THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌

ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 4: Exploring the Supervision Process
Across Diverse Contexts: Collaborative Approaches

Authors: Alison Stewart with Mao Goto and Zhou Xiaotong
Title: Reflecting on the Supervision Process across Diverse Contexts and in Our Own
Date of publication online: 2020
Author contact: alison.stewart@gakushuin.ac.jp, goto_510_mail@yahoo.co.jp & yun.orange0.0@gmail.com

Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
http://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2020 each respective author

The APA citation reference for this paper is:
Stewart, A., Goto, M. & Xiaotong, Z. (2020). Reflecting on the Supervision Processacross Diverse Contexts and in Our Own. In S. Little & M. Golledge (Eds.), The Learner
Development Journal Issue 4: Exploring the Supervision Process Across Diverse Contexts:
Collaborative Approaches (pp. 79-84). Tokyo: The Japan Association for Language
Teaching (JALT) Learner Development Special Interest Group.

Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors grant users
the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only that proper attribution
is given to the work.

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

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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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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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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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