Table Of ContentTransformative Doctoral Research Practices for
Professionals
CRITICAL ISSUES IN THE FUTURE OF LEARNING AND TEACHING
Volume 12
Series Editors:
Britt-Marie Apelgren, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Pamela Burnard, University of Cambridge, UK
Nese Cabaroglu, University of Cukurova, Turkey
Pamela M. Denicolo, University of Surrey, UK
Nicola Simmons, Brock University, Canada
Founding Editor:
Michael Kompf† (Brock University, Canada)
Scope:
This series represents a forum for important issues that do and will affect how learning
and teaching are thought about and practised. All educational venues and situations
are undergoing change because of information and communications technology,
globalization and paradigmatic shifts in determining what knowledge is valued.
Our scope includes matters in primary, secondary and tertiary education as well
as community-based informal circumstances. Important and signifcant differences
between information and knowledge represent a departure from traditional
educational offerings heightening the need for further and deeper understanding of
the implications such opportunities have for infuencing what happens in schools,
colleges and universities around the globe. An inclusive approach helps attend to
important current and future issues related to learners, teachers and the variety of
cultures and venues in which educational efforts occur. We invite forward-looking
contributions that refect an international comparative perspective illustrating
similarities and differences in situations, problems, solutions and outcomes.
Transformative Doctoral Research Practices for
Professionals
Edited by
Pamela Burnard, Tatjana Dragovic, Julia Flutter and Julie Alderton
University of Cambridge, UK
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6300-628-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-629-3 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-630-9 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the
exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vi
Acknowledgements xi
List of Illustrations xiii
Introduction
1. Fields and Oceans: Helping Professional Doctorate Students to Orientate
Themselves and Navigate through Their Practitioner Research Journeys 3
Julia Flutter
Part 1: Mapping Doctoral Practices
2. The Professional Doctorate 15
Pamela Burnard
3. PhD: Been There, Done That: So, Why Do a (Second), Professional
Doctorate? 29
Karen Ottewell and Wai Mun Lim
4. Three Agendas for Researching Professionals: Challenging and
Developing Your Thinking about Your Doctoral Practices 43
Simon Dowling
Part 2: Theorising Doctorate Journeying
5. The Art and Craft of Professional Doctorates 63
Tatjana Dragovic
6. The Teacher as a Learner: Theorising a Shift in Mindset at the Start of
My Professional Doctorate Journey 75
Gavin Turner
7. Professional Doctorate Researching and the Changing ‘Self’: A Personal
and Professional Journey 91
James Edward Knowles
8. Moving from Practitioner to Researching Professional: Shifts of Identity 101
Denise Whalley
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part 3: Generating Impact
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Julia Flutter
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Rebecca Kitchen
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Riikka Hofmann
Conclusion
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slanoiseforP 751
Julia Flutter
A tuob eht Csrotubirtno 361
iv
PREFACE
Being a researcher is a challenge. Being a professional practitioner in education is a
challenge. The idea of being a professional who bridges both practice and research
describes well someone who is doing a professional education doctorate; an even
greater challenge, which has been largely under-represented and under-theorised in
higher education globally.
Who elects to do a professional education doctorate or doctorate of education?
Professionals who are practitioners – that is, those who ‘practice and develop
expertise’ (‘do it’) in a profession and wish to become researchers or scholars who
‘study it’ and conduct research. The researching professional is a hybrid category
of those who ‘do it’ and ‘study it’ simultaneously. Professionals who elect to do a
professional (education) doctorate differ from those who elect to a part-time PhD
because they may not be researching their own practice.
Among the many problems with which doctoral communities must grapple is the
practical dynamics of what makes professional education doctorates really worth
doing. When do people feel most empowered, engaged, and creative? When do
both new and established doctoral researchers, and their supervisors and lecturers,
feel most challenged and stimulated: when doing research or when supporting or
teaching students working on professional doctorates?
The initiative for a book on Transformative Doctoral Research Practices for
Professionals, encompassing a variety of different viewpoints, from students to
lecturers, supervisors and course managers, arises from a need for critical insight
into the doing, supporting, teaching and learning of doctoral research.
