Student-Initiated Advice in Academic Supervision

Abstract

The article analyzes student-initiated advice sequences in Finnish master's thesis supervision, encounters where teachers and students discuss students' ongoing thesis work. Drawing from prior conversation analytic research on advice giving, advice is analyzed here as a problem-solving activity. The article presents two questioning formats used by students. Format I, less frequent, invokes a clear lack of knowledge or competence in a relevant thesis task. Through open-ended question elements and various other design features, these questions constitute a clear plea for help. They also tend to be successful in eliciting extensive advice and help from teachers. Format II, clearly more frequently used in the data, presents checks and proposals and thereby suggests potential solutions to potential problems in the thesis. Polar question or statement formats are used. These questions receive advice in the form of expansions: In addition to the minimal confirmation or disconfirmation, the teachers provide grounds and accounts for their responses. The article demonstrates that responding to student questions is a central pedagogical activity in supervision. In addition, the study shows that in their responding activities, teachers not only orient to the problem-solving task (remedy) but also to estimating the usefulness of the student's problem (relevance). The article discusses these results in terms of their pedagogical relevance and their contribution to the research on advice giving, especially in connection to institutional settings where advisees' autonomy and self-directedness need to be balanced with advice givers' expert perspectives.