What is a doctoral thesis in education?
Dr Tim Clark (UWE Bristol) and Professor Tom Dobson (York St John University)
We are pleased to share our upcoming collaborative research project which will explore the benefits and barriers to EdD students adopting creative approaches to project design and the presentation of their theses.
But before explaining the project, let us outline why creativity and the EdD seem to go hand in hand. A number of researchers have highlighted how the EdD programme has gained in popularity across the globe over the last two decades and in doing so have also highlighted how this growth has necessitated a rethink in what counts as knowledge and how that knowledge should be presented (Jones, 2018; Hawkes and Yerrabati, 2018; Wildy, Peden and Chan, 2015). The main reason for this is that in focussing on practice in an education context, the EdD moves away from what Gibbons et al. (1994) call “mode 1” knowledge creation (i.e. knowledge created in the University) to “mode 2” knowledge creation (i.e. knowledge created in the context of practice with the help of the University). Because of this shift from mode 1 to mode 2 knowledge creation, other researchers have called for a new type of “hybrid” thesis (Vaughan, 2021; Wisker, 2017), whose origins and audiences are located within the practices they articulate and explore.
However, what research into the EdD and other professional doctorates shows is that the radical implications of this shift of knowledge are rarely embraced by students and their supervisors in the contexts of Higher Education. This is due to both a lack of clarity in the way in which the EdD is articulated (Wildy, Pedden and Chan, 2015) as well as a tendency for University policies and practices to encourage students to follow traditional approaches to methodology and thesis writing (Wisker and Robinson, 2014; Brodin, 2018; Thurlow, 2021). As our previous research shows (Dobson, 2022; Clark, 2022), this means EdD students often have limited agency when it comes to making key decisions about how they approach their research and writing. Essentially, there is a risk that they are restricted to following a frame that has been provided for them.
Photo by: British Council, TeachingEnglish
Our collaborative project will involve two phases. The first phase is a scoping activity where we are writing a paper for a special edition of Teaching in Higher Education (abstract accepted), which argues that arts-based research (ABR) can help EdD students achieve mode 2 knowledge generation and the presentation of this in their own hybrid thesis. Part reflection on our experiences of the EdD programme through creative writing, part position paper, and part systematic review, our hybrid article will map the theoretical underpinning of the EdD to ABR and in doing so articulate the benefits and the barriers of EdD students using ABR in their studies.
Patricia Leavy’s Handbook of Arts-Based Research (2018) makes the parallels between the EdD and ABR easy to spot. Irwin et al. (2018, p.50), for example, identify ABR as practice-based research which is a form of “living inquiry” where both self and others are represented and explored, making ABR both “relational and reflexive in character”. This heightens the potential for participatory research as the “dimensions of engagement” are increased and “dialogic interchange” between self and others takes place (Gergen and Gergen, 2018, p.64). According to McNiff (2018, p.32) the nature of this living inquiry means that students should be given more “format freedom” with their theses. For Leavy herself (2018, p.11), this means students writing for a non-academic audience as “public scholarship and usefulness” become integral to inquiry.
The second phase of our project will take place next academic year and will involve EdD students from both of our institutions as active participants in ABR workshops. The idea of the workshops will be to expose EdD students to ABR practices and help them think about ways of approaching their own living inquiries using aspects of ABR. This could include adopting ABR as a small aspect of their project design (e.g. using photo-elicitation in interviews) or adopting ABR as fundamental methodology (e.g. using creative writing to capture lived experiences). As a form of living inquiry in its own right, our workshops will also allow us to investigate how we and our EdD students experience these workshops by using ABR practices, which we will negotiate with each group. The data generated through the workshops will then be analysed and presented in appropriate hybrid forms with the EdD students as co-researchers.
If any of this sounds of interest to you, or if you would like to participate in the project in some way, please do not hesitate to context us. Through methodological and presentational innovation we hope to focus on making research more appropriate to practice and more accessible to all.
Tim Clark
Tim is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Childhood at UWE Bristol
Tom Dobson
Tom is a Professor of Education in the School of Education, Language and Psychology at York St John University
References
Brodin, E., (2018). The stifling silence around scholarly creativity in doctoral education: experiences of students and supervisors in four disciplines. High Educ, 75, pp.655-673.
Clark, T. (2022). Methodological becoming: Doctoral students’ perceptions of their methodological journeys. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, 13(1), 36-53.
Dobson, T. (2022). “A structure that other people are directing”: doctoral students’ writing of qualitative theses in education. The Qualitative Report, 27(4), pp.997-1010.
Gergen and Gergen (2018) The Performative Movement in Social Science. In: Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Guilford Press.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwatzman, S., Scott, P., and Trow, M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage).
Hawkes, D., and Yerrabati, S. (2018). A systematic review of research on professional doctorates. London Review of Education, 16(1), pp.10-27.
Irwin, R., LeBlanc, N., Ryu, J.., and Belliveau, G. (2018). A/r/togrpahy as Living Inquiry. In: Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Guilford Press.
Jones (2018). Contemporary trends in professional doctorates. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (5), pp.814-825.
Leavy, P. (2018a). Fiction-Based research. In: Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Guilford Press.
Leavy, P. (2018b). Introduction to Arts-Based research. In: Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Guilford Press.
McNiff, S. (2018). Philosophical and Practical Foundations of Artistic Inquiry. In: Leavy, P. (ed.) Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Guilford Press.
Thurlow, S. (2021). Creativity is for poets and pop singers, isn’t it? Academic perspectives on creativity in doctoral writing. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 20(2), pp.187-206.
Vaughan, S. (2021). Practice submissions – are doctoral regulations and policies responding to the needs of creative practice? Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 26(3), pp333-352.
Wildy, H., Peden, S., and Chan, K. (2015). The rise of professional doctorates: case studies of the Doctorate in Education in China, Iceland and Australia. Studies in Higher Education, 40:5, pp.761-774.
Wisker, G., and Robinson, G. (2014). Experiences of the Creative Doctorate: Minstrels and White Lines. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 2(2), pp.49-67.
Wisker (2017). The Contemporary Research Degree: Whose Project is it Anyway?Non Traditional Research Outcomes. Available online: https://nitro.edu.au/edition-24.
