committee.	
Imagine, though, circumstances in which none of this support is available. For the doctoral
student and his supervisor, in a university with a very small postgraduate body and a brandnew ethics review committee, there were no postgraduate peers to share their experience, nor
was much guidance available from university faculty or from the office responsible. The difficulties experienced with the newness of the situation we were facing were compounded byconflicting cultural expectations of the various parties involved in the ethics committee submission process, the inexperience of the doctoral student and his supervisor with the process, and the language difficulties encountered in a culture in which there is much that is notdirectly expressed.
As we describe this process and seek to understand the various communication failures
and misunderstandings of what was required, and by whom, we will include the perspectives
gained through interviews with each of the parties involved. First, it may be worth taking a
step back and asking what the nature and purpose of this supervisor-PhD student partnershipmay be. A good starting point is the following description: “The idea of staff-student partnership implies shared responsibility and cooperative or collaborative action, in relation toshared purposes” (Levy, Little, & Whelan, 2011, p. 1). Although not put into words by us, thisdoes accurately represent our understanding of the relationship. In addition, although we, thesupervisor and doctoral student, had already worked together for two years, there were stilltimes of hesitation when we doubted the other’s judgment of how to proceed, both because
neither of us grew up in Japan and because of conflicting expectations of our respective roles
or responsibilities. Each factor, although not unique in itself, combined to form a unique situation that required us both to adapt and learn, in order to get their research plans approvedin time. Trust, too, is an important aspect of the relationship, but this, too, is complex. Selfdoubt is a natural part of facing a new endeavour, whether taking on doctoral studies or taking on the supervision of a doctoral student.
Derounian (2011), investigating the process of completing undergraduate dissertations,notes the various clashes “of very different personalities, styles, expectations and perspectives on learning” (p. 92) as well as differing attitudes and values that are part of the relationship and interaction between the student and supervisor. He also points to the pressuresof academic demands such as deadlines. The differing cultural norms and assumptions that
he identifies between any supervisor and student may well be accentuated when they arefrom different cultural backgrounds, and having to supervise or study, as in this case, in athird culture. As for stressful circumstances negatively impacting communication and relationships, this too was an important aspect of the experience of getting through the processof submitting an acceptable research plan to the ethics committee.

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Incident 1: Submitting a Research Plan.
As Stachus and Jim were working on Stachus’s research plan, for a replication of a study of English learners’ responses to each other’s statements about various discussion topics, we started
planning the period over which the study would be conducted. We then realized that Stachus
would need to submit his research plan for approval by the newly formed ethics review committee as soon as possible. In line with his belief that students should do such things themselves, as part of their academic development, Jim instructed the postgraduate student to go
by himself to ask for necessary documents at the university office that deals with this. Stachus
went to the office and, in Japanese, explained what he wanted to a visibly flustered member ofstaff, who printed out the forms and gave them to him, without any explanation. After thanking her, he left, intending to fill out the forms. He started doing this, in Japanese, and realizedthat preparing the application on the printed forms was not appropriate. A couple of days later
he returned to the office and spoke with the same staff member. He asked her how to accessthe digital files, and was told that his supervisor (Jim) had access to these and could forward
them to him. Assuming, correctly, that his supervisor might be unaware of the availability ofthe documents via the university server or how to access them, he arranged to meet a Japanese
professor whose classes on SLA research he was auditing, to talk about the application process
for the ethics review committee. He had heard that she had already gone through the process
and that her research plan had been the first to be approved by this new ethics review committee. He showed her his partly completed handwritten forms, and she printed out her recently
approved submission then forwarded her completed files to him, thus providing both the digitalforms he needed to complete and her own submission to serve as a kind of template. We will
focus on this aspect of the application further in Incident 2.
We will consider in further detail some of the background of what happened before reporting and reflecting on the views of the four main people involved: the two office staff, thestudent, Stachus, and the supervisor, Jim.
In fact, the first two times Stachus visited the office dealing with submissions of researchplans for approval by the ethics review committee, the member of staff he spoke with was
not the one responsible for this particular work. As her colleague was not present, she printed out the required documents, but could do little else as she was largely unfamiliar with theprocess. She also seemed confused to see the postgraduate student coming alone to the office, since the office would deal almost exclusively with faculty members, and even doctoral students do not typically conduct research in their own name but under the name of the“principal researcher”, their supervisor. Although this may vary depending on the university,
Stachus and Jim’s university generally requires this. Her advice to the student to obtain theelectronic files for the application from his supervisor may well have been a way of telling thestudent that his communication should be with his supervisor, and communication with theoffice staff should come from the student’s supervisor. At that time, we had no sense of thispossible interpretation of her instructions.
The interview with the office staff member responsible for ethics review committee applications, conducted after everything had been completed, was disarmingly frank and straightforward about the lack of readiness to deal with the postgraduate student’s submission. The ethics
review committee had been formed only one month before Stachus submitted his application,and this was one of the first submissions to be received, the first for a student’s research project, and the first by someone who was not Japanese. As the office staff member explained, it
was their intention to learn through the early applications, such as Stachus’s, what they needed
to do or what information or other support they would need to provide for future applicants.
The interview revealed a large gap in understanding between the office and Jim and StaLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 202051

Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Landchus regarding responsibilities for the submission of a research proposal for considerationby the ethics committee. It also exposed a perhaps more worrying perception of these beliefs
as being both common knowledge and common sense, so obvious that discussion was unnecessary. As the staff member explained, a student, even a doctoral student, is not considered qualified to submit a research proposal; it must be done in the name of their supervisor.
Totally unaware of this requirement, and believing that making an application like this to be
an important part of a student’s development, Jim did not hesitate to send his student to ask
for the necessary documents. These kinds of regulations may at first be considered as a formof gatekeeping, which is defined by the Online Collins English Dictionary as “the practice ofcontrolling access to information, advanced levels of study, elite sections of society, etc.”. In
the ethics committee setting, this would be where there are rules set in place to effectively bar
certain individuals from submitting. However, rather than any intention of those who weremanaging the ethics committee this feeling of being kept out may have been more causedby the frustration as we struggled to navigate this process. In effect, though, we lacked theagency to ask the questions that we needed to ask, due to the formality of the environment,
fear of being misunderstood, fear of damaging relationships, and a wish to maintain a positive image in the eyes of the Japanese office.
Which brings us to the question of why the reaction of the office staff, on seeing the student alone, was not to ask that his supervisor come to the office. Even in the strictest of circumstances at a prestigious university such as Stanford University, an ethics review committee typically allows students to submit alone with the approval of an academic sponsor (see“IRB Medical Application Process”). Here, we may only surmise possible reasons. One is that
if they saw the supervisor’s necessary involvement as being obvious and beyond discussion
then they might have inferred that the student’s supervisor was aware of this but, for whatever reason, deliberately chose not to provide the documents nor accompany the student toapply for these. A further interpretation is that the office staff’s response did actually include
an implied request that the student’s supervisor visit the office, but that this indirect request
was not interpreted as such. With the differing status between professors and all but the mostsenior administrative staff, it would have been difficult to openly request the professor tocome to the office. Instead, this may have been couched in indirect terms, through suggestions that the student consult his supervisor himself, who could in turn consult the office regarding requirements for submitting research plans and other documents for consideration by
the ethics committee. However, if this was the intention of the office staff, it was not interpreted as a request of this type. As such, it is an example of pragmatic failure (Thomas, 1983),
in which the meaning of the intended message was lost.
Jintae and Peltokorpi (2013) report a study into the success or otherwise of cross-culturaladjustment by what they term self-initiated expatriates (as opposed to, for example, refugees). They note that self-estimated success at interaction adjustment largely correlated to
two factors: proficiency in the working language of their companies and time spent in the
country. Jim is a long-term resident of Japan and Stachus had also spent around five years in
the country at the time of starting his PhD. In terms of language proficiency, both the supervisor and student are relatively proficient speakers of Japanese in nontechnical contexts. In
the above incident, however, linguistic and cultural failings on both sides led to the confusionthat resulted.
One further factor, that of pragmatic resistance, may have complicated matters and contributed to the undesirable outcomes damaging the relationships between the interactantsand delaying the approval of the ethics committee. Ishihara (2008) defines pragmatic resistance as “deliberate avoidance of what they perceive as certain community norms that they
are aware of and linguistically capable of producing” (p. 5). Both Jim and Stachus may have52

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been more or less consciously and deliberately refusing to behave in what they perceived as aJapanese way, which they felt to be inappropriate at doctoral level. In Jim’s case, as Stachus’s
supervisor, this was manifested in his insistence on Stachus going to the office to enquire
about the ethics committee alone, when he was aware that it might be the norm for supervisors to accompany their postgraduate students, or even to go on their behalf. In Stachus’scase, he disliked the way in which he felt university office staff typically spoke to him, seeing
it as condescending or patronizing. His response, typically, was to respond frostily, hoping toconvey some kind of “Don’t try to talk down to me!” message. In both cases, Jim’s and Stachus’s intentions were open to misinterpretation. Jim’s attempt at developing his student’s
autonomy by sending him to the office may have been interpreted as laziness, ignorance, ordeliberate uncooperativeness, while Stachus may simply have come across as aloof or ungrateful. This perception towards Jim and Stachus may be based on the tendency for students
to depend on their upperclassmen to do certain things in Japan. The dependency of kouhai on
their senpai, more easily expressed in English as the dependency of underclassmen on their
upperclassmen, is common in Japan, and oftentimes expected. The office may have expected
Jim, as a superior of Stachus, to assume the main role during the submission process.

Incident 2: Help From a Senior Professor
A key interaction in the process was between the student and another professor, who had
firsthand experience and knowledge of the ethics review committee process. She helped boththe student and his supervisor through the process. She was not on this particular ethics
review committee, but had already submitted a successful application herself, which is why
Jim suggested that Stachus ask for her help. He did meet her, she looked at his preliminary
research plan and informed consent forms then printed out the completed forms from her
successful application from one month earlier. She also gave him the digital files of the completed forms.
It was at this point that the second incident occurred, in which Stachus adapted the content
of the professor’s forms, keeping the language largely the same but adding the content of
his own proposed study. Although no records of conversations concerning this incident weremade at the time, email exchanges between Stachus and that professor were kept, and thesewill be the principal source of information regarding the incident. One year later, the student
met her to have a discussion to shed light on the circumstances of the incident. The discussion was conducted by looking together through the emails that were exchanged and discussing how each party perceived the problem at the time. Specific interactions as recorded in theemail exchanges below were deemed to be the most significant.

Interaction 1.
The first interaction was reported in the following email exchange. Some parts of the emails
referred to different matters and are omitted.
Email sent by the student to the professor:
Thank you very much for your assistance with the Ethics Committee forms. I was wondering if
you could check my completed forms for any problems at your convenience before I submit themto the Ethics Committee? I would be very much obliged. I have attached the files to this email.
Professor’s reply:
I have a look at your proposal. Your research plan seem to have yet to be designed well enoughto be submitted to the ethical committee. This may be because you try to fit your research into
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Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Landmy theoretical framework. The reason why I gave you my documents is nothing but showing
you how to deal with ethical problems. The first you should do is to establish YOUR theoretical framework. Design your research in the framework and write it precisely so that the readers (non-specialists) can understand the study procedure. After establishing the plan, list up
what ethical problems your research may create. Then think how you can alleviate the problems.
Please find attached two documents with my comments inserted.
Regarding this initial interaction, she described her reaction on seeing Stachus’s researchplan that he sent her as one of “shock”. She had given him a copy of her own documents for
him to refer to only to find that he had left much of her wording intact as he inserted his own
ill-fitting plans. Behind this was the reality that the level of academic Japanese language in theprofessor’s research plan had seemed so high that Stachus felt that he would be unable to produce anything comparable correctly for his own application, which he assumed had to be submitted in Japanese. As an aspect of possible gatekeeping, Stachus assumed that the applicationneeded to be done in Japanese, in order to be viewed positively and to fit perceived expectations
that he assumed existed within the Japanese academic space. Although the ethics committee
application had just recently been established and Stachus was a pioneer, this sense of “wanting to fit in” resulted in him not asking whether the application could be submitted in English. As a result, Stachus assumed that the professor was the only person who could lead him
through the process, since the professor was a Japanese academic and had already submitted an
application. The only way he felt he could produce something approaching what was required
was to try to fit his own plan into hers, using the text from her application wherever possible.
Incidentally, due to the above language difficulties, Jim’s wife also helped with the translation process of the research plan that was finally accepted. Although she was not working at
the university and had no obligation to assist in any way, her contribution played a key role.

