I'm sure that David Durling had the best of intentions in posting my
June RTI provocative comment to DRS, but I may have phrased it
differently had I known it's destiny (the two lists having somewhat
differing levels of provocation and quantity!) Apologies for not
responding until now - I knew I would be very occupied this month.
"... An external examiner of one such doctorate commented that it was
actually two, possibly three PhDs. Are we being too 'belt and
braces'?" (Graham, posted by Durling: Thu, 01 Jun 2000)
Neither myself nor the examiner were trying to suggest that the
candidate actually be awarded more than one PhD (the examiner was, I
reassure gentle readers, an experienced examiner of the blamelessly
non-practice PhD variety, and no, it wasn't my viva voce).
Nevertheless, the comment is open to various interpretations:
1. It might have concerned the combining of various knowledge fields
(as opposed to combining an overview of research knowledge with a
specialised field knowledge), which admittedly, is part of the
responsibility of an academic, as Ken said:
"This is comparable to the work of a scholar who enters another field. He or
she may need significant work to get up to speed. These are the kinds of
things that happen when people move from literature to anthropology or from
math to physics." (Friedman: Thu, 1 Jun 2000, 21:53:13)
As RTI is a research training list, I was hoping for new ideas on how
we can best help our research students with the difficult gaining of
this cross-field knowledge.
2. It might have concerned the form of the thesis: If a student
completes a full written thesis which stands alone, but also presents
a visual argument (as opposed to an artwork) in a multimedia format,
then is that 'belt and braces' (i.e. duplicating a means of holding
up trousers) for the sake of safety, or for the sake of seeing if it
can be done? How can we best help our students with this task if they
want to do it? This obviously doesn't only apply to art-practice
students.
3. I don't think that the examiner was referring to two kinds of
doctorate (a Professional Doctorate and a PhD) but that does lead me
on to a possible theme for next month's comment, concerning
Professional Doctorates ...
yours,
Beryl
_________________________________________________________
Dr. Beryl Graham. tel: +44 (0)191 515 2896
Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Art and Design,
University of Sunderland, Ryhope Road, Sunderland SR2 7EE
email: [log in to unmask] OR [log in to unmask]
web page: http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~as0bgr/welcome.html
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