The Creative PhD

Challenges, Opportunities, Reflection

Tara Brabazon, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight, Natalie Hills

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839827921
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Doctorates awarded based on artefact and exegeses, and enabled through creative-led research, are a minority enrolment which suffer from wildly diverse examination expectations and assumptions about quality. Widening the disciplinary parameters and currency of this kind of doctorate, The Creative PhD is the first book that challenges the standards, structure and value of this research. The authors, themselves leading authorities on doctoral education, break fresh ground by demonstrating that rather than being intrinsically wedded to the creative arts or media studies, arts-based research practice doctorates can transcend traditional humanities subjects, becoming instead a model of organizing knowledge, developing methodologies and presenting research. Offering a critical reflection on the contemporary state of the PhD, the authors probe and reshape creative-led research to increase transparency for doctoral students, supervisors and examiners, inviting readers to access a new pathway to how original research is created, supervised and assessed.

1

THE SPECIFICITY OF CREATIVE-LED THESES

Tara Brabazon

The Doctor of Philosophy is an international qualification, with international currency and mobility. Yet, the trans-local distinctions between the programs are vast. Indeed, the complexity and diversity of the doctorate means that it is not – and never will be – one “thing.” The key challenge is to create a culture of equivalence that confirms quality and standards. The United Kingdom, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia maintain a similar system with a three-year candidature and no coursework elements, unless enrolled in a professional doctorate. The dissertation is between 70,000 and 100,000 words in length. The North American model incorporates coursework, compulsory or mandatory elements and testing, then culminating in a thesis. Other national systems deploy a diversity or combination of modes. For example, the University of Lancaster has a campus in Ghana. That partnership means that the British model for doctoral education is deployed. Regulatory models are as distinct in these jurisdictions as the examination protocols. Most systems feature some form of oral examination or public event. Currently, the majority of Australian universities do not feature a viva, with the manuscript being assessed as a self-standing document by examiners. Students may publish and attend conferences, but most systems and regulations allow a PhD to be examined and passed without publications emerging through the candidature.

One characteristic spans these national systems. The PhD must make an original contribution to knowledge. The masters’ research holds a distinct and distinctive place in the higher degree portfolio, providing a synthesizing research function. The other characteristic of a PhD is that it is guided research. It is constructed by a student with the support of expert, academic supervisors or advisors. Regular meetings are held and feedback is offered on the research. Diverse modes of supervision are also in place, with most systems requiring some form of mandatory training and professional development for both the students and the supervisors/advisors.

Adding to this trans-national complexity is a diversity of doctoral modes. There are six distinctive modes of doctorate.

• Traditional doctorate, composed of 70,000–100,000 words
• Practice-led/creative-led research, composed of an artifact and exegesis
• PhD by prior publication
• PhD by publication
• Professional doctorate
• Higher doctorate.¹

All are different. The challenge for supervisors, administrators, examiners and regulators is creating standards, protocols and strategies to ensure that originality and rigor are intact through the diversity of modes. We often fail, but the goal is to ensure there is a parity of quality and standards. Applied research often moves to the professional doctorate, like the Doctor of Education or the Doctor of Public Health. Blue sky research enfolds into the traditional doctorate. At its best during the candidature, the PhD student experience encompasses a customized and effective professional development program, a diversity of teaching experiences, conference presentations, publications and public engagements and communication of research.

