Student engagement with supervisory feedback: Multiple perspectives across disciplines

Interest in student engagement was initially motivated by the desire to enhance the academic achievement of at-risk students (Reschly & Christenson, 2012). However, over the years, it has developed into an ever important approach to learning, teaching, policy-making, and educational research in higher education (Kahu, 2013; Zepke, 2017). Contributing to its widespread uptake are a range of benefits that can accrue to improved student engagement: cognitive, psychological and moral development; practical competence and skill transferability; improved social relations and social capital; positive self-images and higher academic achievement (Harper & Quaye, 2015). Against this backdrop, one important strand of research on student engagement has examined students’ agentic involvement in learning (Kahu, 2013; McMahon & Portelli, 2004; Zepke, 2017), undergraduate students’ engagement with feedback on coursework (Carless et al., 2011; Handley et al., 2011), and graduate students’ engagement with supervisory feedback on their theses (Zheng et al., 2020). This paper focuses on student engagement with supervisory feedback. Despite extensive research on student engagement in higher education, little has been written about graduate students’ engagement with supervisory feedback.
In this presentation, I present the findings of a study on student engagement with supervisory feedback on master’s theses conducted in the context of Nepalese higher education. The study employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design that drew on interviews and a questionnaire-based survey involving supervisors and students from four disciplines at a comprehensive university in Nepal. The analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data revealed significant differences between supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of all types (i.e., affective, cognitive, and behavioral) of student engagement. Significant disciplinary variations were also observed in supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of negative affect, cognitive engagement, and behavioral engagement. Furthermore, disciplinary background and feedback role interacted to shape perceptions of student engagement. These findings have implications for improving student engagement with supervisory feedback.