This brings up an interesting observation for a survey. There may be
significant regional or international differences on expected competencies.
Below Karel indicates the non-academic functions of Terry's list to be
relevant to undergraduate education. 

Yet these are all practice oriented competencies, and in my experience these
are taught at Master's level (MDes, MA, or MBA) is they are lucky.  Many of
these are judgment based and should not be expected from recent graduates
with no work leadership experience (budgeting, quotes, administration, and
yes, ethics is judgment and not learned in class). 

In North America undergraduate education is oriented toward skill, general
liberal arts and baseline competencies that provide a basis for
specialization or practice. The MA/MDes level is a practitioner degree. The
PhD is a research degree.

Perhaps the employment markets that drive some of the fashions in education
may also drive some differences?

Peter Jones

Peter Jones, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design

OCAD University
Toronto, Canada  


Thanks for your message and list of 'doctoral abilities'. Are you sure these
are for PhD students?

I would consider only two to be applicable to a PhD-education:
- Set up and manage new research projects
- Develop new research and theory (different from their PhD)

One ability might be applicable, but this depends on the definition of
'high-level':
- High-level reasoning skills

All the others should have been acquired during a half-decent
undergraduate-course:
- Collaborate effectively in a variety of team roles
- Good team worker
- Sound administrator
- Accurate and honest budget management
- Develop quotes for work and plan workflows and resources
- Write professional documents and reports that will stand legal scrutiny
- Manage their personal and work lives professionally
- Establish and maintain professional networks
- Make sound professional and ethical judgments
- Be politically and administratively effective

As an external examiner for PhD-theses, I'm worried. I would not be able to
provide much relevant feedback on any of these abilities. Most of it seems
relevant to middle or lower-management. These are things that should be
discussed during an annual assessment of an employer and do not seem to me
as the relevant during a PhD examination.

Kind regards,
Karel.
[log in to unmask]

>>>


On 18 Jun 2012, at 09:49, Terence Love wrote:

Hello,

A significant shift is occurring in refocusing the purpose and assessment of
PhD study  towards 'Doctoral attributes or competencies'.

The nature of this change is likely to reframe and may potentially make
irrelevant current debates about the relation between 'design and art
practices and  research.

Prof Bryn Tellefsen and myself found evidence of this shift in direction
already well established by 2001 (see, Tellefsen, B., & Love, T. (made
available 2004, published date 2002). Doctoral Research in Design: The
Future of the Practice-based Doctorate. International Journal of Design
Science and Technology, 10(2), pp. 45-59 . Pre-print at
http://www.love.com.au/PublicationsTLminisite/2004/future_of_design_doctorat
e.htm )

By the late 1990s, it was clear that governments worldwide were dissatisfied
with the value  of PhD education to their societies and were already
reconfiguring the rules by which it operated. Some of the first steps were
to insist that PhDs were completed in a shorter time (3-4 years) and that
PhD candidates underwent research training that was formally delivered. At
street level this is now mostly implemented  and is the current state of
play in PhD curriculum practice.

The longer term shift, however, is to a refocusing of the purpose and
assessment of PhDs guaranteeing that all PhD candidates on completion have a
certain minimum set of skills useful to societies. This marks a very
significant shift from the idea of the purpose of a PhD as the production of
'new knowledge'.

Until recently, it has been assumed that the long thesis process,  the
US-style research training courses plus research project  and the
requirement that the PhD research would result in new findings would provide
reliable indirect evidence of the PhD candidate's possession of those
skills.

The outcomes of research into PhD education and examination have indicated
that 'PhD practices'  and recent changes in them have meant that the
assessment of the PhD outcomes is no longer guaranteed to provide a valid
assessment of that minimum skill set.


The result is an increasing shift towards assessing the doctoral skills
directly.
	
A  transitional shift towards this  assessing of doctoral skills is the
increasingly use of checklists of PhD attributes given to PhD examiners. 

At this point, these skill checklists are very loose and generic. The trend,
however, is for  these assessment checklists to evolve into a more
structured assessment of research skills independent of assessing the
research outcomes and given priority over it.

The forces and factors currently acting on the development of the PhD as an
award suggest that such a refocusing of the purposes and assessment of PhDs
will centre on assessing the PhD candidate's acquisition of the following
doctoral abilities:

Set up and manage  new research projects Develop new research and theory
(different from their PhD) High-level reasoning skills Collaborate
effectively in a variety of team roles Good team worker Sound administrator
Accurate and honest budget management Develop quotes for work and plan
workflows and resources Write professional documents and reports that will
stand legal scrutiny Manage their personal and work lives professionally
Establish and maintain professional networks Make sound professional  and
ethical judgments Be politically and administratively effective

These new directions in the purpose and assessment of PhDs are already
emerging in some of the higher quality research institutions. 

When implemented broadly they  will mark a significant educational and
organisational shift towards the PhD candidates acquisition of practical
high-level professional skills and doctoral professional attributes  and
away from the current focus of PhD candidates and supervisors on the PhD
candidate's research/practice outcomes.

Best wishes,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI PhD, B.A. (Hons) Eng, P.G.C.E
School of Design and Art, Curtin University, Western Australia Psychology
and Social Science, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia Honorary
Fellow, IEED, Management School, Lancaster University, UK

PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030
[log in to unmask]   +61 (0)4 3497 5848=