Interaction 2
The following discussion will consider the involvement of the supervisor following Interaction
1, in which the first Japanese draft of the research plan had been sent to the Japanese professor. Parts of the emails deemed to be important and relevant in this email exchange are provided below.
(Jim)
I have just talked briefly with [the professor]. She is concerned that you have imitated her theoretical background for her study for yours, even though it doesn’t match your own plans. I misunderstood - thought you were just using the model. Do you understand the problem, and how
to resolve it? She said you haven’t responded to her email yet - can you do that? Look forward
to talking - later today? Could you bring a copy of the documents for us to look over? When are
you free this afternoon?
(Stachus)Thanks for contacting me. I’m still working on fixing my research proposal. Initially i tried tofit my plan into hers because I thought that was the format we were supposed to write it, in
terms of the Japanese lingo. I’ve reverted it back to my original translation but it will take a bitof time, it’s still in the works - I need to get someone to check the Japanese. I was intending on
responding to her email after I finished correcting everything - I have just done that. Today is a54

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bit difficult - would Friday work? I have attached what I have completed now in this email. I can
respond to emails until then.
(Jim)
It would be worth sending a quick reply to say that you understand and are working on it. From
what I understood, it isn’t the format that’s the problem, but using the same theory / rationale asshe did. Maybe the distinction wasn’t clear to you. She was confused as to what you were doing.
She is heading to Tokyo at the weekend, maybe earlier.
(Jim’s follow-up email)
Could you send me the English version, and also [the professor’s] one if you could? I need a clear
understanding of what is needed. Also, if you can send me the version you sent to [her], it will
give me an idea of what the problem is.
(Stachus)
Please find the English version of the research plan and the original copy I sent to [the professor]
with her comments attached. The English version is not completely reflective of the new Japanese version I sent you in the previous email, as I directly added some parts in Japanese without
directly translating from English to Japanese.
(Jim)
It’s clearer to me, now. You tried to plug your plans into [hers], which are based in SLA. Do you
have someone to check your translation?
(Stachus)
I’m going to see if [another Japanese] professor can check my translation once it’s finished. I’ll
send you a draft of everything before that though.
(Jim)
Yes, asking him, or [another professor] would be a good idea. I wish I were able to help - andeven to judge how the translation looks. Will you email him?
(Stachus)
Yes, planning on asking him via email soon. Have a good night!
(Jim)
If you don’t hear from [the other professor], [my wife] could have a look at it for you. Let me know.
(Jim’s follow-up email)Have we gone through this together? We have a communication problem that we need to resolve. If you are not getting the help you need from me, you need to tell me. It looks like it refers
too much to Chandrasegaran’s paper. It’s true that it’s a replication, but the rationale is not quite
the same - what has your study got to do with the composition classroom? Even for her, the rationale of this particular study was not how to improve students’ expository writing but to see
what support strategies were employed. (True, helping improve students’ composition was thefocus of her long-term project but not of this particular study).
Looking over the communication above, it is worth considering that cultural similarity may
be just as difficult to adjust to as cultural dissimilarities (Selmer & Lauring 2009, p. 434).
Beyond a university’s international affairs center, many Japanese offices may not perceive
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Adventures of an Academic Pioneer: Getting Through the Ethics Review in a Foreign Landa need to provide other language support, since the majority of the student body consists ofJapanese students. The international student body itself may be the biggest support for theinternational students, where foreign students navigate the system together and help eachother along the way. The relationship between any student and supervisor may be seen as
its own “culture”, since their interactions form a unique relationship. Although Stachus andJim had worked together for more than two years, the adjustment to this particular “culture”
may have been just as difficult as their adjustment to the culture of a Japanese university.
Although there were similarities between their respective cultures, this may have underestimated the effort required to adjust to each other even after two years of being in a supervisor-postgraduate student relationship. This means that there were still possibilities of communication mishaps. In the incident described above, Stachus did not seek the help he felt heneeded, which was an expectation from Jim, and this did not become clear until Incident 2
with the Japanese professor.
An interview with the professor involved in Incident 2 was conducted one year later. Looking back, she felt that the incident was primarily an academic problem resulting from the
ethics review procedure being just newly established, from linguistic problems on Stachus’sside, and from some cultural problems involving the need for and presence of an ethics review
committee and education related to it. When Stachus first asked for help, even though theprofessor was not his supervisor, she said that she was very happy to help because she realized that she was probably the only faculty in the department who could offer advice on thisissue. She also believed the problems encountered could have been avoided had there beena system established to educate graduate students about ethical issues in applied linguistics
research: that if students have a clear understanding of the importance and necessity of the
ethical review process, such problems could be avoided. She also believed that the Faculty of
Humanities should be more aware of this issue, and that the Faculty should strive to establish
a better support system for graduate students. She did not think the problems were resolved
satisfactorily in this case due to the fact that Stachus has felt lost, without sufficient guidance. According to her, this may indicate something unsatisfactory in the system. However,she believed that the process that they went through was not wasted time, but actually gave
Stachus a precious opportunity to think about ethical issues and his research design as a doctoral student. She also believed that there were communication difficulties between herself,
Jim, and Stachus because she was not aware of the confusion the student was experiencing
while working on the ethics committee application. She was also not aware that the student
would face difficulties in reading the academic Japanese of her application materials. She feltthat there should have been more face-to-face discussion. She felt that, more importantly,
the underlying problem was the lack of awareness of ethical issues among both faculty andgraduate students. She pointed out that all of these incidents meant that there was a need formore education to inform students of the role of an ethics committee at the university andconcerning publishing research internationally. She also provided the student with a book toread, called Second Language Research: Methodology and Design, especially the section on ethics,
which she felt should be read by all students before writing anything. Her belief is that thiswould help the development of the ethics committee and all other postgraduate students inthe Department.
We will now go on to Stachus’s reflections after Incident 2, as recorded in an interview
conducted by another postgraduate student using questions developed by Stachus and Jim.
Stachus felt that the time taken on the entire ethics committee process far exceeded his expectations. He had expected the whole process to only take from two days to a week, whereas
the actual time spent on the process from start to finish was a total of two months. He was
not prepared for the seriousness of the process as he had thought it was going to be only a56

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formality, most likely only requiring him to get the forms signed and approved. He felt thatthe administrative office responsible for receiving the application for passing on to the ethics committee did not seem supportive. He was given the impression that the “gatekeepers”,
the ethics committee itself, was composed of the office staff he met, which was not true. It
was not until the interview one year later with the Japanese professor who had helped himthat he was told that the actual ethics committee consisted of professors who evaluated all of
the forms included in the application, not anyone in the office that accepted the documents.
This information was not clear to the student, especially when the Japanese professor had
told him that he needed to write his application in simpler layperson terms. This had led him
to assume that it was not professors in his field who would be looking at his submissions but
office staff, who may not have been able to cope with technical or academic Japanese. It also
seemed to Stachus that the office assumed that he had access to all the forms and information
he needed and should not have needed to ask for them. He also had the impression that theoffice did not expect or feel the need to deal directly with students visiting the office unaccompanied, since the office usually deals with faculty.

Stachus Looking Back
Stachus was happy to a certain degree that there was an official ethics committee to approveresearch plans since it would satisfy a likely requirement for this by journals he may submit
work to in the future. He had been unaware of this possible requirement before the process.
He described his experiences throughout the process as feeling “lost”. When he first went toseek information from the office that received submissions for the ethics committee, he did notknow that he was not talking to the right person. He was confused as to why the staff member
seemed confused, since he was under the impression that this was the job of the people in thisoffice, and they should know what to do. In fact, this one office has responsibility for various
different matters, including managing the university’s journals, coordinating volunteer activities, or dealing with extension courses, with staff assigned to a primary responsibility for one ofthese. In case of absence, however, they all cover for each other, as in this case.
At the time, Stachus described the whole ethics committee as feeling like a “roadblock”.
He felt that the difficulties, delays and obstacles experienced in submitting, then revising his
application were somehow deliberate. His feelings towards Jim as his supervisor were also
ambivalent. He felt that since Jim was also new to the process, he could not guide him adequately. At the same time, Jim, the Japanese professor, and Jim’s wife were his main comforts
and supports during the submission process. As a study on academic professions in higher
education from Singapore points out (Lee, 2003, p. 135), in each society academics hold multiple roles, from conducting research, to teaching, and to carrying out administrative or managerial duties at their universities. Jim played the main support role throughout the process
and devoted a large amount of his time to helping the student but was not able to provide theinformation or insights that Stachus needed. His main worry then had been that the process
would last too long, and that there would not be sufficient time to conduct the planned research. He felt that he had lost confidence in whether the application might be approved intime for him to conduct his research as planned. He was worried that it would affect others
who were involved, including his supervisor and another professor who had offered to help
with data collection. Stachus felt that his supervisor had devoted an enormous amount of time
to assisting him throughout the process. He also felt that his supervisor’s wife contributed a
lot of her time even though she had no obligation to help.

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Jim Looking Back
Looking back, Jim had felt out of his depth, and unable to be an adequate supervisor for Stachus through most of the process of gaining the approval of a research plan by the ethics
review committee. His written Japanese is very limited, even in comparison with Stachus,
who grew up able to read and write in Chinese and so was familiar with much of the Japanesewriting system. He also had no previous experience of ethics review committees himself, andwhile research that he had conducted did take care to obtain informed consent from student
participants, this had been done without reference to any review committee or similar. Stachus was his first doctoral student, and as supervisor he was aware that much would need
to be learned as he and Stachus proceeded. He was very grateful for the assistance given by
the Japanese professor to Stachus in guiding him and providing him with copies of her ethics
review board application documents. He was also very embarrassed to hear that Stachus hadcopied large parts of the professor’s application to use in his own, and apologized profusely tothe professor for this. She was very understanding and seemed to feel sympathy for Stachus’s
struggle to complete all the documents in, for him and for Jim, a foreign language. Although
Jim believes in theory that struggles such as those experienced through these incidents andthe overall process are an invaluable source of wisdom, in practice at the time he only felt amixture of embarrassment and frustration: with himself, with Stachus, with the office managing the ethics review documents, and with the whole process.

