Hi Peter, Gabriele, Imara, and all,
Thank you for your useful replies. I agree that a design PhD is not a licence or certification of practice.
Peter, I appreciated your point that “A certifying test does not qualify one's ability to make good practice decisions in real-world contexts.” Indeed, it's too much to ask that certifying tests provide predictive evidence of successful practice in the real world. I assume the vast majority of car accidents involve people holding valid driver’s licences.
Certifying tests exclude people who cannot meet certain minimum standards. It is justified to institutionalise certain minimum standards in some situations. For example, I think it is right that driver’s licence tests exclude people who lack visual acuity to a significant extent.
Is it justified that the PhD excludes people who cannot show minimum competence in research? Or should we change PhD standards to include, for example, research directed at not-knowing and the unthought (Borgdorff, 2011, p. 74)?
Admittedly, the analogy between a driver’s licence test and a PhD is not a powerful argument. But it seems unjustified to me to change the minimum standards for a driver’s licence test to include those who cannot see.
Regards,
Luke
Borgdorff, H. (2011). Where Are We Today? The State of the Art in Artistic Research. In J. Ritterman, G. Bast, & J. Mittelstraß (Eds.), Art and research: Can artists be researchers? (pp. 57-79). Vienna: Springer-Verlag/Wien.
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