Thanks to Ken and Meredith for asking for contributions from people in different points in their career to a dialogue that addresses how PhD studies in Design might be advanced.
I’m responding to this from two perspectives. The first is from what I and the other members of the group that produces and edits the scholarly journal “Dialectic” have had to confront/deal with over the course of the last two-and-a-half years re: issues related to research and scholarship in design, and attempts by potential authors write about their endeavors in these areas. The second is from what I personally have experienced as a grant reviewer over the course of the past 15 years for 1) the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts), 2) a small group of (U.S.-based) federally funded independent agencies, 3) and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), an state-of-Texas organization that funds research in several areas across the higher education spectrum here.
I thank Danielle Wilde, Nigel Cross, Erik Stolterman and Stephen Allard for what they offered in their responses to this call for ideas and opinions.
What I offer below is not numbered in order of import.
01
I too have now “witnessed”—if that’s the right verb—in the roles described above, far too many instances of doctoral candidates in design programs who have not been immersed in learning experiences at the MASTER’S level of study that should have taught them how to know and deploy specific theoretical approaches to whatever research and/or scholarship they are attempting. Not understanding the need to “think about how and why you might want to think about what you’re doing, or what you propose to do” across the graduate spectrum—at least in the U.S.—seems to me to be more problematic over the course of the past decade or so since I started working with grad students in 1998. My colleague Keith Owens and I introduce master’s candidates to theoretical approaches and methods in separate but “dovetailing” courses to first year, master’s level students each fall, and we’ve found that doing this is essential to their eventual success at both the master’s and the doctoral level.
Master’s level is ALSO—we have found—where potential doctoral candidates in design need to be taught how to AND HOW NOW TO craft an effectively analytical, broadly informed review of literature that will allow them to grasp “where” what they’re examining or inquiring about, or propose to, “fits and doesn’t fit” within the extant canon of scholarship in AND AROUND their work.
02
As a journal producer and co-editor, and as someone who has taught graduate level critical writing courses for almost 20 years, I’ve read a wide variety of attempts—a key term—at many different types of writing. The level of quality inherent in so many of the attempts at scholarly writing I/we (at Dialectic, as grant reviewers) see on a monthly basis has degraded significantly over the past decade or so. A recent set of informal surveys at five design educators’ and design research conferences held in the U.S. since the summer of 2015 indicate that “grad-level writing,” of any type, is only taught prior to the beginning of the thesis or dissertation proposal phase in about 15% of the 80+ institutions whose faculty responded. SO—this means that, at least in the U.S., immersing graduate candidates in learning experiences that challenge them to formulate and structure arguments well, support contentions with viably gathered or constructed evidence, and/or engage in well-framed criticism or scholarly inquiry is NOT occurring at the MASTER’S level, much less beyond.
Specifically, here are some things that I/we see in attempts at scholarly writing in my/our role(s) as a producer, co-editor and grant reviewer most often:
a. a gross inability to structure a written piece, in its entirety, so that a reader can logically follow the thread of the author’s narrative;
b. a severe lack of well-crafted, good ol’ fashioned-but-essential, phrase-to-phrase, sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph prose structure;
c. an often mind-blowing void of cited scholarship (it’s NOT OK to be immersed in doctoral experience, or to have recently emerged from one, without being able to reference and situate at least some knowledge of the seminal/foundational work done by recognized scholars and researchers in our discipline);
d. (this is directly related to c.): too many MASTER’S candidates in design DON’T READ THE SCHOLARSHIP IN AND AROUND OUR DISCIPLINE, or any of the excellent resources that Danielle mentioned in her post, and neither do far too many of those who teach them, which does NOT bode well for them as they enter the doctoral level of study;
e. attempts at writing that have NOT been “critically swept” by someone with significant scholarly writing experience.
03
Something that, despite explicit instructions to the contrary, I’ve encountered all too often as a grant reviewer: a failure among (mostly) recently conferred PhD holders to qualify the broader impacts of whatever a given research or scholarly undertaking will actually have, or could have, on the bases of knowledge that informs a given discipline, or a given scholarly approach, or a specific population group living or working in a particular type of situation, or how a set of procedures or protocols affecting a given set of circumstances might be changed. These are the sorts of issues that dissertation or thesis committees are supposed to confront head on during the EARLY stages of a candidate’s formulations in a critical dialogue session that transpires soon after a thesis or dissertation proposal is submitted. Failing to do this is a gross abrogation of grad-level faculty responsibility.
04
We/I have seen all too many (more than a hundred since 2006) instances of people who teach design or who purport to be somehow engaging in design research trying to pass off what I’ll refer to here as “mere reportage of the cool project I/we just finished” as research. I/we read a large volume of material that consists of authors expending prodigious effort attempting to justify why they’ve decided to undertake a particular endeavor without also articulating how and why what they have undertaken/formulated (or will undertake eventually) is significant in terms of the type(s) of new or re-contextualized knowledge it will help others construct. The key questions “why should anyone care? What useful, usable, desirable KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING will come from your effort(s)?” either were never posed, or have not been addressed. Merely reporting out on your latest, (often small-scale, small n-group, short timespan) project does NOT constitute research. Neither does, as Jorge Frascara has oft-reminded us, mere visual exploration. “What research is NOT” is an issue that (again) needs critical address (and perhaps redress) at the master’s and the doctoral level in design.
FIN.
+ + + + + + + + +
Michael R. Gibson
Professor, Communication Design
Graduate Programs Coordinator, Design Research and Interaction Design
The University of North Texas
College of Visual Arts and Design
https://unt-ixd.com/
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Producer, Dialectic: a scholarly journal of thought leadership, education and practice in the discipline of visual communication design published by the AIGA DEC (Design Educators Community) and Michigan Publishing
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