Supervision and mentoring to foster excellence in graduate students’ academic writing and publishing

Author: Michele Jacobsen

Importance

This case study highlights the importance of effective supervision and mentoring to support graduate students’ progress in academic writing and publishing. By fostering a collaborative and supportive environment, supervisors help graduate students to progress by developing the confidence, skills, and experience needed to navigate complex academic writing processes, share their research, and establish themselves as emerging scholars within their fields.

Scenario

An effective graduate supervisor combines their passion for research with a commitment to mentoring student progress. Supervisors and graduate students are motivated to publish and present their research. Publishing allows researchers to share key findings that contribute to collective understanding and advancement of their discipline. Publishing one’s research can have a direct impact on professional practices, inform and improve methods, techniques, and approaches within the field.

Academic writing and publishing can be a challenge for many doctoral and master’s students. Graduate students often experience stress, anxiety, imposter syndrome and low confidence with their academic writing and the publishing process. Mentoring graduate students in presenting and publishing their research is a crucial aspect of effective supervision, and is essential for preparing graduates for diverse career paths. I contend that supportive supervision practices are crucial for addressing the emotional, cognitive, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of academic writing and publishing.

To support ongoing socialisation in academia, and to foster a community of scholars, I provide diverse opportunities for my graduate students to engage in academic writing, peer review and dissemination of their research results. From conceptualisation of their study, to developing the theoretical, conceptual and epistemological positioning of their work, critical literature exploration and review, methodological design, ethics application, process and review, enactment of recruitment, data collection, data analysis, synthesis and reporting methods, and preparing manuscripts for peer reviewed publication and presentation, I support my students in all aspects of academic writing. To help graduate students share their results with fellow students and with scholarly and professional communities, I map out knowledge mobilisation plans with each of my students with timelines, processes and deadlines to support ongoing academic writing, peer review and publication. My track record in supporting graduate students in knowledge mobilisation demonstrates my commitment and my approach to mentoring graduate students and providing advanced research training that promotes excellence in research and scholarship.

From conceptualisation of the research problem, through to enactment and reporting on the research, I work closely with my graduate students to identify venues for presenting and publishing findings and outcomes from their research. I support my students in submitting their research to conferences, to author manuscripts as sole authors, as well as mentor, coach and guide graduate students as a co-author given my involvement in supporting their research and in response to their specific requests or mentoring needs.

Throughout my career, I have committed to collaborative knowledge engagement and support of graduate scholars in my supervision and academic writing practices. In the past twenty-five years I have steadily increased my practice of co-publishing and co-presenting with postdoctoral fellows, doctoral candidates, and master’s students. More than half of my published academic journal articles and conference presentations have been co-created in collaborative knowledge building relationships with current or former graduate students. Supporting the progress of graduate student scholars through a collaborative writing process results in mutual learning where the student’s and supervisor’s thinking is transformed by each other’s ideas, experiences, and expertise. A key factor in my supervisory practice is “cultivating a collaborative community of support for academic writing” (Jacobsen et al., 2021, p. 3) that supports the progress and flourishing of graduate student scholars.

Reflection

By co-authoring and co-presenting with my graduate students, I play a crucial educational leadership role by shaping the next generation of researchers and professionals, while also advancing both of our careers and contributing to the academic and professional communities of which we are all a part. If I could time travel, I would go back to the early days of my career and ensure I co-authored and co-presented with more of my graduate students.

Through coaching and exemplars, I model and scaffold academic writing processes with my graduate students that fall along a spectrum of purposes; from crafting research proposals and grant applications to preparing manuscripts for peer review and submitting award and fellowship applications. An important part of my mentoring is helping students to navigate and persist with revise and resubmit, or reject, decisions from journals or conferences. Instead of expecting my graduate students to start from scratch, I work to scaffold their learning by introducing diverse forms of academic writing across various purposes, using discipline-specific examples as guides. Instead of viewing the graduate student experience as a mere rite of passage, where students are novices guided by experts in a hierarchical power dynamic, I commit to mentoring and coaching graduate student writers in ways that promote our mutual interdependence and reciprocity. My graduate students know that we are on this graduate learning journey together – that I am a learner alongside them, that I stand to learn as much from them as they explore and push the edges of the discipline and profession through their writing, as I hope they learn and gain from me.

