Dear Teena,

Within the frame of your specific statement, I’d agree with you. What
we do as scholars is and must be holistic.

The case remains – for me at least – that a research intensive
university requires scholars who can work across several research
traditions and triangulate multiple modes of research to answer
questions and solve problems. Without arguing that everyone should seek
only people who can publish journal articles or research monographs, we
do, and publications are one criterion we consider when hiring anyone
above the junior lecturer ranks. We also consider demonstrated skills in
professional practice and we consider teaching. Since the university
requires a PhD and demonstrated research capacity, so do we. But it’s
not simply because the university requires it – we need people who can
supervise doctoral students, and we need people who can handle students
working across a number of research approaches. This means we need
people with a solid research foundation who can themselves coach others
in multiple approaches, as well as supervising and teaching them to
write and to publish in journals.

Do I agree with your views on holism and the linkage between multiple
approaches across all four domains of teaching, research, professional
practice, and writing? Yes, I do. This does not mean that we would be
interested in someone with abilities in only one or two of these
domains.

The full university mission requires staff members who work across all
four domains, and the senior appointments are designated for those who
can win significant grants and work with industry. Few design scholars
meet all these criteria, and few university-based faculties meet all
these goals. Part of the nature of work in the university today involves
meetings national and international standards, while fulfilling
university goals. 

The question is where you want to work. If you want to work in an
independent art and design school, a private school focused on
professional practice, a polytechnic, a vocational school, or a
teaching-only university, you can get by without research. The goals are
clear in a research intensive university.

While I think that research capacity is vital to the future of the
professional, I don’t argue that everyone ought to undertake research
and I don’t believe that everyone needs a PhD. There are many kinds of
institutions and many kinds of careers. That’s another thread. 

This thread started with a question: “Are PhDs a threat to design
education?”

The answer is no. The PhD is the foundation of design education in the
research intensive university.

Yours,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61
39214 6078 | Faculty 

--

Teena Clerke wrote:

—snip—

I have been speaking about the role of dialogue between people
positioned differently institutionally to help establish, and broaden,
the disciplinary landscape in design from the bottom up, so to speak,
which involves the range of activities in which an academic participates
as a holistic endeavour involving research, teaching, etc., as opposed
to the idea that they can be separated into distinct spheres of
activity. 

I personally find it difficult to separate dialogues and subsequent
reflection about my research from the research itself, as my
epistemological position follows Laurel Richardson, which is the idea of
research THROUGH writing, and Terry Threadgold, which is the idea of
research as co-production between participants and researcher, through
the practice of what she calls rewriting. Hence my hankering for
considering research in its myriad modes on this list, including the
daily dialogical interactions that in my case, further my own process of
becoming scholarly and presumably, because I am completing a PhD,
contribute to the knowledge landscape in design.

—snip—