Abstract
In mentoring graduate students, it is hard to deny the ubiquity of graduate student advising. Faculty members, who are usually engaged in advising to tease out problems and suggest solutions, could often times be faced with negative attributions concerning faculty members’ competence, as well as receive unaligned responses rather than collaborative understanding of issues or recommendations. While previous studies on advising may have focused on specific, intricate, discourse particles and microscopic perspectives on advising, studies on advice giving exchanges that depart from these dimensions are insufficient. To fill in this lacuna, this paper proposes to explore strategies and participation roles in which faculty members assume in selected doctoral dissertation advising. Through discourse analysis, specifically focusing on discourse and situational identities grounded in identities-in-interaction (Zimmerman, 1998), the study illuminates some of the many advising roles and advising strategies that are revealed as legitimate, aligning doctoral student learning experience. In particular, advising roles and advising strategies, as illustrated in this study, link social and institutional context by proposing some of the many trajectories of how both faculty members and graduate students understand the relevance of advising exchanges. By focusing on these exchanges, the paper will also contribute to the growing body of literature on a range of different factors that may constitute advising in terms of content and manner in which advising takes place.
Highlights
As an important part of doctoral studies in Malaysia at least, graduate students often discuss their writing of dissertation with faculty members
This paper argues that, as faculty members and graduate students participate in advisement, their interactional styles during such advice-giving consultations can illuminate participation roles as well as strategies used by faculty members to develop graduate student plans to help, check, follow through, and monitor their dissertation writing
Developer, planner, reviewer, reviser, monitor, discussant, acceptor, reinforcer, interpreter, rationale provider, approver, maintainer, informer, referrer, contactor, consultant, knowledge giver, engager, clarifier, accessor, reader, and requester are some of the many roles demonstrated by faculty member- graduate student advising at a large, public university in Malaysia
Summary
As an important part of doctoral studies in Malaysia at least, graduate students often discuss their writing of dissertation with faculty members. These, among many other interactional styles that guide Zimmerman’s (1998) idea of establishing participation roles in social and institutional activities, are among those that are important, useful for the present analysis This framework, as Zimmerman (1998) explains, furnishes interlocutors, in this case, faculty members and graduate students, “a continuously evolving framework within which their actions...assume a particular meaning, import, and interactional consequentiality” This paper argues that, as faculty members and graduate students participate in advisement, their interactional styles during such advice-giving consultations can illuminate participation roles as well as strategies used by faculty members to develop graduate student plans to help, check, follow through, and monitor their dissertation writing To put it differently, the study contends that by using Zimmerman’s (1998) framework of participation roles in analyzing faculty member- student advice-giving exchanges, some strategies and roles in which faculty members and students acknowledge, negotiate, affirm, argue, agree, and accept can surface. The point is not to belabor the validity of these exchanges (Creswell, 2007; Mohd Muzhafar, Ruzy, Raihanah, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016, 2017, 2018a, 2018b ; Piaw, 2012; Stewart, 1998), but to consider them as a rough guide in the selection of exchanges that can best manifest the dynamics of advice giving strategies and identities towards writing dissertation
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