The purpose of this edited volume is, primarily, to explore the distinct research
practices and unique journeying of professional practitioner-researchers and their
supervisors and lecturers who stand at the centre of doctoral education. While the
topics feature critical issues that characterize professional doctorates, the ways in
which these scholars have chosen to address their journeying illustrate the diversity
of voices in practice, with project examples from within and beyond educational
settings.
1
This volume offers the first institutional-specific collection in the form of a
collaboratively authored volume, with the purpose and goal of sharing the lived-
through debates, deliberations, challenges and experiences of a group of professional
doctoral students, their supervisors and lecturers. This book is designed to help
professional doctoral students and their supervisors and educators understand
what doctoral education means in contemporary practice and to reflect on, address
and integrate, an understanding of the practical and theoretical issues involved in
journeying as a doctoral student. It provides a valuable showcase of key themes
and contemporary issues as experienced by a diversity of voices in an international
vii
PREFACE
community of professional doctoral students and their educators whose voices will
relate to an international audience. This group of doctoral students draws from diverse
disciplines which include education, business, veterinary science, physiotherapy,
and counselling.
The book showcases the mapping of professional practices at different phases and
stages of a five year doctoral journey, the imperative of reflexivity as one moves
from practitioner to researching professional and scholar identities, and the placing of
‘practice’ at the centre of doctorates. Within the scenario of one institution, the aims
of the volume can be articulated as questions, such as: What does it mean to be a
doctoral researcher and what practices are of central concern to the critical reflexivity
and positioning involved with the outer and inner journeys it engenders? Why and
how do writing practices challenge and delight doctoral researchers, supervisors and
doctoral educators engaged in creating and supporting the development of innovative
portfolio doctorates? And what is their notion of a ‘professional’ doctorate and
‘doctorateness’? When do studies make a ripple and/or a splash? How do we think
about and address crucial issues surrounding the outcomes and impact of our research?
How does theorising practice play a role in the creation of a new professional identity
(of a researching professional) and in the journeying of a professional doctoral
researcher, supervisor and doctorate educator and how do professional doctorates
represent, facilitate and generate impact on practice and participation within and
across disciplinary and institutional structures and practices?
The aim of this book, therefore, is to engage and explore some of the critical
issues for doctoral students and educators in the teaching and learning of professional
doctoral journeying. The voices of novice researchers, as well as developing and
established researchers, are put together to create, in their own right, a rationale for
why professional doctoral research matters. The manner in which the book has been
compiled will give doctoral educators and students an innovative and appealing way
of deliberating on the diverse paths and critical issues arising in professional doctoral
research which reform and transform professional practice. The contributions
highlight the latest theories and research approaches which have been developed in
practice.
The book is divided into three main parts: Part 1 ‘Mapping doctoral practices’,
Part 2 ‘Theorising doctoral journeying’, and Part 3 ‘Generating impact’.
The poem that follows is offered as a way of thanking every author who shared
their journeying, their voices and their research with us, the readers. It is also an
expression of (and site for disturbance of the usual way of being and becoming,
thinking and doing, teaching and learning), what it is to be a professional researcher.
Sometimes it’s just not enough to talk or reflect, read or write in conventional forms
about the rich and fruitful experience of doctoral work.
I encourage all doctoral educators and students who read this book to embrace
the question and issues raised within Transformative Doctoral Research Practices
for Professionals and to maybe rethink the role that writing has in your practice, and
how it is represented in doctoral education and in research.
viii
PREFACE
The Reflexive Researching Professional by Pamela Burnard
We talk, we reflect, we think, we share the individual account
How this or that
rap or rhythm, practice or perception, article or chapter
moves us
We do. We study. We theorize the ripples that change us
How personal the practice;
How professional practice is personal
Reflecting on the person, the profession, the researching professional
Doing a professional doctorate
How practice is reflective yet may not be reflexive
How practice can be research or practice as research
Playing with and reflecting on ideas, opinions, assumptions and experiences,
Documenting, representing, seeing and re-seeing and unpacking practices with new
Sight, in-sight into words, images, metaphors
Reflecting on the unspoken
Articulating the taken-for-granted
Reflexively fighting familiarity
Doing and theorizing research
Doing research, as researching professionals
Into the night
Doing research, writing our selves
Without silencing voices
Theorizing professional lives
Writing our selves in re-search
Pamela Burnard
NOTE
1
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, Doctor of Education programme (see
http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/courses/graduate/doctoral/edd/)
ix