Yet, our universities are not isolated institutions. The twin impacts of widening participation and vocationalism have left their fingerprints on higher education and tightened the priorities within a doctoral program. The PhD through its relatively short history was an educational pathway to governmental bureaucracy and academia. Yet currently, the majority of graduating PhD students do not remain in higher education. Therefore, issues of employment, employability and professional development attend doctoral programs like an eager if discarded lover. There are generational shifts. How a supervisor was supervised is not appropriate or relevant supervision in the current system. The political economy has transformed, alongside the workforce inside and outside the university. Experience is not enough. Expertise in andragogy is required. Yet, singular systems or standards will not suffice. The key problem is based on an assumption: it is possible to create a culture of equivalence when admitting, supervising and examining the diverse doctoral forms. To use two outlier and minoritarian modes, how can the very specific regulations for a PhD by prior publication be evaluated against the professional doctorate, which often include coursework requirements that are often “double-badged” as master courses? How do these modes then operate in the artifact and exegesis thesis where ideologies of “art” and “quality” flutter around the regulations? How do these outlier doctorates impact on the traditional PhD? The problem remains that through the literature on the creative-led PhD, particularly the creative-writing PhD, the focus has been on how distinctive and special the students and scholars are within this cohort. Actually, the intent of a PhD mode is not to be distinctive, but to conform to regulations and reach international standards. A PhD is assessed. It is examined. It must be assessed against viable and clear criteria, policies and procedures. Yet, Derek Neale noted “an alarming variation in quality of regulation, supervision and provision for Creative Writing PhD study across the sector” (Neale, 2017). This variation is a problem and a well-deep challenge for quality assurance in each individual institution and also national systems.

Raymond Williams, the affable godfather of Cultural Studies, described culture as “one of the two or three most difficult words in the language” (Williams, 1976). That phrase was used in his remarkable Keywords, published in the 1960s. Now, there is another word that claws with controversy and has become equally difficult to deploy with clarity: “creative.” A noun and an adjective, it can refer to people, objects or processes. But, it creates separation from the practices and behaviors of daily life. This word is a wedge or an intellectual moat that blocks theorization and commentary. If something is “creative,” then it is disconnected from scholarship, industrialization, money and critique. Even creative industries, although as a phrase vying with the Fourth Industrial Revolution as an opaque cliché of our time, refers to how money can be made from creativity. But the word “creativity” itself floats through discussions, without anchor or definitive interpretation and precise recognition of the word’s difficult etymology. Creativity is now part of self-help, which only adds to the ambiguity. Mark McGuinness published his 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives in 2018. It is a book of passion, desire and belief. Highlights of the prose include, “if you don’t love your work, you can forget it as a creative” (McGuinness, 2018) and “forget discipline. Focus on desire” (McGuinness, 2018, p. 380). Such mantras are antipodally disconnected from the requirements of research. Discipline, slog, persistence and resilience are required. Desire and love will not sustain research projects more generally, and doctoral programs in particular. Being “creative” has become a space apart, disconnected from the actual work required, as demonstrated through creative industries theories, to manage “portfolio careers” and the “gig economy.” These phrases are used to mask unstable work, zero-hour contracts and precariat labor. Such ideologies do not stop at the gates of a university and such assumptions spill into teaching, learning and research.

While creative “silos” have been created, this is a rational and reasonable response to a neglect of this paradigm, field, theories and methodologies. When reviewing the textbooks on qualitative research, the absence is clear. For example, Lisa Given’s 100 Questions (and Answers) About Qualitative Research has no section on creative-led methods (Given, 2016). Question 53 asks about visual methods. The answer presents “textual methods,” without semiotics or social semiotics mentioned, and “photographic methods” which was described as “participants use still or video cameras to document their experiences” (Given, 2016, p. 38). Visual ethnography, creative-led methods or photovoice were not discussed. Therefore, with these creative-led methods invisible and marginalized even within a textbook on qualitative research methods, it is logical, rational and understandable to create a silo – an intellectual ghetto – where there is some scholarly literacy about these fields.

These paradoxes and problems raise foundational questions for anyone working in higher degrees and doctoral studies. The challenges are myriad, including the analytical language to summon research. When reviewing the issues emerging through artifact and exegesis theses in the portfolio of doctorates, a Times Higher Education article conveyed concerns with existing academic protocols.