One Year Later…
One year later, Stachus went to the same office, spoke to the same staff, and again submitted a research plan for consideration by the ethics committee. This time he was accompanied
by Jim as his supervisor, and we were greeted by smiling staff who printed out the application form and documents that explain the process of submitting a research plan to the ethics
review committee as well as providing the digital files. This time, the documentation for theforms was provided in English, and we were able to submit the research plans in English, too.
The planned research was projected to start three months after the submission of the plan,and so we felt that we would have ample time to get through this process in time, despite
possible objections to some aspects of the plans.
In the intervening year, Jim had been involved in the translation of the ethics review documents, and had also been a member of ethics committees for two further research projects
himself. He had also developed better relationships with the office staff, meeting and talkingsocially as well as helping with proofreading of materials for various purposes. Perhaps asimportantly, he had learned a lot through the previous year’s experience of that first application with Stachus. That experience had also made both Stachus and Jim be more honest witheach other regarding areas in which they felt ill equipped or lacking in confidence. This, too,has helped create a stronger basis for working together.
One year later, Stachus felt more positive towards the office but still resented the fact thata lot of time had been wasted on the previous application. This year’s application was much
more straightforward because he knew who to talk to and had access to the documents required for submission. He also had a better idea of how long the process would take, about
two months, and so applied three months before the planned research. Stachus imagined that
other non-Japanese researchers applying in the future would have an easier experience since
many of the problems he encountered with his initial application had been resolved, and wasglad that his struggles one year earlier had not been for nothing.
One final incident occurred when the postgraduate student handed over the completed
forms and other documentation. The staff member asked in Japanese, ファイルを持っていますか –58

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Do you have the file(s)? This is a very common form of indirect request in Japanese, as in English, and the staff member was asking for the computer files for the completed documents.
Stachus’s response was almost to panic, as though the utterance had caused a flashback orsomething was blocking his understanding of the request. Straight after, talking together
about how the submission went this time, he explained that he thought that the staff member might be saying that the documents should be submitted in a plastic file, and that without
this they could not be accepted.
Although much of the process of preparing and submitting research plans for the ethics
review committee has become much easier, this little file incident is an indication of Stachus’s continuing feeling of “us vs. them” and fear of opposition and deliberate delay rather
than cooperation. His continued use of the term “roadblock” or “roadblocking” when problems with this latest application were brought to our attention by the staff of the office whichrelays applications to the ethics review committee are also indicative that not everything issettled yet. What this little incident revealed to both of us was that, although so much has
improved, perhaps most of all in the relationships among those involved, we are still learning. For this reason, we hope the Lessons for students/supervisors/administrators will help those
involved in the process.

Lessons for Students
When you are going through the process of submitting a research proposal to your university’s ethics review board or similar, expect it to be a struggle somewhere along the way. It
may feel that there are deliberate obstacles to progressing through this stage of research, but
in fact very often what may be holding you back are your hesitations to express yourself or
to ask questions. In other words, do not let the fact that you are a student, a foreigner, not afluent speaker, or relatively young keep you from asking questions you need to ask. It is truethat there may be people who will be less helpful than they could be, but it is largely up to
you to find the best way to proceed. Without communicating problems, students cannot expect others to guess what they need! When confronted with deadlines or difficulties, always
ask for help. In short: Know thyself, know what you don’t know, and ask for help! Push forhelp if you don’t get it at first. Don’t rush deadlines without asking for assistance.
Learning how to say what needs to be said is vital—this is the power of pragmatics as anenabler of agency. There are two linguistic goals here: conveying your needs or problems,and keeping a good working relationship with your supervisor and other university staff. For
example, how do you tell your supervisor that it’s his or her job to go to the office with you,or even rather than you? How do you remind him or her that the deadline is approaching fast
and that things need to be done? How do you respond to the office staff’s “The person in
charge is not here now”? How do you ask questions about the application, when those questions may show how little you know, how bad your proficiency in the language is, how naive
you are? How do you voice your fears and receive reassurances that submitting your application in English will not delay its consideration or prejudice its chances of approval? How
do you apologize when there are misunderstandings? If you are not confident about how to
express all these things best, who can you go to for help—a friend, a teacher, a parent? And
how do you ask them?
One more matter concerns time. Take your time to reflect on the best way to proceed, to inform yourself well and consider your options. But do not just hesitate and do nothing, hopingthat it will just work out. A more likely outcome of this hesitating paralysis is that you will
not finish in time, or that you won’t do as good a job as you could, and this hesitation may
cost you financially, career-wise, or in damaged relationships.
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Lessons for Supervisors
As a supervisor of postgraduate students, you will typically have reasons for proposing one
course of action rather than another. Communicate your motives behind your instructions.
For example, when sending/telling students to do things by themselves, communicate thatyou want students to develop the ability to be independent, but that you are there to help.
Supervisors also need to understand that postgraduates are not only working with a limited
set of skills, but a limited set of resources. These include ease of contact with university colleagues, and ability to make decisions. Postgraduates do not have as much access to resources, particularly authority and connections. In these two areas, supervisors must help theirstudents. As supervisors, any help they provide for their students is always helpful. In short:
Be aware of how postgraduates, because of their status, are inherently limited in what they
can do. Remember that any help is always appreciated and absolutely needed.
Is your student able to say no, or to suggest an alternative? Is he or she able to point out
your mistakes? Or to suggest that what you want them to do is really your job? If not (and if
he or she never does, that may mean they cannot), what can you do to enable them to do this?
Do you have access to important information, skills, or resources that your student does not?
Can you help with these? Find out yourself, then share that information. In your position, is“I don’t know” a good enough response?
You might have conflicting motives for how you behave: one to make your student’s lifeeasy, the other to not spare them from challenges that will help them grow. But these may
not be either/or choices but, rather, two extremes along a continuum. For example, rather than just sending your student unannounced to the office that manages the ethics review
process, you could go there first and explain the situation, ask who your student should speak
to, and when would be a good time for your student to visit. You can also explain your reasonsfor sending the student to make these enquiries, to reassure the office that you are not justbeing lazy, shirking your responsibilities, or avoiding the challenge yourself.

Lessons for Administrators
If the ethics review process is new, let the applicants know that it is. Do not try to defend
your lack of experience of the lack of information available. Do not assume that postgraduate
applicants or their supervisors understand the entire process. Be helpful and open to questions. In the case of international postgraduate applicants, try to put yourself in their shoes
and do not expect them to know everything about how things should be done. In short: Don’t
be defensive, do be understanding, and do be transparent.
Your job is not to be a gatekeeper, but to be a facilitator. Many administrators have a good
sense of these things, and even if not seeing it from the student’s perspective, aim to do what
they can to help, to communicate well, and to develop a good working relationship with theapplicants. The international graduate student’s position is precarious: they are in a positionof weakness. They are aware of this, and administrators need to be, too. For example, if they
ask a question, such as “When will he be in the office?”, please don’t take it as a complaint,even if it sounds like it. Give international students the benefit of the doubt in this regard.
If they appear to make unreasonable demands or sound bossy, the most likely reason is thatthey do not know a better way to express themselves. To help, you can initiate, offer, without
waiting to be asked.

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References
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative
research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Derounian, J. (2011). Shall we dance? The importance of staff-student relationships toundergraduate dissertation preparation. Active Learning in Higher Education, 12(2), 91-100.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787411402437
Froese, F. J., & Peltokorpi, V. (2009). Organizational expatriates and self-initiated expatriates:
Differences in cross-cultural adjustment and job satisfaction. The International Journal of
Human Resource Management, 24(10), 1953-1967. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2012.725
078
IRB medical application process. (n.d.). IRB medical application process: Research complianceoffice. Retrieved April 7, 2020, from https://researchcompliance.stanford.edu/panels/hs/
forms/for-researchers/med-application
Ishihara, N. (2008). Transforming community norms: Potential of L2 speakers’ pragmatic
resistance. Proceeding of the 2008 colloquium on applied linguistics, Temple University Japan,
1953-1967.
Lee, M. N. N. (2003). The academic profession in Malaysia and Singapore: Between bureaucratic andcorporate cultures. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Levy, P., Little, S., & Whelan, N. (2011). Perspectives on staff-student partnership in learning,
research and educational enhancement. In S. Little (Ed.), Staff-student partnerships in higher
education (pp. 1-15). London, UK: Continuum International.
MEXT (2014). Guidelines for responding to misconduct in research. https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/jinzai/fusei/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2015/07/13/1359618_01.pdf
MEXT (2015). Kenkyū kikan ni okeru kenkyū rinri kyōiku ni kansuru chōsa bunseki gyōmu. https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20200122-mxt_kouhou02-000004312_01.pdf
Selmer, J., & Lauring, J. (2009). Cultural similarity and adjustment of expatriate academics.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33, 429-436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ijintrel.2009.06.007
Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91-112. https://doi-org.eres.qnl.qa/10.1093/applin/4.2.91

Author Bios
Stachus Peter Tu is originally from Montana in the United States. He is a doctoral student
at Hiroshima Shudo University who teaches part-time at universities around Hiroshima. He
occasionally gives presentations at the English Literary Society of Japan and the Japan Association for Language Teaching. His research interests include politeness, facework, and social
media. E-mail: stachuspetertu@gmail.com  
Jim Ronald is a professor in the Department of English of the Faculty of Humanities,
Hiroshima Shudo University. He is also a teacher and supervisor for postgraduate students, including his first doctoral student, Stachus Peter Tu. He has a PhD in Vocabulary Acquisition from Swansea University, Wales. His research interests include pragmatics, learnerdevelopment, and vocabulary acquisition.  E-mail: ronald@shudo-u.ac.jp

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RESEARCH PAPER
A Student and Teacher Supervising a Student
and Teacher: Examining the Trajectory of a
TESOL Master’s Dissertation
学生として教員として指導し合う―TESOL修士論文の指導過程の検証
Theron Muller, University of Toyama
Tracy-ann Tsuruoka, University of Birmingham
This investigation presents an exploration of the process of producing a master’s dissertation leading up to submission for a degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). It uses a new literacies studies(Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 2003) inspired analysis of the dissertation supervision and supervisee experience ofnegotiating and discussing the expectations of written postgraduate work. This study employs Lillis and Curry’s(2006) “text-oriented heuristic for tracking changes across drafts” (p. 10). This tool is used to examine the writing
and revision of a master’s dissertation as negotiated between a student (Tracy) and tutor (Theron), both basedin Japan and working together through a UK university (both part-time, one for a degree, the other as an adjunct
Associate Tutor). A text trajectory of the dissertation writing process is developed, graphically representing the different dissertation versions and supervision exchanges. At the time Theron was supervising Tracy’s dissertation,
he was himself a PhD student working toward a degree with a UK university. At the same time Tracy was working
toward her master’s degree she was herself teaching English as a foreign language in Japan. How our respective
experiences as supervisor/teacher/student influenced those other domains of our practice as supervisor/teacher/
student are explored.
本論文は、TESOL（英語を母国語としない人々への英語指導の国際資格）における修士号取得へと導く論文指導過程について研究したものである。ここでは、新しいリテラシー研究（Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 2003) を活用しているのだが、それは論文の指導者と学生が互いに意見を交わし、期待されるべき質を伴った修士論文を作成する経験について分析する研究方法である。このリテラシー研究は、リリ
ースとカリーによる2006年の研究「論文の草稿の修正分析に基づく発見的方法」(10頁)を用いている。そしてこの手法を、今回、学生（トレイシー）と指導者（セロン）との間での、修士論文作成とその修正過程に援用した。両者はともに、日本に居住し、イギリスの大学を通して修士論文作成に取り組んだ。
（トレイシーは日本で英語を教えながら、遠隔教育を通じてイギリスの大学の修士学生であった。そしてセロンは
その大学の非常勤の兼任准教授であった。）修士論文作成過程におけるテキストの修正跡を図表化することで、何度も修正や変更を施した完成前の修士論文原稿や、指導の痕跡が見えてくる。セロンがトレイシーの修士論文を指導していた際には、彼自身はイギリスの大学の博士課程に在籍していた。そしてトレイシーは、日本で英語を教えながら修士号を取るために研究を行っていた。こうした背景から、個々の経験、すなわち論文指導者、教員、学生であることが、別の側面で論文指導者、教員、学生となった場合に、どのような影響を、テキストにみられる論文修正の軌跡に与えているのかについて明らかにする。

