Hi Mark,
After reading the paper there are some issues that are not totally clear to me. I will try to summarize them below:
1 - The first issue is that the word 'practice' is very tricky and it can mean many things in different contexts. For example, to me practice refers to professional practice. In that sense, to me there is no practice-based/non-practice based research, but just research, which involves practice in order to be mastered like many other activities.
2 - The second issue is that some of the type of practice-based research you mentioned in your paper might be considered (as you mentioned) action research, which is not new to research in other fields, and which has been adopted by design-research, among other methodologies from other fields.
3 - The third issue is addition to knowledge. Some of the PhDs examples you mentioned contribute to the traditional view of addition to knowledge (according to the natural science research approach), however other might not be adding to knowledge (in the traditional sense) but represent addition to the state of the art. Now, if these tools, artefacts, etc embody addition to knowledge too, or they just represent advanced product development practice? i do not know the answer, i am inclined to think they do, and commercial research is an example of that, however we should be aware that academic research and commercial research are not the same thing.
I hope this helps,
Jose
> Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:19:04 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: PhD supervision of practice as a research method?
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Having spent my early career as a practitioner; employed practice in my own
> PhD (industrial design); and now supervise/examine PhD's that include practice
> as a research method; I reflected on my experiences in the preparation of a
> paper for the 2009 International Conference of the DRS Special Interest Group
> on Experiential Knowledge (http://www.experientialknowledge.org/). When
> discussing the use of practice in research, I made the following comments in
> the abstract of my paper:
>
> "When considering the application of such methods, it is necessary to ask two
> key questions: can the process/outcomes supply robust data and does the
> researcher have the necessary capability as a practitioner to enable
> generalisations to be made. The latter issue brings into question the need for
> appropriate supervision, as judgements must be made on the capability of the
> researcher and quality/relevance of creative output i.e. do their supervisors
> need expertise in practice?".
>
> I have seen examples of poor practice that has contributed to PhD's in
> industrial/product design and have no problems articulating the deficiencies
> and impact this has on the research method. Unfortunately, their supervisors
> were unable to see this. I therefore have concerns that this may be a
> significant issue in the field of industrial/product design. It may also be an
> issue for other disciplines but have no evidence to substantiate this.
>
> I'd therefore like to offer up the potentially controversial position that PhD's
> that include practice as a research method should, preferably, be supervised
> by academics that have considerable experience as practitioners: plus a PhD
> of course!
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