Practice-based PhDs, where doctorates are awarded for “non-textual” submissions such as a work of art, are becoming more common. Yet researchers in the creative fields still lack a “properly developed language” to describe what they are doing. (Corbyn, 2008)

To create, develop and disseminate this “language,” a conference at Northumbria University was initiated with a provocative title: “All Maps Welcome: doctoral research beyond reading and writing.” The delegates explored how “non-textual” modes and forms of communication were embedded into scholarly processes. This was a positive and welcoming space. Yet, the challenging meta question remained unasked: Should doctoral programs welcome “all maps”? What happens to a PhD as a degree when “reading and writing” are transcended? If scholars move “beyond” reading and writing, then what is the point of research? An even more significant question is if all maps are welcome, then how are the majority of doctoral theses and research protocols impacted?

Reading and writing still matter. Indeed, the parameters of acceptable reading and writing are broadening, and creative-led theses are part of that movement and widening of the frame of scholarship. But once more, the key problem is validating diversity and multimodality while ensuring quality and standards. Louise Ravelli, Brian Paltridge and Sue Starfield presented this problem with care.

The doctoral thesis in the creative and performing arts poses significant challenges to universities, both for the institutions themselves which need to supervise and examine these theses, and for students who need to find a way to blend their creative practice with more conventional notions of research. (Ravelli, Paltridge, & Starfield, 2014)

The focus on “the blend” is significant and important. A blend transforms both initiating compounds to create something different, meaningful and worthwhile. This is a key verb, metaphor and trope. The blend activated in creative-led research will not only transform creative acts, but also the doctorate itself. Therefore, for supervisors, students and examination managers, the pivotal task in the contemporary university is interface management. Standards must be set and met. Writing matters, particularly with regard to style. As Steven Pinker confirmed, “every writer must calibrate the degree of specialization in her language against her best guess of the audience’s familiarity with the topic” (Pinker, 2014). That audience includes the examiners. Finding the correct mode of expressing research, connecting the artifact and exegesis, remains the specific challenge.

The first Doctor of Philosophy was awarded by an English university in 1920. A D. Phil. at Oxford (Noble, 1994), it was followed by a PhD awarded from Cambridge the following year (Simpson, 1983). Harvard awarded a Doctor of Education in 1921. A much wider gap awaited the first PhD awarded in Australia, which was in 1948 from the University of Melbourne. The University of Sydney followed three years later (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000). Of most significance for this book, Australia’s first professional doctorate was the Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) from the University of Wollongong in 1984. It predated the qualifications in law (1989) (Shanahan, 1996) and education (1990). In other words, while Australia delayed the introduction of a Doctor of Philosophy, the nation’s universities pioneered innovative and diversified higher degrees. Bourner, Bowden and Laing noted a distinction in the English university sector which survives to this day. Pre-1992 universities “protected” the doctorate by proliferating other more descriptive and different titles, while post-1992 universities denied the diversification of doctorates favoring a single qualification.

Whereas the “old” universities have been concerned to protect the “gold standard” of the PhD by allowing the development of alternative titles for professional doctorates, the “new” universities have been more concerned to avoid proliferation of new doctoral titles so that variants have been squeezed into the PhD. This may reflect the greater self-confidence of “old” universities as long-established awarding bodies. (Bourner & Laing, 2001)

What they recognized is that older universities have been more satisfied to use diverse doctoral designations, while “new” universities overloaded too many genres of original scholarship into that title. Such under-confidence reveals profound problems for international education. This meant that inappropriate methods, approaches and presentations of research were squashed into a singular qualification: the Doctor of Philosophy. By encouraging and supporting a diversity of doctoral titles, with clear descriptions, criteria and instructions for examiners, staff and students can make informed selections about their enrollment. Examiner dissonance will decline. Such a system is better for postgraduates, more effective for staff and most importantly, offers a way to secure the future of the academy in all its diversity, rigor and breadth.