Keywords
postgraduate writing, academic literacies, text trajectory graphic, dissertation supervision, distance learning
修士論文作成、アカデミックリテラシー、テキスト修正の図表化、論文指導、遠隔教育

T

here has been, and continues to be, considerable interest in the processes of academic
knowledge acquisition and production. How knowledge is entextualized in postgraduate education through master’s dissertations (Prior, 1998) and PhD theses (Tweedie,
Clark, Johnson, & Kay, 2013) is one focus of research. Another focus is investigations into theacademic professions through examining processes of writing for academic publication (Lillis& Curry, 2010). Much of this literature takes as its starting point a conceptualization of aca-

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demic speciality as a “discipline”, with the job of the supervisor and student (or author in thecase of writing for publication) to initiate/be initiated into a given discipline’s “community ofpractice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 42).
While there are some limited investigations of students studying for their master’s degrees
via distance learning (Ross & Sheail, 2017), most investigations available explore study modes
where students are located full-time at the institution at which they are studying (such as
Dysthe, 2002 and Prior, 1998). Furthermore, many of these studies take as their starting point
assumptions about student-supervisor roles that may be limiting as they do not encompass
the full range of roles involved in the supervision process. For example, that supervisors may
be students themselves and students may also be teachers tends to not be discussed. However, in the TESOL field, part-time distance students may be employed as teachers in addition
to pursuing their studies. Further, in the case examined here, the supervisor (Theron) was
also pursuing a PhD degree as a part-time distance student at the same time as supervising apart-time distance student’s (Tracy’s) master’s dissertation. These multiple roles of supervisor and supervisee as both teacher and student present potentially interesting insights into
the overall process of master’s dissertation supervision.
We open by describing the context for the investigation before a literature review of research into writing practices, including the writing of master’s dissertations, noting whatthese studies have found and identifying some of the problematic assumptions embedded inthem. This is followed by a description of the constructivist, ethnographically informed (Williamson, 2006) methodology and methods used for the investigation presented here, which
draw particularly heavily on new literacies studies (Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 2003). Next,
the findings and discussion are presented, first through a graphical text history developed to
track the overall process of supervising Tracy’s dissertation. This is followed by a discussionof how the supervisor-supervisee relationship was negotiated in the correspondence analyzed. Implications of this investigation for studies of postgraduate writing are detailed in the
conclusion along with some implications for methods of investigating writing in postgraduate
education.

Describing the “Context” of This Investigation of a Dissertation Supervision
As is outlined in the literature review in the next section, much of the research into master’s
dissertation supervision has concerned itself with investigating students and supervisors
based at the same university full-time (such as Dysthe, 2002 and Prior, 1998). However, thereality of postgraduate education is becoming increasingly complex, and while it’s important
not to idealize a “campus imaginary” (Ross & Sheail, 2017, p. 842) around full-time, campus-based study and supervision, it is also important to consider the affordances and constraints of distance modes of study and dissertation supervision.
Specifically, with regard to this investigation, there are at least five universities involved(directly or indirectly) in Tracy’s dissertation supervision. There is the UK-based ‘degree’
university where Tracy was enrolled as a part-time postgraduate student, there is the university she was employed at and where she conducted her research or the ‘research’ university.
Further, Theron is employed as a full-time faculty member at a Japanese national university.
However, part-time he is responsible for tutoring, dissertation supervising, and marking at
the degree university and a second UK-based university. Further, at the same time as he wassupervising Tracy’s dissertation, he was himself pursuing a PhD part-time at a third UKbased university. In addition to this, Tracy is from Jamaica, which as a former UK colonial
territory, uses similar academic conventions to the UK. Theron has studied or worked in UK
higher education since 2002.
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A Student and Teacher Supervising a Student and Teacher: Examining the Trajectory of a TESOL Master’s Dissertation

Supervisor Profile: Theron
I have been based in Japan since 2000 and have been an Associate Professor at the Universityof Toyama since 2011. I graduated from the degree university with my master’s in TEFL/TESL
via distance learning in 2004 and have been working with the distance learning program
there part-time since 2005. In 2012 I enrolled in a part-time distance PhD at Open University, UK which I completed in November 2018 shortly before first-marking Tracy’s dissertation.
Between the two UK-based universities I do part-time postgraduate work for, I am responsible for about 15 students at any given time, a few of whom may be working on their dissertations. This is in addition to my responsibilities as a full-time University of Toyama faculty member. My PhD is in the writing for academic publication experiences of Japan-based
language teachers (Muller, 2018), and I felt that the methods of investigation I used for that
research would be applicable to the investigation of supervision experiences explored in thisspecial issue, which led me to approach Tracy about working together on the research described here.

Supervisee Profile: Tracy
I came to Japan in 2008 as an assistant language teacher working at public elementary andhigh schools in Yokohama, Japan. Since 2015, I have been working as an English Instructor ata private university in Tokyo, Japan (the ‘research university’). This was when I started theMasters in TESOL (the ‘degree university’) via distance learning. After completing my dissertation I graduated in July 2019. As my first degree was in the natural sciences, the dissertation
was my first attempt at a major research project in the social sciences. I found the process ofwriting up the dissertation much more enjoyable than I had originally thought it would be,
and so was very happy to be a part of this research when approached by Theron.

Literature Review of Investigations into Master’s Dissertation Supervision
As one of the primary functions of higher education is the production and dissemination ofknowledge, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is a considerable history of interest in researching its processes of knowledge production and dissemination. This includes investigating processes of publishing academic texts (Knorr-Cetina, 1980; Lillis & Curry, 2010)
and investigating postgraduate education, both for master’s (Prior, 1998) and PhD degrees(Tweedie, et al., 2013). Here we review literature that is of particular interest to the investigation, which examines the process of producing Tracy’s master’s dissertation. We characterize this literature as falling into two broad categories: new literacies studies investigations ofprocesses of text production (Lillis & Curry, 2010) and postgraduate education-focused investigations of the dissertation supervision process (Prior, 1998).
New literacies studies investigations such as those described in Lillis and Curry (2010) haveshown that published texts tend to represent a co-constructed hybrid that has been shaped bya variety of different “brokers” (Lillis & Curry, 2010, p. 93), such as editors and/or reviewers.
These brokers shape manuscripts in different, sometimes conflicting, ways. For example, they
document how following review one manuscript is changed “from contrast to confirmation”(p. 105) of a theory. Further, they note that these changes are not ‘neutral’ but rather echodisparities in the distribution of power worldwide, with scholars outside the ‘Anglophone
center’ confronted with expectations that they conform to “centrifugal” (Lillis, 2013, p. 133)
pressures to represent knowledge in certain ways. In terms of research methods, new literacies studies investigations tend toward “rich description” (Creswell & Miller, 2000, p. 128),
including the investigation of multiple versions of manuscripts and correspondence related to64

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them, such as reviewers’ reports and emails or letters between authors and editors (Lillis &Curry, 2010). Thus the focus of attention is on the process of textual production rather thananalysis of final texts alone. It is new literacies studies’ interest in processes of textual production and how the consequences of differences in power influence texts that are of particular relevance to our investigation.
The majority of investigations focusing on master’s dissertation supervision have concerned themselves with modes of postgraduate study where supervisors and students are
based full-time at the same institution. One such investigation is Prior (1998), who followed
students studying for a master’s degree in four different disciplines as they worked throughtheir coursework toward final dissertations. Similar to new literacies studies-style investigations, he examined multiple versions of manuscripts, supervisor comments on the manuscripts, and notes on graduate student seminars held as part of the students’ degree studies,along with text-focused interview data. He documents how the supervisor not only comments
on and evaluates the students’ texts, but also how these comments and evaluations represent
evaluations of the students themselves, such as whether they “could handle” (p. 59) a given
proposed research project. He characterizes “three modes of participation in graduate study:
passing, procedural display, and deep participation” (p. 59), with each mode representing
more (deep participation) or less (passing) engagement on the part of students.
Another way postgraduate study has been investigated is through the use of questionnaires
and interviews without the inclusion of samples of texts and feedback from supervisors.
Dysthe (2002) describes different approaches to the master’s supervision process at a Norwegian university, largely correlated with different departments of study, with the sciences department tending toward more normative, text-centered supervisions and humanities
toward dialogical supervisions of students’ dissertations. Ross and Sheail (2017) describe, in
an interview study with distance master’s students, how their conceptualization of a “campus imaginary” (p. 842) can hinder their progress and performance on their degrees as theytend to attribute difficulties they face to their mode of study (distance). Ross and Sheail (2017)contrast the campus imaginary with studies showing that on-campus students tend to face
the same kinds of issues described by the distance students in their study, noting that thisidealization of “being physically located at the university” (p. 840) could hinder the distancestudents’ ability to see and seek alternative solutions to the issues they face.
Our study can add further depth to the descriptions of master’s dissertation writing experiences reviewed here. Specifically, there are several assumptions that appear to underlie
investigations into master’s dissertation supervision which we hope to probe. One concernsthe ‘place’ of master’s supervisors and students at their institutions. There tends to be anassumption in the literature reviewed that supervisors are full-time, academic members of
the university faculty at which they are supervising master’s dissertations. Furthermore,
descriptions of supervisors’ and students’ experiences are relatively narrow, focusing almost
exclusively on their classroom, writing, and supervision experience to the exclusion of otheraspects of their lives, such as potential domestic obligations and other teaching obligations.
This tends to lead to representations of the supervision process as unbounded, or time constraint independent, such as Dysthe’s (2002) account of a student presenting “texts to mysupervisor every fortnight for one and a half years” (p. 527). Finally, such investigations tend
to take place in the context of programs where students take courses intended to assist themin the preparation of their dissertation plans (Prior, 1998), which means the students’ experience of dissertation writing spans a wide variety of activities, making capturing a full pictureof the complexity of their dissertation planning and writing difficult to accomplish.
Our investigation addresses the issues raised above in the following ways:
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The multiple roles that Theron and Tracy fulfill at their various institutions, and the impact these potentially have on the dissertation supervision, are made explicit in the discussion presented here.

•

Effort is made to document obligations and experiences emerging from outside the immediate focus on producing Tracy’s dissertation text that impact the process of producingthat text in various ways. Particular attention is paid to potential constraints on supervision and dissertation writing.

•

As Tracy’s supervision was completed via distance, primarily through email exchanges, amore complete picture of the overall dissertation supervision process can be examined andrepresented than that presented in the studies reviewed, as electronic communication ismore conducive to archiving and analysis than face-to-face, spoken supervisions.

