Feedback dialogue in intercultural doctoral supervision

Doctoral educational programmes are increasingly intercultural. However, research that explicitly explores students’ active roles in drawing on or navigating their cultural values when engaging with feedback is limited. Understanding how international doctoral students draw on their cultural values in supervision feedback practices is essential, as these values affect how feedback is interpreted and acted upon, ultimately shaping students’ learning experience. This paper examines how international doctoral students draw on and reshape their cultural values in making sense of and responding to supervisor feedback. The study gathered detailed, longitudinal experiences from ten international doctoral students in Australia through interviews conducted over a nine-month period. The study revealed four distinct ways students engaged with supervisor feedback: (1) referencing available cultural values to interpret feedback, (2) reconstructing cultural values to interpret feedback, (3) reconstructing cultural values to respond to feedback, and (4) relying on their prior cultural values when responding to feedback. These findings emphasise the significance of students’ agency in reconstructing their cultural values when engaging with feedback. Additionally, our findings emphasise that mismatched expectations may arise when supervisors fail to recognise students’ cultural values in feedback dialogues.