Dear All,
Had to laugh -- and agree -- with a vital and forgotten issue in Chris’s
last post. He refers to what some people have been calling “The Two PhD
Problem.”
Some time back on the JISCMAIL DRS list that we used for these kinds of
conversation before migrating to PhD-Design, Chris and I instigated a
debate that came to be titled “Picasso’s PhD,” asking the question of
whether one of the great artists of the 20th century should get a PhD --
a research degree -- for his mastery of painting. As part of the run-up
to the La Clusaz conference on Doctoral Education in Design, the debate
lasted from April through early July 2000. (The full archive is still
available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/DRS ).
One of the topics that went round then was what some artists labeled the
“The Two PhD Problem,” using an elevated label to bestow that status of
a serious problem on a conceptual error, as though this resembled “the
halting problem” in mathematics, or the “authorship problem” in Old
Testament exegetics.
As Chris Rust writes: “... I’ve heard designers and artists whinge that
they have to do 2 PhDs because they have to do all that drawing and
making etc and then they have to write a book. Well what do they think
chemists do? Just write a book? No they spend a great deal of time doing
demanding practical work just like artists and designers, then they
write their book.”
One of the genuine puzzles in this problem is the fact that so few of
the people who think that this is a problem have ever earned a PhD. In
the old days, of course, none of them had done so, but the emergence of
PhD degrees for studio art confuses the issue because it solves the
“problem” by awarding a research degree for an exhibition of
paintings and an essay. Thus we have people whose universities grant
them a PhD for the work that generally would earn an MFA.
The book that one writes to earn a PhD -- a thesis -- has a unique
function. It demonstrates the research skills and understanding of the
candidate. This demonstration resembles the journeyman piece that crafts
guild apprentices were required submit for promotion from apprentice to
journeyman. Many aspects of the PhD involve information and knowledge
that experienced researchers already understand – they belong in the
thesis because earning the PhD is a licensing process. That is also why
most doctoral scholars who transform a thesis into articles or books
revise significantly.
What belongs in books and articles is the original contribution to
knowledge that the research yields. Much of the discussion that is
appropriate to a thesis is no longer appropriate once the scholar earns
his or her license.
While I am still struggling with my answers to the questions from Robbie
and Jose Luis, this is a useful moment to examine what it is that makes
a PhD degree a PhD. This will also shed light on some other aspects of
the current thread, especially as they touch on practice-led research
and the relations between producing artifacts and doing research.
1) Purposes of the PhD
The PhD degree has several purposes. Several of these purposes
distinguish the PhD from other kinds of degrees.
The PhD is a research degree and a license for those who practice and
teach research.
The special role of the PhD as a teaching license determines several
aspects of the criteria for a
PhD. This license covers several kinds of teaching. First, it
establishes the expertise of the graduated doctor to teach the content
of a specific subject field. Second, it establishes the expertise of the
graduated doctor to teach the research methods of that field. Third, it
establishes the ability of the graduated doctor to conduct independent
research. Fourth, it establishes the ability of the graduated doctor to
supervise research and train researchers.
Each of these key purposes determines central criteria for the PhD.
Other aspects of any specific PhD program may entail other criteria. A
summary does not permit issues are those that affect the PhD in relation to practice-led
research.
2) A special aspect of the PhD
The role of the PhD as a license to teach research methods and train
research students establishes criteria for the PhD that may serve no
purpose in any other research project. We must demonstrate skills to
earn a PhD that we may never use again in our own research. We require
these skills for our future students.
I once spent two weeks with a master chef who prepared magnificent meals
for a conference while he ate tuna sandwiches. I asked him why. He told
me that cooking was an art form for him, but he did not want to eat food
after working with it all day. He tasted most recipes twice; first when
another chef taught him to cook it so that he would know how it should
taste; second, when he prepared it to make sure that it tasted the same
way. He had the equivalent of a photographic memory for tastes, so
tasting became a tool in his work. While he only ate tuna sandwiches for
the two weeks that I watched him cook, the “twice only, never again”
principles may have been a slight exaggeration. However, the principle
was clear.
Some of the skills we learn to earn a PhD are like the recipes in my
friend’s repertoire. We master them so that we can cook with them for
our students. We may never eat them again ourselves.
The point for us is clear. If we cannot work with these skills, we are
not properly prepared to teach research methods or to train research
students. As research teacher and supervisors, our own research needs
comes second to the needs our students have.
As long as the PhD is a license to teach and supervise, the PhD has
specific criteria that may affect no other research we ever do.
3) Criteria for the PhD
These conditions establish the critters for earning a PhD. Since a PhD
is a research degree, the candidate must demonstrate that he or she is
prepared to undertake and complete unsupervised research by
demonstrating the ability to make an original contribution to the
knowledge of the field.
Because the PhD is a license to teach and supervise research, the
candidate must demonstrate research skills that will eventually qualify
her or him to teach research methods and research methodology before
moving on to teach and supervise research students.