Research Methodology and Methods
As our investigation of the supervision of Tracy’s dissertation is concerned with “the meanings
and experiences of human beings” (Williamson, 2006, p. 84), we take an interpretivist stance,
which holds that “people are constantly involved in interpreting their ever-changing world” (p.
84) resulting in a “social world” “constructed by people” (p. 84). These social worlds are investigated here using a new literacies studies (Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 2003) lens.
New literacies studies research explores insider perspectives regarding how texts are produced, viewing “literacy as a social practice” (Street, 2003, p. 77; 1984). In doing so, newliteracies questions paradigms that view literacy as a neutral, universally transferable skill,seeking to demonstrate the importance of context in how individuals learn about and engage
with literacy practices (Street, 2003). It is new literacies studies’ interest in examining writing for academic publication in higher education through attention to the processes underlying textual production that was of particular interest to us. New literacies studies is also compatible with an ethnographically informed perspective that seeks to take time to research andfor researchers to make the familiar more distant or different (Rampton, Tusting, Maybin,
Barwell, Creese, & Lytra, 2004), which Lillis (2008) refers to as, “making the strange familiar
and the familiar made strange” (p. 382). This can be accomplished through repeated exposure
to data and attention to insider and outsider perspectives.
With regard to the methods of the research, or how our data was collected and analyzed,
two parallel tracks were pursued. One involved producing a ‘correspondence history’ of theemail interactions between Tracy and Theron. The concept of a correspondence history isbased on Lillis and Curry’s (2006) “text history” (p. 8), which is explained in the next paragraph. As the supervision was entirely conducted via email, the correspondence data represents a complete record of the interactions between Tracy and Theron about her dissertation, including discussions of the process of planning and executing her research and writing
the dissertation manuscript. The total email correspondence, including messages from thedegree university’s administration, was about 13,000 words across 68 emails, 36 sent from
Theron, 24 from Tracy, and 8 from the degree university’s administration along with about
20 files, including (mainly) Microsoft Word documents, Google drive documents, PDF documents, and one blog post between March and November of 2018 (see Figure 1). By way ofcomparison, Tracy’s full dissertation, including all appendices and references, was just under
17,000 words, so the email correspondence, while shorter in total length, is comparable in size
to the text of her dissertation. This correspondence was arranged chronologically in a single
Google Document file that we then commented on, developing “conversational narratives”(Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 2) about the supervision process that formed the basis for the analysisof the correspondence discussed here. In total, this conversation involved 17 comment threads

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and a total of 32 comments. This correspondence was analyzed using Fairclough’s (1992)
critical discourse analysis, specifically seeking to describe the “exchange structure” (p. 153) ofour interactions, or the “recurrent patterning of the turns of different participants” (p. 153).
The intention was to give “attention to the process of text production” (Fairclough, 1995, p.
7). In addition, the correspondence was examined to determine what was important in termsof ‘uptake’ in the dissertation text, with Austin’s (1962) conception of “uptake” (p. 116) used,which refers to linking within sets of correspondence. This linking can refer to changes madeto the dissertation text and themes taken up in subsequent supervision correspondence.
In addition to examining the correspondence history between Tracy and Theron, a text history of the different versions of her dissertation manuscript and associated files, such as early
proposed tables of contents and research questionnaires, was developed, tracking the changes
made to the files associated with her dissertation and when. This data and the correspondence
history was incorporated into the graphic representation of the trajectory of her dissertation (see Figure 1 below). Lillis and Curry (2010) describe text histories as “a key unit of datacollection and analysis” (p. 4) that facilitates “exploring the trajectories of texts” (p. 4) andwhich can be used to construct a picture of a text’s trajectory and the changes made to it overtime. While the text history as an investigative tool was originally developed for research intowriting for publication, as a research instrument it is applied here to investigate the processof producing Tracy’s dissertation.

Findings and Discussion
This section opens with presentation and discussion of the text trajectory graphic developed
to represent the overall process of producing Tracy’s dissertation. This is followed by a discussion of the critical discourse analysis of the correspondence between Tracy and Theron
about writing her dissertation. All of our correspondence was in English and the extract examples included are verbatim reproductions of the original.

Dissertation Text Trajectory Graphic
The text trajectory graphic developed for Tracy’s master’s dissertation is shown in Figure 1. Inorder to accommodate printing the figure in the space available, the representation of Tracy’s
dissertation’s text trajectory graphic has been split into two parts, the first on the top spanning from March to October 2018 and the second on the bottom from October to November
2018. However, this division is arbitrary; the figure should be seen as representing a continuous
trajectory rather than a trajectory divided into two different functional ‘parts’. The arrow at the
top of both parts of the figure maps her dissertation’s timeline, noting the dates of each of thedifferent exchanges we had. The arrow immediately under that arrow in the bottom half of the
figure documents the total number of changes between Versions 1 of her dissertation (for eachof the different parts of the dissertation she sent) and its final version, quantifying the total
number of changes to the overall text between the first versions of chapters sent for commentand their final versions submitted for evaluation to the degree university. The solid rectangular boxes summarize each of the different exchanges regarding Tracy’s dissertation during thesupervision process. Where appropriate, the white rectangular boxes summarize the contents ofthe exchanges and their outcomes, such as the number of changes tracked in files returned toTracy and Theron’s evaluations of different parts of her dissertation. Finally, the arrows at thebottom of the figure document commitments and developments in our lives outside of Tracy’s
dissertation, with Tracy represented in the top blue arrows and Theron in the bottom green
arrows. These elements were included to help illustrate how, while our focus of analysis is the
production of Tracy’s dissertation, neither Tracy nor Theron were 100% engaged in the superLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

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A Student and Teacher Supervising a Student and Teacher: Examining the Trajectory of a TESOL Master’s Dissertation

Figure 1. Text trajectory graphic for Tracy’s master’s dissertation.

vision of her dissertation throughout the period documented in the trajectory graphic. Rather,
we were both moving between working on her dissertation and other professional and personalcommitments that potentially influenced our interactions in complex ways.
In total, the text trajectory graphic documents 15 different thematic exchanges between
Tracy and Theron regarding her dissertation. In addition to these exchanges between Tracy
and Theron, there are four administrative messages sent from the degree university.
One lens through which to examine the dissertation trajectory is the degree university’s
official representation of the responsibilities of master’s dissertation supervisors, which proposes a supervision “schedule” of “a minimum of six substantial contacts/communications”
that “should represent a major element of the dissertation, and will usually include sending
drafts of substantial sections of work, e.g., a chapter, possibly annotated with queries in themargins for your supervisor to answer. It will also include queries on other matters such as
how to design data collection instruments, organize a report of data, suggestions for further

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reading” (Document 2019-5-28-1, p. 12). While the definition of a ‘substantial contact’ is open
for interpretation, in the case of the 15 exchanges between Tracy and Theron, there are perhaps
eight that would qualify as such; the initial two in April where Theron responds to her proposal and then to her questionnaire, the exchange in May surrounding gaining institutional ethics
approval from the degree university, then the five exchanges between October 1 and 29 where
different samples of Tracy’s writing are exchanged and commented on. Of the remaining six
less substantial exchanges, there is the exchange about Tracy’s revised questionnaire May 7 to
11, a brief discussion of a ‘pilot’ and the need for Tracy to care for her mother following a surgery that leads to her requesting and receiving a deadline extension between June and July (2exchanges), the ‘checking in’ exchange in September following Tracy’s mother’s surgery, tworelatively brief exchanges in November about the contents of her appendices and confirming
submission of her dissertation, and then finally an exchange on November 21 following thecompletion of marking and the announcement of the provisional results of Tracy’s dissertation from the degree university administration which leads to a final exchange between Tracy
and Theron. While the process of producing this article is not a focus of analysis, as Tracy andTheron were discussing whether to submit a proposal to this special issue at the same time that
she was working on her dissertation, and our working together on this investigation is integrally tied to our having worked together on her dissertation, when Theron approached her
about this project in her dissertation trajectory is also documented (October 30).
Finally, regarding developments in our personal lives, Tracy’s caring for her mother following surgery and moving into self-employment are documented in the first arrows at thebottom of the two parts of the figure. Theron’s responsibilities as an adjunct Associate Tutor
on the two UK universities’ distance master’s programs are documented next. The next two
arrows document various additional responsibilities that demanded Theron’s time and attention during Tracy’s dissertation supervision. These include PhD supervisions and other commitments as a postgraduate student, professional responsibilities such as conference chairing
and attendance, and developments in his personal life, such as his grandmother passing in
the US while he was traveling to the UK for his viva.
The dissertation trajectory presented in Figure 1 evidences the amount of work that went
into the supervision of Tracy’s dissertation, in terms of the work of producing the text andthe correspondence work underlying that textual production, which involved framing the research and methods for the dissertation and interactions with the degree university to secure
permission for the research project and a deadline extension. In terms of the timeline of Tracy’s dissertation, Figure 1 illustrates that much of the work of setting up the methods of research for Tracy’s dissertation investigation occurred early in the supervision process between
April and May. This includes designing the questionnaire used and securing the necessary
institutional permissions to conduct the research. The majority of the writing and revising ofher dissertation text and the correspondence associated with that occurred quite late in the
supervision schedule, exclusively in October with a few minor exceptions concerning responses to specific queries in November. This is in part attributable to the degree university’s policy
regarding dissertation supervision, which states that “Supervisors are under no obligation to
give feedback on drafts or queries received after the end of less than three weeks before thesubmission date” (Document 2019-5-28-1, p. 12), a policy Theron raised with Tracy directly in a September 17 email, and which Tracy noted provided “a really strong motivator andhelped me to finish even more quickly than I would have normally” “because I work wellwith deadlines” (May 14 2019 Comment). This evidences a potential constraint on dissertation
supervision not previously explored in the literature reviewed earlier; the limitations placedon the supervision relationship by institutional policies and deadlines which can shape whenand how much feedback students receive. This issue is returned to in our conclusion.
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Negotiating the Supervisor-Supervisee RelationshipThe dissertation interactions tracked in Figure 1 suggest a clear “exchange structure” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 153) to the correspondence, with Tracy initiating contact in a relatively shortmessage with a specific query or request that is subsequently followed up in a longer response
from Theron answering the question asked and/or responding to the query, generally with apedagogical expansion on his answer beyond the immediate question asked (an example isincluded below). In cases where this includes Tracy submitting a file for comment, this fileis invariably modified by Theron with the changes tracked and returned to Tracy along witha substantial email reply. In all of the interactions represented in Figure 1, Theron’s total
message word count is greater than Tracy’s, and is often close to or more than double thetotal length of her messages. This is perhaps unsurprising given the pedagogic nature of thesupervisor-supervisee relationship but is, to our knowledge, evidenced using empirical data
here for the first time.
Next, we consider three different themes addressed in the supervision discourse. The mostprominent concerns the production of Tracy’s dissertation text, including more general discussion of how to demonstrate “criticality” (Theron October 14 Email) in her writing andquestions about what Tracy “can” (Tracy October 13 Email) write where in her dissertation
text. The other two themes concern issues of doing formal dissertation research for a degree
through a university and social interactions between individuals. Borrowing broadly from
Habermas (1984) generally, and Mishler (1981) and Barry, Stevenson, Britten, Barber, andBradley (2001) more specifically, the former involves “system” (Barry, et al., 2001, p. 488)
discourse and the latter “lifeworld” (p. 487) interactions. These lifeworld interactions areconstrained by the ‘system’ supervisor-supervisee relationship in important ways that are
discussed below.