Co-authoring and co-presenting with graduate students offers a range of benefits for both the students and supervisors, starting with increased joy and enhanced productivity in collaborative and individual academic writing. In my own practice, I have benefitted from students’ diverse ideas and perspectives that strengthen our collaborative research projects. I experience personal and professional satisfaction from mentoring students and contributing to their academic and career success. Finally, guiding students through the research and publication processes, and co-authoring papers and presentations, enhances my student’s academic publishing portfolio, which makes them more competitive for academic and professional positions. For graduate students, the opportunity to co-author with their supervisor can strengthen their academic writing practice and improve their success rate at publishing high-quality manuscripts. Co-presenting at conferences with their supervisor can support students in developing their public speaking and presentation skills in supportive academic and professional contexts.

Early exposure to publishing and presenting helps establish students’ reputations as emerging experts in their field. Regular interaction with supervisors during the writing and presenting process provides valuable feedback and support, which fosters academic and professional growth.

Advice

Based on my experience as a graduate supervisor and research on supervision and academic writing with colleagues (Becker et al., 2025; Friesen et al., 2023), I recommend four supervisory practices to support graduate student productivity and success with academic writing: (1) engage in regularly scheduled meetings with iterative cycles of mentoring and scaffolding; (2) engage students in a trusting, supportive community of practice; (3) use coursework and program structures as springboards for writing; and (4) provide students with diverse models of academic writing.

Practice 1 – Regular meetings with mentoring and scaffolding conversations

I meet regularly with my graduate students to discuss and provide feedback on their academic writing projects. I listen to graduate students’ ideas, take time to understand their needs, and provide personalised support with their academic writing. My approach to mentoring and scaffolding graduate student writing occurs from the start of their program and continues throughout their degrees and beyond graduation into their professional and academic careers. For example, I engage students in talking about their writing during their coursework and while they initially gather, read, and review the literature. My guidance of student writing occurs during mentoring conversations to explore ideas, topics, and research questions. I invite my students to share written drafts of their proposals, papers, and applications with me, and as appropriate, with other faculty and their supervisory committee, for feedback. My mentoring and scaffolding of student writing occurs through timely and tailored feedback on their work with a focus on incremental and continual improvement. My practice focuses on feedforward and the continual identification of next steps for students to improve and polish drafts of their writing projects. My doctoral and master’s students know that the ongoing feedback they receive on multiple drafts of their papers is an intentional effort on my part to prepare them for achieving milestones like a conference presentation, a published article, an approved research proposal, a successful candidacy exam, or writing a high-quality thesis or dissertation.

Knowing that successful academic writers talk about their writing (Belcher, 2019), I regularly engage my graduate students in conversations about their writing, to explore their ideas for writing, their goals for various assignments and projects, and their evolving manuscripts. My goal is to help graduate students to talk through how to improve their/our ideas and map out their/our writing projects and discuss how we can navigate the publishing and presenting landscape together.

Practice 2 – Engage students in a supportive community of practice

My supervision practice involves fostering a supportive community for graduate student writing. Faculty, peers, and supervisory committees all play crucial roles in these collaborative communities of practice. It is essential for diverse faculty to work together with the supervisor to support the graduate student’s writing in coursework and in supervisory committees. This community approach allows graduate students to access the diverse expertise and advice from a range of faculty members regarding their academic writing.

