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While supervisory feedback in academic writing of master’s and doctoral students has been extensively documented, there is a glaring dearth of research focusing on undergraduates’ emotional responses to such feedback during graduation thesis writing. By gathering multi-sourced data from mind maps, interviews, annotated drafts and screenshots of feedback interactions through social network services, this study explored the intricate emotional dynamics experienced by nine English majors throughout their graduation thesis supervision process, with particular focus on their responses to supervisory feedback and the multifaceted factors influencing these emotional reactions. Reflexive thematic analysis of data captured seventeen emotional reactions spread across four phases of thesis creation from initial supervisory encounter to final thesis assessment. The findings revealed a prevalence of negative emotions far outnumbering fleeting, easily shadowed positive ones in diversity, intensity and duration. These emotional responses are mediated through a complex interplay of feedback features, interpersonal relationships and individual student perceptions, all situated within altered learning contexts. The insights gleaned from students’ firsthand accounts of their emotional experiences carry crucial implications for collaborative endeavours among supervisors, students and institutions to mitigate negative emotional impacts for an emotionally intelligent feedback process.
Xie et al. (Thu,) studied this question.