Production of the Dissertation Text
The broad theme concerning the production of Tracy’s dissertation generally arose throughquestions regarding how to handle information or data. For example, in an October 13 email
Tracy wrote, in part:For the questionnaire I gave to the teachers, the last question asked them to write any
comments that they had about L1 use in the L2 classroom [...] If I would like to use anyof their comments, can it only go in the results section?
These questions, when they appeared in the correspondence, tended to be answered by
Theron in his follow-up correspondence (as opposed to moving the discussion into the text ofa draft). For example, Theron responded to Tracy’s above query with the following:
It would be fine to include extracts from their responses in your results and your discussion sections. I would recommend making sure you explain how you analyzed/coded these responses; in your thesis you want to demonstrate that you’ve done more thango through the responses and pick the ones that are interesting to you. For example …
[approx. 200 words omitted]
The pedagogical nature of the supervisor-supervisee relationship comes through in analyzing Theron’s response, as he both answers Tracy’s direct question (include extracts [...]
in your results and your discussion sections) and provides recommendations about how to do
this that represent more than a direct answer to Tracy’s immediate question (I would rec-70

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ommend [...] interesting to you), including some sample hypothetical analysis text (omitted
above). While Tracy’s question raises concerns about where in her dissertation she should
include sample open-ended responses from her questionnaire data, Theron’s answer addresses both the question of where to include those extracts and how to demonstrate to her readers
the systematicity of her research in choosing those extracts for inclusion from her wider data.
An example of how she applied this advice in the text of her dissertation follows:
In response to the frequency with which the L1 should be used, only 2 teachers out of
36 said never [...] One of the teacher respondents who thought L1 should never be used
(Teacher 008) commented that [...] The other teacher who thought the L1 should never
be used commented that [...]In the above extract, the boldface text shows Tracy’s attention to signalling the extent ofcoverage of her respondent’s answers in her data, in this case evidencing how she has shared
the perspectives of both of the two teachers who answered a certain way on a certain item inher questionnaire.
Commenting on the relationship more broadly, Tracy recalls being unsure about whether
this was the kind of topic that Theron, as dissertation supervisor, could or should comment
on. Specifically, she recounts being worried about how “silly” (Personal correspondence,
2019-9-22) the question may have appeared. From a supervisor perspective, Theron feels thisis precisely the kind of question a student should ask in regard to their dissertation text; how
and where to include primary data, and how to demonstrate criticality and attention to detailin analysis.

System Discourse
While Barry, et al. (2001) analyze doctor-patient medical discourse, their explanation andrepresentation of ‘system’ discourse is a useful one to characterize the second theme addressed in the dissertation correspondence. This concerned the technical aspects of doing
dissertation research for a degree with a university. Barry, et al. explain system discourse as“action oriented to success and the ends are defined by technical, not moral considerations”(p. 488). System discourse arises in the correspondence regarding deadlines, ethical approval, and how many versions of dissertation chapters can be submitted for feedback. While thistheme is considerably less frequent in the correspondence than the themes concerning production of Tracy’s dissertation text, it is nevertheless an important part of our interactions
representing dissertation supervision, as opposed to writing support more generally. Here we
discuss the ethical approval process in more detail.
This is first raised by Theron in a reply to Tracy’s sending her “questionnaire that I am
thinking of using” (Tracy April 26 email) which she wanted to submit to the research university for approval “as soon as possible” (Tracy April 18 email). Theron replied:
Before you collect any data, though, you also need to complete the [degree university]’s
ethical approval process. I would recommend getting started on that right away since
you’re in a hurry to administer your questionnaire. (April 27 email)In later correspondence Tracy mentions difficulties in accessing the necessary ethical approval forms through the degree university’s website and that her research university granted“permission for me to give the questionnaire to my students” (May 23 email), noting, “Thisis extremely good news so I can go full steam ahead.” Theron provides links, documents, andLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 2020

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forwarded messages from the degree university about its ethics approval process, cautioning
Tracy to “wait for approval from the [degree university] before” (May 26) collecting any data.
These interactions represent an explicit ‘system’ constraint on the dissertation supervision
process because the degree university’s policy that all dissertation research involving humansubjects must receive pre-approval from its ethics review board before any data is collected
was of considerable concern to Theron, as failing to follow this policy could compromise theentire dissertation. There is moral and ethical reasoning behind these requirements. However, this represents a ‘system’ action because whether Tracy received approval from the degree
university’s ethics review board before collecting data is a technical consideration. If she collected data before approval was received, regardless of whether it was collected ethically andwhether the research institution granted permission to do the research, Tracy would not havebeen able to use it for her dissertation.
As a first-time dissertation student, Tracy was not necessarily aware of what the system
requirements at the degree university were or what the potential consequences of not following those requirements would be. Further, as a teacher Tracy was interested in collecting dataaccording to a timeline compatible with the semester system in Japan and was conscious thatmissing this critical timing could have affected the timeline for her dissertation submission
and graduation. Thus from her perspective, looking back on the dissertation supervision process, this was one point where she was particularly reliant on Theron as her supervisor to guideher through the process. She also feels that the institutional communications from the degree
university regarding expectations about official processes such as ethical approval were notnecessarily transparent. This made Theron as her supervisor particularly important as a mediator of institutional requirements at key points during her supervision. As a supervisor, Theron
had been through the process with multiple students and was familiar with the requirements.
He felt it important to clearly communicate them so Tracy’s dissertation would not be adversely affected. Ethical approval for research as part of the dissertation supervision process is not atheme raised in the literature reviewed earlier, illustrating a further contribution our investigation can offer to current understanding of master’s student dissertation supervision.

Lifeworld Discourse
The ‘lifeworld’ refers to “contextually-grounded experiences of events and problems in[one’s] life” (Barry, et al., 2001, p. 487). These interactions between Tracy and Theron werethe least frequent in the data, which is perhaps emblematic of the system-oriented supervisor-supervisee relationship. Further, when they arose in the discourse, this tended to be in
relationship to the impact they would have on Tracy’s dissertation submission timeline. The
primary instance of this was her mentioning her mother’s surgery, for which Tracy would“fly home” and following which she expressed a desire to “be with her mentally - not worrying about the dissertation” (June 5 Email). This ultimately led to Tracy successfully applying for a deadline extension due to the interruption this life event caused in her dissertation
timeline.
Tracy’s mention of the lifeworld requirement to care for her mother is particularly tellingin light of the lack of that kind of discourse in Theron’s correspondence with Tracy; while heacknowledges her lifeworld correspondence, writing that the timeline Tracy proposes “sounds
fine to me,” adding “I hope everything goes well with your mother’s surgery” (Theron June
5 Email), he doesn’t raise lifeworld issues or topics of his own. The reasoning behind this is
likely complex and involves a variety of potential causes, including the fact that Tracy as a
student is required to justify delays in her progress on her dissertation while Theron, as supervisor, is perhaps (implicitly) not required to or expected to justify delays in responding.

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Additionally, as an adjunct, Theron may be particularly vulnerable to the consequences ofnegative student feedback being passed on to the degree university, leading to caution in how
much he reveals to students about his private life. This has been raised as an issue explicitly by the UK universities he works for in the past, and so was something he was particularly
conscious of at the time. Further, there is Theron’s own experience as a PhD student, where
his supervisors frequently cited being extremely busy when he sent correspondence, an experience which may have made him more conscious of the message such communications
might send to the distance students he interacts with. Finally, there is the issue of how muchof a lifeworld connection it is appropriate for a supervisor and supervisee to seek to establish
over the course of a dissertation supervision. For example, as a teacher, Tracy notes not sharing her mother’s situation with her students. However, as a supervisee, she was obligated toshare this information with Theron. Similarly, Theron shared the fact that his grandmotherhad passed away with his PhD supervisors but did not share this information with his students at the time, including Tracy as his supervisee. There are perhaps also cultural issues
at play as well here in regard to what is appropriate and expected for teachers and students
to share with one another which are likely dependent on a variety of personal preferences
and social conventions. Examining the supervision discourse, the fact remains that Theron’s
grandmother’s passing, his travel to the UK for his PhD viva, and the variety of other life
events and professional obligations tracked in Figure 1 are largely absent from the correspondence. When reasons for delays in his returning feedback are offered, these are almost always
attributed to other adjunct work duties, such as, “I’m still working through the [master’s]
marking I need to do before I can get to your work” (Theron Oct 6 Email) and “I have anotherstudent ahead of you in my queue but will try to respond before the end of the coming week”(Theron Oct 21 Email). However, reasons for delays aren’t always given, such as one responsethat reads, in full, “I wanted to let you know I received your message. I’ll aim to reply in detail sometime next week, hopefully” (Theron Oct 12 Email), sent in response to a Friday email
received from Tracy. These lifeworld interactions are not discussed in relation to the master’s
supervision process in the literature reviewed, and perhaps represent one of the constraints ofa system-oriented supervisor-supervisee relationship on the supervision correspondence.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we have presented a complete graphical representation of Tracy’s dissertation supervision in Figure 1, documenting the work underlying the production of her text, in
terms of correspondence and in terms of writing and revision of her dissertation text. The“exchange structure” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 153) embedded in this correspondence was analyzed next, in terms of its focus on the text of her dissertation, on the system elements ofdoing a dissertation for a degree, and on the elements of the lifeworld that came through inthe correspondence. Our ethnographically informed perspective toward our research involving
repeated exposure to our data facilitated the documentation of a number of issues that were
not raised in the literature reviewed. One concerns the bounded, constrained nature of Tracy’s
dissertation supervision; the literature reviewed tends to represent the production of a master’s dissertation as an open-ended, exploratory process. However, in this case, the focus wasvery much on the goal of completing the dissertation throughout the correspondence, including system-oriented correspondence specifically related to aspects of completing university
master’s degree study. The multiple roles that Theron in particular was filling at the sametime as he was supervising Tracy’s dissertation appear to have influenced his interactions
with Tracy in complex ways, such as by restricting the lifeworld information he shared in thecorrespondence. In contrast, Tracy shared lifeworld information but only in contexts where it
immediately impacted the timeline of her dissertation, such as with her mother’s surgery.
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Our analysis shows that the process of supervising Tracy’s dissertation shaped her dissertation text in important ways that an analysis of the final text alone would not necessarily beable to identify or explore. This illustrates the usefulness of a new literacies studies lens in
examining the production of master’s dissertation texts. As the focus of our analysis included
the process of producing Tracy’s dissertation and the correspondence underlying that process,how her dissertation text was shaped by that process was only given limited attention. Thereis considerable potential for future research to examine how the correspondence between
supervisor and supervisee and rounds of feedback on versions of dissertation text shape thefinal dissertation submitted for evaluation.

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Ross, J., & Sheail, P. (2017). The ‘campus imaginary’: online students’ experience of themasters dissertation at a distance. Teaching in Higher Education, 22(7), 839–854. https://doi.
org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1319809
Street, B. V. (2003). What’s “new” in New Literacy Studies? Critical approaches to literacy intheory and practice. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 5(2), 77–91.
Tweedie, M. G., Clark, S., Johnson, R. C., & Kay, D. W. (2013). The “dissertation marathon” indoctoral distance education. Distance Education, 34(3), 379–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/015
87919.2013.835778
Williamson, K. (2006). Research in constructivist frameworks using ethnographic techniques.
Library Trends, 55(1), 83–101. http://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2006.0054

Author Bios
Theron Muller is an Associate Professor at the University of Toyama, Japan. He is lead editor
on two book projects, Innovating EFL Teaching in Asia (2012) and Exploring EFL Fluency in Asia
(2014), both with Palgrave Macmillan. He received his PhD from Open University in 2018, research that explored the publication practices of Japan-based language teachers. He is activewith JALT Publications and a member of English Scholars Beyond Borders.
Tracy-ann Tsuruoka has been an English teacher in Japan for over 12 years. She recently graduated from the University of Birmingham with a Masters in TESOL. Her dissertation
examined teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about the role of the L1 in the L2 classroom. She isa member of JALT and formerly the Membership Chair for the JALT- Teacher Development
Special Interest Group.