To support collective capacity building, I intentionally connect present graduate students with peers and alumni for peer mentoring, advice and emotional support with academic writing. I connect and support my first, second, third, and fourth year master’s and doctoral students to work with each other on their research designs and to benefit from expertise and experience of the cohort in addition to my supervision and connections with faculty on their supervisory committees. I encourage my students to discuss their writing with peers and engage in peer reviews of each other’s ethics applications, grant proposals, and manuscripts. To facilitate this, I organise a monthly group mentoring session called DOC-MA Club, which brings together my master’s and doctoral students to foster social connections, reduce isolation, and provide regular opportunities for students to discuss their graduate program experiences, ask questions, present coursework and research updates, and share writing samples. My graduate students value the DOC-MA Club as a collaborative peer mentorship community where peers act as critical friends, provide authentic feedback, diverse perspectives, and constructive challenges to each other.

Practice 3 – Leverage program structures as springboards for academic writing

In the Werklund School of Education, we offer a variety of program pathways for master’s and doctoral students. Whether I am supervising course-based, or thesis based graduate students in discipline focused or professional learning settings, I am deeply committed to designing and creating tailored academic writing experiences that call on graduate students to engage deeply with powerful ideas and concepts and discuss their ideas with other graduate students and academic faculty in respectful and scholarly ways.

I align my supervisory practice and support with the instruction and practice with academic writing through specific coursework and program structures. I invite my graduate students to talk about the writing projects and topics they are pursuing in their coursework and offer my assistance and advice on topic selection, approaches to literature review, and continual improvement of the organisation and presentation of their scholarly writing. As students gain experience with different kinds of writing assignments, and procedural supports with APA referencing and ethics proposals, with their course instructors, I encourage them to consider opportunities to link these ideas with their thesis or dissertation research, conference presentations, and venues for academic publishing.

Although building confidence and competence in independent writing is vital for graduate student success, working with others can significantly improve the quality and depth of their writing. Collaborative writing can be motivating and keep a graduate student’s writing moving forward in a timely manner. Co-writing can make the difference between a course paper being stored in a folder after a course is complete, or investing the additional effort to shape that work into a manuscript that is submitted for peer review. Effective supervision for academic writing can help graduate students to count themselves into publishing and presenting processes and opportunities, deal with acceptance and rejection of submitted work, and identify next steps in their academic writing journey. For example, when a graduate student receives a revise and resubmit decision from a journal, I help them to create a step-by-step plan for addressing the feedback and resubmitting a revised manuscript in a timely manner.

Practice 4 – Provide diverse models of academic writing

In my supervision practice, I share diverse models and exemplars of academic writing products that graduate students will be expected to generate during their program. During my career, I have built an inventory of diverse exemplars of academic writing across genres, such as course papers, research proposals, grant applications, conference proposals, and ethics applications, among others. Using a responsive pedagogy, I share these models and exemplars with students as they have questions or learning needs, and as opportunities to count themselves in to awards or scholarships arise. Exemplars are shared with permission of the original author, and with my guidance on appropriate use and citation, so that graduate student writers can examine and learn from the high-quality writing of knowledgeable others and use these authoritative sources ethically. For example, with a recent graduate who was preparing an award application, I shared a previous award winner’s application package for inspiration and guidance.

References

Becker, S., Jacobsen, M., Friesen, S. (2025). Four supervisory mentoring practices that support online doctoral students’ academic writing. Frontiers in Education: Higher Education, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1521452

Belcher, W. (2019). Writing your journal article in twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Friesen, S., Brown, B., Delanoy, N., Dressler, R., Francis, K., Hernandez-Zavaleta, E., Jacobsen, M., Markides, J., Mosher, R., Roy, S., & Thomas, C. (2023). Staying on track: Writing our way through a global pandemic. Journal of Educational Thought, 56(2), 125-144. https://doi.org/10.55016/ojs/jet.v56i2.78059

Jacobsen, M., Friesen, S., & Becker, S. (2021). Online supervision in a professional doctorate in education: Cultivating relational trust within learning alliances. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 58(6), 635-646. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2021.1991425