MADHU NEUPANE BASTOLA (THE HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY)

MASTER’S THESIS SUPERVISION IN HONG KONG: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY : ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC/SPECIFIC PURPOSES

Supervision plays a crucial role in the successful completion of a master’s thesis. Master's thesis supervision has been viewed from two contradictory but mutually inclusive perspectives. On the one hand, students are expected to undertake a master’s thesis independently. On the other hand, supervisory guidance is crucial for their disciplinary socialization. The small body of existing research is mostly based on Western contexts (Ankersborg & Pogner, 2022; Brown, 2007; Filippou et al.). Since supervision is a socio-culturally situated practice (Hu et al., 2016), supervisors may understand it differently in different contexts and even within the same context. Although master’s thesis supervision has attracted some research interest in Hong Kong (Lau et al., 2020; Zhang & Hyland, 2021), research on how supervisors view such supervision has remained unexplored. In this presentation, I will share the findings of a narrative inquiry that draws on data from interviews with 15 supervisors at UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. From supervisors’ accounts of their supervision experiences, four core narratives have been constructed: scholarly partnership, directional partnership, affiliative partnership, and non-directive. The findings suggest that it is necessary to critically reflect on the kinds of stories that supervisors subscribe to enhance master's thesis supervision.

Madhu Neupane Bastola is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Her research interests include English for academic purposes, graduate research and supervision, supervisory feedback, and corpus-assisted discourse studies. She has published in these and other areas in refereed journals.