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BOOK REVIEW
Review of “Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectivesof International Students and Their Supervisors” by Nigel
Harwood and Bojana Petrić, 2016, Taylor & Francis Group(Print ISBN: 9781138929807, Ebook ISBN: 9781317398653)
Jang Yuan Chao, University of SheffieldIn this book, Harwood and Petrić share their findings
from a study of the discourse between master supervisors and supervisees from four different departmentsin the social sciences and humanities faculty at a UK research-intensive university. The authors’ motivation for
the research was threefold: a desire to share their personal
experiences supervising international master’s students;
to explore an increasingly important educational context in which there has been insufficient research; and to
propose research-based interventions to improve supervisory pedagogy. The focus of the authors’ study is precisely
what the title indicates: international master’s students.
But this book is valuable for supervisors and supervisees, regardless of their ethnicity and the context of theirrelationship. It is shocking that there has been so little
research on this educational context, considering the factthat the supervision of postgraduate students is one of thecore responsibilities of academics and a measure of academic outcomes. By revealing the discourse and dynamics
that occur within the supervisory relationship, the authors
challenge both parties to take a step back and think twice
before assuming that the other is to blame for any failure or shortcomings in the academic
research experience.
Both authors are highly involved in the learning and teaching of international higher education students for whom English is a second language. Their extensive experience working
with students learning and using English as a second language, and researching about thembrings relevance to the work they are describing in this book. As a reader and an international doctoral student, I can identify with many parts of the participants’ experiences and theseremind me that I am not alone in what I went through and am going through now.
An initial chapter in the book is dedicated to explaining the methodology of their study
which was highly informative and well-explained. Harwood and Petrić adopted a multiple
longitudinal case study approach, with each “case” being one supervisee or supervisory dyad.
The authors define their study as “longitudinal”, but in fact the duration of each case wasonly five or six months, the time typically taken to complete the research and dissertation
writing required at the four research sites. For each case, the authors analyse the stages of the76

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Jang Yuan Chaosupervisory journey in detail, from the development of the students’ proposals to determining research questions and submission of their final dissertation. The authors used multiple
methods, i.e., semi-structured interviews, diary/log entries and supervisors’ think-aloud tocollect data from ten supervisees and four supervisors.
Five “richest cases” (p. 32) are featured in this book. Two out of the cases were from SouthAsia, while the rest of the participants came from Eastern Europe, the Americas, and East
Asia. The criteria for the choice of those five “richest cases” are not explicitly described in thebook. However, I could relate with some of the experiences recounted by all five participants,
such as needing more guidance in starting an assignment, which shows that some learning
experiences need not be confined to different ethnicities and cultural background. In particular, I could specifically relate quite closely to Janet’s story because I had similar problems when
I was doing my master studies. Like Janet, I initially expected that my supervisor would giveme clear instructions and that I would have frequent opportunities for consultation. This may
be a common cultural misunderstanding for students, like Janet and me, who come from East
Asia. Reading about the frustration Janet experienced was a déjà-vu moment for me, it was
bitter but definitely there is a sweet endnote to this experience as I have grown to understandand appreciate the merits of a more autonomous way of learning.
There are several conclusions that are put forward in this book. Ultimately, the authors
believe that the supervisory experience could be improved upon and they list several points
for supervisors to consider when planning supervision. One point where I would absolutely
agree with the authors would be that the supervisory journey is filled with a range of profound emotions. The study recognises the importance of managing emotions of supervisees
for successful outcomes of the supervisory journey. Another important aspect is seen in Jay /Billy and Clara’s story - the issue of the lack of alignment of supervisor’s expertise and supervisees’ projects. However, the researchers concluded that even if such misalignment canbe lessened or avoided, it appears that each party would still have divergent ideas on supervisory roles (p. 198). Hence, it seems at the end of the day, successful supervision is a balance
between “supervisor and supervisee pedagogies and preferences” (p. 198).
One of the main strengths of the book for me was the way in which it is written. The findings are written in a very readable narrative style, making comparisons between case studies
with the primary objective of identifying “common and disparate themes and patterns acrosssupervisory journeys” (p. 25). What makes it particularly appealing is the authors’ comments
and observations provided at the introduction of each case study for each participant featured
in the book. Though they appear trivial, these personal notes are crucial for helping readers
make sense of the findings described and concluded. The writing style intrigued my naturalinquisitiveness and kept me moving from case to case. I enjoyed it so much that I forgot that
I was reading the findings of a research study. The description of the emotions as experienced
by the participants hit a raw nerve in me. In particularly, I could relate to Laura’s accountof dropping by her supervisor’s office without any clear purpose or goal. Similar to Laura, I
would doubt myself and make many “spur of the moment” decisions and scheduled meetings
aimlessly with my supervisor just to chat in the hope of gaining some assurance and direction. It was my supervisor’s firm but gentle approach and clearly articulated feedback on all
my writing assignments that eventually built my confidence in my learning journey.
There are weaknesses in this book too, however. I would have liked to have read about otherpossible influencing factors, such as gender in relation to the discourse of a supervision relationship (Smeby, 2000). Besides, the title states, “Perspectives of…and their supervisors”
and yet the supervisors’ perspectives were addressed only via a concluding interview, which I
thought was insufficient. Though the authors explained that it was due to many supervisors’
reluctance to participate in their study that made them reduce the number of interviews, it
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Book Review: “Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectives of International Students and Their Supervisors”

does not justify a deflection from an emphasis on the importance of their accounts. I thinka lack of representation of the supervisor’s point of view can make the study appear to haveplaced all responsibilities for improving the learning and supervisory experience solely on the
supervisor alone, making the power relations between the supervisor-supervisee one that is
asymmetric. Overall, I should think the research described in this book is only the beginningof more studies to come.
Nonetheless, this book is worth reading for everyone involved in a supervisory experience atthe postgraduate level because it raises pertinent issues and serves as a launchpad to a better
understanding of this important educational practice. Harwood and Petrić’s work brings hopeto the possibility that, ultimately, the supervisory experience is changeable and that supervisors and programme policymakers can change the circumstances of supervision to ensure
clarity and satisfaction for both supervisor and supervisee. Although supervisory discourse
occurs in various forms and, hence, the findings cannot and should not be readily generalised,
their work addresses genuine issues and serves to illuminate new possible directions for supervisors, supervisees, and the higher education programme policymakers to better manage
this highly complex academic relationship.

Reference
Smeby, J. (2000). Same-gender relationships in graduate supervision. Higher Education, 40(1),52-67. doi:10.1023/A:1004040911469

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COMMENTARY
Reflecting on the Supervision Process acrossDiverse Contexts and in Our Own
Alison Stewart with Mao Goto and Zhou Xiaotong, Gakushuin University

I

have been supervising master’s degree students at Gakushuin University in Tokyo for the
past eight years. Reading through the five research articles that are featured in this special issue of the Learner Development Journal, “Exploring the Supervision Process AcrossDiverse Contexts: Collaborative Approaches”, I find a great deal that resonates with my own
situation, as well as much that prompts me to question and review my own context and thepractices that I have come to adopt within it. The articles by Crawley and O’Brien, Tu andRonald, Hyatt and Hayes, Muller and Tsuruoka, and Ikeda and Shiba report on extremely
diverse contexts and all of them offer new perspectives and insights on postgraduate supervision. Common themes that emerge across all five include the roles and identity of the supervisor/supervisee, the power dynamic in that relationship, and on communication and miscommunication. In this final article in the issue, I would like to offer some further reflection
on these issues and on the puzzles and conundrums they pose in my own context.
To explore these themes, I invited Mao Goto and Zhou Xiaotong, my two master’s students
who graduated last March, to an online discussion. Mao and Zhou came to Gakushuin University having completed first degrees at other universities: Mao from a private university
in Tokyo, and Zhou from an English-medium university in Guangdong, where she majoredin international business. Mao was interested in Content and Language Integrated Learning(CLIL), and she conducted an interview study to examine CLIL teachers’ beliefs about this approach. Zhou wrote her master’s thesis on translanguaging and identity among multilingual
students in Japan. In addition to supervising their master’s theses, I was closely involved invarious other academic activities that Zhou and Mao undertook: Zhou wrote up a pilot study
on translanguaging practices of Chinese students at the university, which was published in
the university’s Faculty of Humanities research bulletin (Zhou, 2019). Zhou and Mao alsopresented their research at the department’s annual formal presentation day and at the Japan
Association of Language Teaching (JALT) Graduate Student Showcase.
It had been six months since I last saw Mao and Zhou. Although their graduation ceremony at the end of March 2020 had been cancelled, we celebrated by taking photographs aroundthe campus, and then I took them out to tea at a nearby café. When I emailed Mao and Zhou
at the end of August to inquire if they would be interested in discussing the supervision process, both of them agreed instantly to the request, so I sent them short summaries of the fivearticles and set up a Zoom meeting. I also sent them questions, based on those formulatedby Crawley and O’Brien, regarding language issues, power, feedback, and culture, and invited them to contribute questions of their own. Zhou sent back questions about the difference
between Ph.D. and Master’s, whether I had supervised Chinese students in the past, andwhether Chinese students were different from my expectation, and whether I had a “vision”
of being a supervisor. Mao did not send any questions, but she was keen to respond to thequestions already posed and to raise new questions as they occurred to her during the disLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 4 • December 202079

Reflecting on the Supervision Process Across Diverse Contexts and in Our Own

cussion. After chatting about our lives during the pandemic for half an hour, we started our
discussion, which was recorded on Zoom and Quick Time Player. The following commentaryon the prominent themes raised by the articles in this issue draws on our discussion and on
my subsequent reflections.

Roles and Identities
On reading through the articles in this issue, it struck me how three of the five (Crawley andO’Brien, Tu and Ronald, Ikeda and Shiba) describe the experiences of supervisors who were
new to the role. Dai O’Brien, as a deaf person, and Jim Ronald and Ken Ikeda as non-Japaneseworking in Japan came to their experience from cultural backgrounds that differ from that of
their current institutional context. As newcomers to the role, these supervisors were obliged
to pay particular attention to the expectations of the institution and the needs of their supervisees. In addition, their newness had the effect of reducing to some extent the power gap
between them and their students. In each of these three cases, we see the supervisor learn,
adapt and change as a result of the process. In Hyatt and Hayes’ account a similar kind oflevelling occurs; through the students’ initiative in forming a scholarship group, the supervisor David Hyatt comes to put into practice his ideals of a “decentered pedagogy”. The successof the group depends on his and the supervisees’ repositioning and consequent empowermentof the supervisees. By contrast, Muller and Tsuruoka’s article investigates a supervision practice that is quite well established. Theron Muller has been conducting online supervision ofmaster’s dissertations for several years and continues to oversee large numbers of supervisees(this on top of his full-time job at a Japanese university). Time—in terms of how much wehave accrued in supervising postgraduate students, or how little we have to spare in our busy
lives—may be a key factor in the hardening of roles and, indeed, in a tendency for supervisors
to avoid opening themselves up to change.
Reflecting on the roles and identities that my supervisees and I brought to the supervision
process, whilst I like to imagine that I am flexible and open to change, I can also see thatmany of my expectations and beliefs are fairly fixed. Coming from a different cultural background from that of most of my colleagues, I feel that it is incumbent on me to adapt to their
expectations and practices, at least to some extent. Nevertheless, I realise that my beliefs andpractices as a supervisor are to a large extent based on my own “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975) as a master’s and doctoral student at universities in the United Kingdom.
Our personal biographies can colour our expectations and lead to blind spots, but they can, if
we are open to the possibility, also provide opportunities for understanding supervisees better. Ikeda’s moving account of the silencing of his father, a Japanese immigrant to the United States, comes in response to his supervisee’s intense feelings of discomfort as a returnee
to Japan, who felt stigmatised because her English accent stood out from that of her peers.
Working together on their narrative inquiry turns out to be an occasion for reciprocal learning: Shiba is able to gain a new perspective on her voice, while Ikeda gains an appreciation of
students’ sensitivity and the potential for supervisors to unthinkingly inflict pain.
From the questions that Zhou sent me prior to our discussion, it is clear that identity matters to her too. Initially, I did not realise that her questions could have been motivated by her
personal interests. Accordingly, my answer to her question about the difference between a
Ph.D. and a master’s degree was based on my previous short experience of supervising a doctoral student, who dropped out when he was unable to balance this work with job and family
commitments. I also took the opportunity to observe that patronage was more important thancompleting a Ph.D. in the traditional academic career path in Japan. Only then did it occur tome that Zhou and Mao might have been thinking of embarking on a Ph.D. themselves. When

