Title: Professional Doctorates
1Professional Doctorates
- Research capacity and changing professional
agendas - Ingrid Lunt, University of Oxford
2Growth of professional doctorates
- Introduction in UK early 1990s (1992)
- Rapid growth especially in Education (EdD 45
universities) and management and business (DBA
35 HEIs) - EngD introduced by EPSRC (top down initiative)
- Now over 30 different professional doctorate (PD)
titles (reflecting professional background) and
over 200 different PD degrees - Proliferation of titles
- Great variation in aims, structure, outcomes,
product
3Great variation
- Titles
- Programme structure
- The thesis? (20k to 100k words)
- Learning methods
- Use of credit rating (and level), also APL/credit
for Masters modules - Methods of assessment
- Professional accreditation or CPD
- E.g. license to practise
4What is a generic professional doctorate? Or
can we see commonality across the differences?
- a Professional Doctorate is a programme of
advanced study and research which, whilst
satisfying the University criteria for the award
of a doctorate, is designed to meet the specific
needs of a professional group external to the
university, and which develops the capability of
individuals to work in their professional
context (UKCGE 2002)
5Parity with the PhD
- Criteria for the award of the PD?
- Substantial and original contribution to
(knowledge) professional practice - Doctoral thesis of (100,000) 50,000 words
- PhD professional scholar/researcher vs. PD
scholarly/researching professional - confidence is needed that the awards are
alternative ways of achieving the same advanced
level of study and contribution (UKCGE 2005)
6PhD and PD in a university
- Professional doctorates are research degrees (not
taught doctorates) - Useful to emphasise commonalities and differences
with PhD - Complementarity of programmes
- Similar QA requirements, also cf. ESRC
- Mutual and interactive influence between PhD and
PD - Community of doctoral researchers
7The strategic importance of the PD in some fields
- ESRC Demographic review and the crisis of
Education and Management Business Studies - PD as a means of developing subject knowledge
- PD as a means of bridging the practice/academic
divide - PD as a means of developing research capacity and
evidence base
8Tensions between requirements of the university
and those of the profession?
- Nature of professional knowledge (and
professional practice) what counts? - Status of different forms of knowledge
- University students senior professionals?
- Who assesses professional doctorate i.e.
assessment criteria, and nature of examiners (is
there a role for professionals as
assessors/examiners)? - Who defines competences?
9What is the relationship of academic and
professional knowledge?
- The role of the HEI and the role of the
workplace? Complementary? Different kinds of
learning? - The relationship between academic and
professional knowledge (knowledge for
professional practice) and academic and
professional writing? - Reason/motivation for undertaking a professional
doctorate? - What counts as originality?
10Student motivation for undertaking the PD?
- Senior professionals
- Little overlap with students undertaking the PhD
- Wish to develop their professional practice
- Evidence-based/informed practice increasingly
emphasised - Wish to take a research stance/perspective
(develop research capacity)
11Professional doctorates and their contribution to
professional development and careers
- How does the professional doctorate in education,
engineering and business administration influence
participants professional lives and act to
develop professional knowledge and improve
practice? - What is the impact of this development of
professional knowledge on the employment culture
of the students? - What is the most appropriate relationship between
professional and academic knowledge and how can
universities develop practice which best reflects
this?
12Some findings 1. Influence on Practice
- This varied both within and between programme
types, in part because of the wide-ranging
profile of the participants (four models of
motivation) - Extrinsic professional initiation
- Extrinsic professional continuation
- Extrinsic professional alteration
- Intrinsic personal/professional affirmation
13Some findings 2. Impact of professional doctorate
on students employment
- Linked to age and stage of entry
- Often CPD rather than career progression (e.g.
EdD) - Linked to type of employment Public/private
sector - For some, linked to enhanced employment
opportunities (EngD) - Shift from action to reflection (DBA)
14Some findings 3. Pedagogical and organisational
strategies for organising professional doctorates
- Structure and organisation (EngD FT, EdD and DBA
mainly PT) - All have substantial taught component (relative
weighting differs) - Pedagogic modes and relations assumptions about
how professionals learn - Positioning of participants senior
practitioners, research engineers, mid-career
professionals - Relationship between professional practice and
research
15Some findings 4. Professional and academic
knowledge
- Relationship between professional and academic
knowledge (and issues of parity and value) - Four modes of knowledge creation
- Disciplinarity
- Technical rationality
- Dispositionality
- criticality
16Student outcomes
- Becoming more reflective has helped me to
achieve a better understanding of my own practice
and an improved level of performance - Undertaking the EdD has radically altered my
professional practice - The EdD has enhanced my professional confidence
and my analytical abilities - The thesis became a fundamental and transforming
process in my life, both professional and
personal
17Student outcomes 2
- Undertaking the DBA enhanced my confidence and
also my credibility - The DBA gave me the time to think and forced me
to articulate my ideas and to think analytically
- the DBA fundamentally changed my whole
professional life it was transformative - I would never have done a PhD that seemed so
academic. But the PD has really taught me to do
research and to be interested in a much deeper
approach to my practice
18Professional doctorates in the education sector
- Participants have very diverse professional
backgrounds and include university lecturers and
administrators, wide range of health
professionals, NGO personnel, Local Authority
staff, social workers, managers, inspectors and
advisers, some (few) school teachers (mainly
senior) - I.e. Senior professionals in education
19Motivation for doctorate
- To stand back and reflect on professional
practice - To learn with a cohort of like-minded
professionals - To engage in lifelong learning
- To gain additional skills especially research
- To carry out a research project based on
professional practice - To gain additional qualifications
20Universities claim that the EdD
- Places research at the heart of educational
practice and relates theoretical knowledge to
every aspect of practitioner education - Contributes to a culture of reflective practice
and research - Develops researching professionals or researchers
of the professions - Enhances professional practice through research
21Proliferation of titles or generic titles?
- What is in a name?
- Growth of inter-disciplinarity
- Emergence of new inter-disciplinary PDs
- Issues of status and professional closure?
- The generic DProf
22Some issues
- Need for greater consensus on nature of generic
PD - How to achieve/maintain parity with PhD
- Balancing the relationship between the university
and the profession and their requirements - Need for exit awards
- The issue of proliferation of titles
23Conclusion
- Changing professional agendas
- Credentialism
- Evidence-based practice
- University agendas (including RAE/REF)
- Professional Doctorates
- Parity with PhD
- Research capacity building
- New pedagogies and modes of learning
- Knowledge creation and knowledge transfer