This entails many skills. Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre (2004: 6-7) offer
a useful partial list of skills in their excellent book on earning a
PhD: [Use of academic language] “correct use of technical terms;
attention to detail in punctuation, grammar, etc.; attention to use of
typographic design to make the text accessible; ability to structure and
convey a clear and coherent argument, including attention to the use of
‘signposting’ devices such as headings to make the structure
accessible; writing in a suitable academic ‘voice’; [Knowledge of
background literature] seminal texts correctly cited, with evidence that
you have read them and evaluated them critically; references accurate
reflecting the growth of the literature from the seminal texts to the
present day; identification of key recent texts on which your own PhD is
based, showing both how these contribute to your thesis and how your
thesis is different from them; relevant texts and concepts from other
disciplines cited; organization of all of the cited literature into a
coherent, critical structure, showing both that you can make sense of
the literature - identifying conceptual relationships and themes,
recognizing gaps - and that you understand what is important; [Research
methods] knowledge of the main research methods used in your discipline,
including data collection, record keeping, and data analysis; knowledge
of what constitutes ‘evidence’ in your disciplines, and of what is
acceptable as a knowledge claim; detailed knowledge - and competent
application of - at least one method; critical analysis of one of the
standard methods in your discipline showing that you understand both its
strengths and istrands and theoretical concepts in your discipline; understanding how
theory shapes your research question; ability to contribute something
useful to the theoretical debate in your area; [Miscellaneous] ability
to do all the above yourself, rather than simply doing what your
supervisor tells you; awareness of where your work fits in relation to
the discipline, and what it contributes to the discipline; mature
overview of the discipline.”
If a candidate cannot demonstrate most of these skills, he or she cannot
teach and supervise research students. It is likely that he or she
cannot conduct research without these skills.
Therefore, demonstrating these skills establishes the basis for awarding
or denying the PhD.
4) A useful proposition
The nature of the PhD as a license requires the candidate to demonstrate
solid skills - Rugg and Petre compare these to carpentry and cabinet
making. That generally entails a standard, grind-it-out project. There
is more to research, however. Because artists and designers seek
adventure, some supervisors encourage students to pursue a high
potential and possible high-risk personal research project at the same
time that they develop the straightforward project required for the PhD.
This approach to supervising clarifies the distinction between the wide
latitude available to us when we choose our own research with full
freedom, and the necessary qualities and skill we must demonstrate to
pass our licensing exam.
5) Problematic propositions
From time to time, people suggest that these criteria are matters of
personal preference and taste rather than common standards across most
fields.
This would only be the case if normative technical research skills or
formal criteria were irrelevant. In some places, of course, this is the
case, and in some nations, each university determines its own PhD
criteria based on a license to award degrees rather than based on
continual renewed accreditation. When the right to award a PhD degree is
based on a purely political decision without review or external
assessment for quality, it is possible to earn a PhD simply by
persuading an institution to award the PhD. This establishes one of the
clear distinctions between the degrees awarded in North America with its
major accrediting bodies and the UK with its ancient university law.
While the Research Assessment Exercise should help potential students to
sort out the difference between better degree programs and lesser degree
programs, it does not help them to sort out the institutions or
dependents that ought not to be awarding a PhD at all. In some nations,
the system works in such a way that national agencies serve the function
of the accrediting associations of North America – while the right to
award the degree is granted by a national agency, the same agency
reviews education constantly, and it is possible to revoke the right to
award a degree by changing the status or rating of a university.
The “two PhD problem” is entangled with the argument that only an art or
design school knows what a PhD in art or design ought to be. There are
two problems here – and neither of these is the two PhD problem. The
first is that the PhD has to do with the many issues I stated earlier in
this note. The second is that this view proposes political grounds for
degree awards – rather like the philosopher-gangster played by Rod
Steger in On the Waterfront, the argument is that you have the right to
do anything you can get away with. This argument suggests that a PhD
award is little more than a negotiated outcome. Stated another way, the
argument here is that negotiating a PhD from an institution that has the
right to award one is, in itself, a reasonable criterion for the degree.
This criterion renders the PhD something like awarding the rights to an
oil field or unclaimed farmland. The qualities do not rest in the
demonstrated work that earns the degree. The quality of the PhD rests in
the political right to grant the degree. Of coufurther political question. The authorization that gives an institution
the right to award a PhD is a public good. It reflects the claims and
goals of any given society acting through the educational system and a
national structure of rules and standards governing legitimate degree
awards. If there were no stated standards based on common criteria, then
a PhD would soon have no legitimate transferable value.
The failure to establish common values would effectively mean that the
PhD itself has no consistent meaning. That is odd, since only a
consistent meaning makes the degree valuable. I presume most candidates
want a PhD precisely because it has a widely recognized legitimate
meaning. As a criterion, therefore, politics begs the question.
Ewe discussed these issues and more in the AHRC Practice-Led Review
Workshop.
6) PhD research is a specific subset of all research
PhD research involves a subset of all possible kinds of research. It is
a subset because the PhD serves to train researchers in the skills they
will use in independent research. It is specific because it entails
demonstrating skills that graduated doctors will need in teaching,
supervising, and training the next generation of researchers.
Best regards,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
Telephone +61 3 9214 6755
www.swinburne.edu.au/design
--
Reference
Rugg, Gordon, and Marian Petre. 2004. The Unwritten Rules of PhD
Research. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.
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