Prospering in Thesis Writing: From Self-Reflexivity to Ideological Becoming

Abstract

Thesis writing is a daunting task. For students who write their thesis in a second or foreign language, the task is even more challenging. To cope with this challenge, ongoing self-reflexivity toward feedback has to be nurtured and sustained. In this chapter, I advocate for a nuanced understanding of self-reflexivity, a concept that can be a driving force of ideological becoming for doctoral students. Simply put, ideological becoming is a process of developing a certain worldview. I argue that ongoing self-reflexivity has helped me to ponder my ideological surroundings. In particular, I show that my learning environments that are composed of various ideologies shaped my ideological becoming. Furthermore, understanding my ideological becoming has helped me to improve my writing because I now not only focus on the given feedback, but I am also able to develop a greater awareness and sensitivity toward my supervisors’ feedback and aspirations, the university system, and other elements that compose the ideology of my learning environment.