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Alison Stewart with Mao Goto & Zhou Xiaotong

I asked them if that was the case, both demurred: Mao said that she lacked “readiness”, while
Zhou, who felt that her master’s research was too short and too rushed to allow her to do justice to her topic, commented that the thought was “attractive, but I don’t have enough level”. Did I discourage these students by ignoring the possibility, until too late, that they might
have imagined this identity for themselves?
Zhou’s question to me about my expectations of Chinese students similarly brings identity to the fore. In our discussion, I claimed that Zhou’s identity as a Chinese in a Japanese
university did not affect my expectations of her and that during the supervision process I
viewed her as no different from her Japanese peers. Recently, there has been a marked increase in international students in Japanese higher education, with the majority coming from
China. However, that is not the case in our department; Zhou is the first Chinese student,
to my knowledge, to complete a master’s degree. Working in a tight-knit group of graduate
students in the English department, Zhou appeared to me to have integrated very successfully. On reflection, however, I can see that I was conscious of her Chinese identity. Partly, thiswas because Chinese identity was something she brought to her research, conducting studies
on firstly Chinese and then other transnational students. But Zhou also evinced a particular interest in the publications of Li Wei, primarily, of course, because of his defining workon translanguaging, but perhaps also because he is Chinese. In recent years, I have become
interested in identity as recognition (Stewart, 2020), which leads me to reflect now whether Zhou felt that I had acknowledged her Chinese identity sufficiently during the process.
Highlighting a difference from the rest of the graduate students could have been construed as
exclusion or prejudice, feelings that are clearly felt painfully by Ikeda and Shiba. The balance
between recognition and mis- or non-recognition is clearly a fine one.

Power
Issues of power and hierarchy are a key concern to all the authors in this issue. As Hyatt andHayes observe, “the very terms ‘supervisor’ and ‘doctoral [/master’s] student’ or ‘supervisee’
are ones which construct subject positions for both parties” (this issue, p. 21). Nevertheless,this institutional positioning can be interrogated and re-negotiated. Power can be made explicit by analysing interaction between supervisor and supervisee (Muller and Tsuruoka), byclarifying and defining the respective roles in the supervision process (Crawley and O’Brien)
and in the institution more generally (Tu and Ronald), by being mindful of the potentiallyharmful effects of power (Ikeda and Shiba), and by changing the power dynamic in the supervisor-supervisee relationship (Hyatt and Hayes).
Three of the articles in this collection deal with doctoral supervision, while two of them
are concerned with master’s supervision. What difference does this make to the supervision
process? When I answered Zhou’s question about the difference between master’s and Ph.D.,
I focussed primarily on the requirements, observing that, in the context of our university atleast, there is a significant jump from master’s level to doctoral level. Undergraduate students
sometimes enrol in the master’s programme because they do not feel ready to start work, or
have not been able to find a suitable position for themselves (although this was not the casewith Zhou and Mao). The expectations I and my colleagues have for master’s degrees are far
lower than those we have for doctorates. Hyatt and Hayes allude to the “liminality” of thedoctorate process; doctoral students, unlike master’s students, are at the threshold, or an early stage, of their academic careers, and this strengthens the rationale for involving supervisees in the type of work academics are expected to engage in. Although we have only master’s
students, it has been important for me and my colleague, Yuichi Tomita, to facilitate somekind of entry into the wider academic community because we believe it is empowering for
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our students. Thus, Zhou was supported in her decision to write an article for the university
research bulletin, and both Zhou and Mao presented their research not only at the department’s open conference but also at the JALT international conference. For the publication andthe conference presentations, the students received more rigorous feedback than they did fortheir theses, perhaps because their performance in these public activities would reflect on the
reputation of the university (and on me, their supervisor!).
Whilst power and authority are inherent in the identity of supervisor, it is clear, talking to
Mao and Zhou, that different supervisors assume this differently. In my own case, I want toestablish a caring and relaxed relationship with my supervisees. Mao stated that some teachers made her “feel uneasy”, especially if they were “teaching in a bossy way”, but she didn’t
feel any uneasiness or fear with me. Zhou agreed, stating that she felt that, rather than a“power gap” or “authority”, my role in our relationship was providing “supervision”, bywhich she appears to mean setting deadlines and “talking a lot”. Coming from a university
in China where class sizes were large, Zhou had never experienced one-to-one teaching and“never imagined I could have a relationship with a professor in this way”.
Whilst I am gratified to hear this, I also wonder whether my relationship with supervisees
is actually equitable, and whether equity is necessarily a good thing. In their article, Tu andRonald describe a critical incident that occurred because of a lack of clarity in communication and expectations. Ronald mentions that he knew Tu socially from his church and that
this friendship enabled them in the end to become more open with each other and to get thesupervision process back on track. However, is it possible that the cordiality and equality of asocial relationship complicate, rather than facilitate the supervision relationship? Muller, who
supervised Tsuruoka in a distance master’s programme, notes that whilst Tsuruoka openly
disclosed personal problems during the supervision process, he himself did not do so. This issomething that resonates strongly with me. Although I hope that my attitude towards my supervisees comes across as kind and caring, I tend for my part not to share with them personalor health problems that I may be facing. Clearly, I do keep a social and emotional distancefrom them, perhaps as a way of maintaining some power and authority. But at the same time,
I often wonder if I am sufficiently clear with and supportive of my supervisees, an issue that I
come to next.

Communication and Miscommunication
Language is a prominent issue in all the articles in this issue. For Hyatt and Hayes, the focus
is on academic discourse, and in particular writing for publication; for Tu and Ronald, language and culture pose problems for both the supervisor and supervisee’s negotiation withother supervisors and the administrative staff; for Muller and Tsuruoka, it is not the language
itself that is at issue, but rather the way in which the supervisor and supervisee communicate,for Ikeda and Shiba, language, in the sense of voice, becomes the object of discrimination by
those with authority, a cause of alienation which in turn leads to trauma, and for Crawley
and O’Brien, sign language is bound up with issues of ownership, identity and use during thesupervision process. In my own context, language is perhaps the most prominent issue that I
struggle with as a supervisor. I speak and read Japanese but am far from proficient, so almost
all communication with my supervisees is in English, which is a second language for them. I
should state that Mao and Zhou are both fluent English speakers, and thus the use of English
did not appear to pose a particular difficulty in supervision meetings, which it sometimes haswith previous master’s students. But, as I have already indicated in my misapprehension of
the motives for Zhou’s questions for our discussion, the potential for miscommunication isconsiderable and ever present.

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Alison Stewart with Mao Goto & Zhou Xiaotong

Needless to say, good supervision entails good communication. Muller assumes in his detailed study that this means “uptake”, that supervisees accept the advice that is given andimplement it in their work. This notion of uptake, however, gives me pause for thought. In
my own experience of being a supervisee, the discussions I had with my doctoral supervisor
often resulted in further reading and re-thinking of my subject. (I know that my constantrewriting drove my poor supervisor to distraction.) Thus, rather than uptake, which to me
implies the acquisition of specific skills or ideas, I found the effect of supervision to be transformative. I expected that this would be the case for my supervisees too. When Zhou wrote
an article for publication, I spent a great deal of time rigorously and extensively editing it.
I hoped that this reworking of her article would be of service to Zhou in the writing of her
thesis the following year. I was thus frustrated to see in her drafts that she reproduced large
chunks of the article and otherwise had not improved her writing. Similarly, Mao struggled toorganise her interview data and maintain any focus in her thesis. In the final stages of writing, she contacted me frequently and I felt that I gave her far more specific instruction thanI expected to or wanted to. Although both students completed their theses successfully, I feltthat neither had realised their potential, and I wondered whether I could have done more.
Could I have communicated more effectively? How did Zhou and Mao see this?
In fact, both of them put the responsibility for any shortcoming onto themselves. Zhou
claimed that the feedback she received, particularly the recasting and corrections she received
on the first drafts of her published article, was “useful” and that she “read it over and overand try to figure it out”. She admitted that the final thesis that she submitted was not as
good as she had hoped and felt that her research topic of translanguaging and identity could
have been (or could be in future?) explored in more depth. Mao, for her part, apologised for
demanding so much help in the final weeks leading up to the submission deadline. Since she
had been unable to complete her thesis the previous year because of mental health problems,
I was especially anxious that she not drop out again. But eventually, it was too much for me,
and I asked her to stop sending me her drafts. As she recalled, “my mental [state] was insane at the time,” and added, “I knew it was wrong, but I needed to do that”. Was it becauseof a lack of confidence, I wondered? Mao agreed that it was, but that completing the thesis
and the master’s degree gave her “so much confidence”. As I reflect back on our supervision
meetings, I remember that these sessions always seemed to end on a positive note, and I had
the impression that Zhou and Mao had found some clarity as a result of what we said. Butthat clarity they appeared to find when we were together seemed to elude them the moment
they stepped out of my room.

Vision/Supervision
In our discussion about the supervision process, Zhou’s final question—about my vision—
was the hardest to answer. Do I even have a vision? Perhaps I do, and that it is simply that
I want all my supervisees to do the best they can, to produce work that they feel proud of. I
have spent much of my teaching career thinking about autonomy, and as a supervisor I want
my supervisees to be independent, questioning, and always developing their thinking. Like
Hayes and Hyatt, I hope that students will take initiatives to share and develop their own
learning, something that Zhou and Mao certainly did. Crawley and O’Brien remind me tobe mindful of the identities, skills, desires and needs that my supervisees bring to our work
together. And like Ikeda and Shiba, I need to be careful not to forget my position of power
and inflict hurt or offence to students who may not feel able to speak up or resist. Muller and
Tsuruoka encourage me to think about the nature of my interaction with the students, and to
think more deeply about how I can communicate my intentions and my ideas more effectively, while at the same time ensuring that students retain agency throughout the supervision
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process. Finally, Tu and Ronald remind me that the supervision process takes place in a particular context. That context is social, institutional, and emotional, and its complexity meansthat there will never be any perfect solution to the pitfalls and mistakes along the way.
Perhaps a better way to look at the notion of “vision” is in its literal sense of seeing what
is before us. Rather than an ideal, something that can only be imagined, this sense of vision
prompts us to look closely at the practices that we take for granted, at events that happen andare forgotten, and at the context in which this process unfolds. Looking back at the supervision experience that I went through with Mao and Zhou and talking to them about it shows
me that my vision as a supervisor is limited and partial. I take this insight forward into mysupervisory relationships to come.

References
Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Stewart, A. (2020). Language teacher recognition. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Zhou, X. (2019). A study of translanguaging and identity among Chinese students in Japan. 学
習院大学英文学会誌 (March 2019)84

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