The Doctor of Philosophy is special. It is still rare. Some sources from the United States cite that 50% of people admitted to a doctoral program do not graduate from the program (Lovitts, 2001). This attrition problem is invisible and under-researched and rarely logged in public documents because it is embarrassing. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the scale and scope of this problem, each individual student is blamed for their “failures,” their attrition and isolation. Yet for such a scale of “failure” to emerge means that it is not an issue of a single individual who cannot “cope” or “manage.” Research has shown that the students who leave doctoral programs and the students who graduate from them are equally intellectually able (Lovitts, 2001). The case is made with greater effectiveness when realizing that the attrition rate for women is higher than men and racial minorities have a higher attrition rate than white men. Therefore, there are problems: difficult, dense challenges that require profound, social-justice infused interventions. Studies of the American humanities programs have offered comparative studies of completion rates, not only against the biological and social sciences, but also within the humanities disciplines. The generalizability of this data set is not clear, because of the coursework requirements for US-based doctorates and the length of the candidatures. Also, the survey set was small. However, the study confirmed that the performing arts had the highest completion rates. Languages, society and cultural disciplines in the humanities had the lowest. But this study demonstrates that many individual disciplines throughout the spectrum of knowledge have a completion rate below 50% of admissions, while noting the long candidatures in the North American system (Attrition in Humanities Doctorate Programs, & American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018). Obviously, the longer the enrollment, the greater the degree of personal, professional, intellectual and institutional challenges that can emerge.

Universities rarely publicize this scale of attrition from the PhD. But the scope, scale and individuated nature of this problem remains. Is there “something” that defines the PhD internationally and through all of its diverse modes? The research area of Doctoral Studies is enhancing and improving the knowledge base around the qualification. But there is still nostalgia, a summoning of the supervisor’s singular experience as if it is generalizable. Frances Kelly, a scholar in the School of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland, titled her monograph, The Idea of the PhD: The Doctorate in the Twenty-first-century Imagination (Kelly, 2017). This is an odd titling for a strange project. The word imagination is always troubling. It summons a world of Willy Wonka and flights of fancy. What is a PhD imagination? The controversies, vitriol and debates in the doctoral space are aggressive and heated. The sexual relationships between supervisors and students are being logged, acknowledged and potently regulated (Australian Council for Graduate Research, 2018). The authorship debate – debacle – where supervisors “assume” co-authorship of their student’s work is now being addressed through clear guidelines to protect the student (National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), 2018). Through such sharp, brutal and clear regulation, recognizing an exploitative history of doctoral students that has been hidden from the light and heat of governance, PhD candidatures appear like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones. Under the “light touch” regulation and governance, supervisors rip off the research of their students or add their names as authors without the requisite work. Supervisors select loyal friends from their disciplinary Star Chamber to examine their students. In such a culture, students are deeply vulnerable. Academic jobs – and jobs more generally – are scarce. Students must do anything and everything to secure reliable work, in an era of casualization, part-time and zero-hour contracts. These are ruthless, tough times that manifest devastatingly on our doctoral students. Imagination is the least of their worries.

Kelly’s book argues that the PhD is undergoing change. That is accurate. But the obviousness of the argument does not enable or assist contemporary supervision, governance or examination. Arguing that the idea of the PhD is “culturally determined … within and beyond the context of the university” (Kelly, 2017, p. 1), her theoretical framework is weak and increases the obfuscation she wishes to curtail. Describing the PhD as, “a set of ideas expressed and perpetuated in stories, images and legends, held by PhD students and graduates but also in the repertory of ordinary folk or society at large, and which enable particular practices, regarded as “normal” or how things usually go” (Kelly, 20...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1. The Specificity of Creative-led Theses
• 2. The Creative-led PhD: A Student’s Perspective
• 3. Strategies for Students Considering a Creative-led Doctorate
• 4. Multimodality: Reflection, Connection and Reframing
• 5. Creative-led Examinations and the Administrator’s Perspective
• Conclusion. Why the Creative Doctorate Matters
• References
• Index