Greetings Edgar, and all,
Thanks for initiating this useful conversation. In this post I will attempt to briefly sketch out some of the historical socio-economic context of PhDs in design through creative practice in UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Higher education underwent several massive changes in the 20th century. In the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, design education shifted from elite colleges, to large vocational polytechnics, to universities. PhDs in design through creative practice emerged in the 1990s within the context of these massive changes to higher education.
From the late 19th century through to the end of the Second World War, most design education in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, was taught in relatively independent elite colleges of art and design. After the war, higher education provision was massively expanded to educate or retrain returning service men and women in predominantly vocational science and technology disciplines (Archer, 1995, p. 4). For a time, most of the art and design colleges resisted the change to vocational education, but by the 1960s most were incorporated into large centralised vocational polytechnics. Studio-based instruction by doing projects was the predominant teaching and learning approach. Studio tutors were predominantly art and design practitioners, and few were trained educationists or researchers.
After the severe global economic recession that affected much of the developed world in the late 1970s and early 1980s, higher education in UK, Australia, and New Zealand was transformed according to Neoliberal economic policy and New Public Management theory. Consequently, the original centralised polytechnic concept was abandoned, and the former polytechnics were converted into a decentralised network of self-governing universities that competed with each other for government funding (Archer, 1995, p. 7).
A great deal of pressure was put on art and design schools to transform into research-producing university departments. According to Archer (1995, p. 7-8), in the UK in the 1989, “there were fewer than ten university courses on engineering product design. By 1994, there were more than 200”. This competitive environment and focus on research also increased pressure to award research degrees such as the PhD, since PhD completion rates were an important performance indicator.
Some design departments had staff with experience in supervising research degrees, which smoothed their transition to the research university context, but many design departments were staffed by practitioner-teachers. In addition, in the late 1980s and 1990s, postmodernist and post-structuralist theory was influential, bringing with it a new kind of skepticism towards research in the science tradition. PhDs in design through creative practice emerged in this context.
Many of the earliest papers on PhDs through creative practice were published in the early 1990s and are often concerned with rationalising art and design practice as research for PhD degrees (see f.ex: Agnew, 1993; Allison, 1991; Coyne & Snodgrass, 1991; Frayling, 1993; Gray & Malins, 1993; Malins & Gray, 1995; Newbury, 1996a, 1996b; Press, 1995; Seago, 1995). The point of view of many of these early papers is more influenced by visual arts and applied arts than technology and engineering. The papers’ point of view reflect the influence the ‘Art and Design’ stream of design education in the UK, rather than the ‘Design and Technology’ stream.
Best regards
Luke
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Luke Feast, Ph.D. | Industrial Design | Senior Lecturer | Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies | Auckland University of Technology | New Zealand | Email [log in to unmask] | +64 9 921 9999 ext 6017
Agnew, K. (1993). The Spitfire: legend or history? An argument for a new research culture in design. Journal of design history, 6(2), 121-130.
Allison, B. (1991). Open door on research in art and design. Design and Technology Teaching, 23(3), 157-160, 164.
Archer, L. B. (1995). Designerly activity and higher degrees: Seminar papers from a staff development short course. Loughborough: Loughborough University.
Coyne, R., & Snodgrass, A. (1991). Is designing mysterious? challenging the dual knowledge thesis. Design Studies, 12(3), 124-131.
Frayling, C. (1993). Research in art and design Royal College of Art Research Papers (Vol. 1, pp. 1-5). London.
Gray, C., & Malins, J. (1993). Research procedures/methology for artists & designers Art & Design Series. Aberdeen: Centre for Research in Art & Design.
Malins, J., & Gray, C. (1995). Appropriate Research Methodologies for Artists, Designers & Craftspersons: Research as a Learning Process presented at the meeting of the Making it, UK Crafts Council Conference, Wakefield.
Newbury, D. (1996a). Knowledge and research in art and design. Design Studies, 17(2), 215-219.
Newbury, D. (1996b). Research Perspectives in Art and Design. In Research Perspectives & Art and Design: Case Studies (pp. 7-18)
Press, M. (1995). It's Research, Jim... presented at the meeting of the Design Interfaces conference, European Academy of Design, University of Salford.
Seago, A. (1995). Research Methods for MPhil & PhD Students in Art and Design: Contrasts and Conflicts Royal College of Art Research Papers (Vol. 1). London.
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