Practitioner Research at Doctoral Level

Developing Coherent Research Methodologies

Pat Drake, Linda Heath

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136895685
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In trying to juggle the various priorities of doctoral study, many individuals struggle. From gathering data, preparing papers and organising projects, to the less obvious difficulties of time management and personal development, doctoral researchers are heavily tasked. In addition to this, those undertaking practitioner research face the complication of negotiating a less traditional research setting.

As a guide to this ongoing, often neglected aspect of doctoral research, the authors of this innovative book explore in detail the challenges faced by doctoral researchers conducting practitioner research today. They show that the special nature of this research and the conditions in which the professional researcher works raise questions about producing new knowledge at work through research. This affects everything: relationships with practice; ethics; the ways that they are taught and supervised; the genre of the thesis; all place practitioners in situations which may not methodologically align with conventional approaches.

In this book the authors take the opportunity to explore these themes in an holistic and integrated way in order to develop a sense of methodological coherence for the practitioner researcher at doctoral level. In doing so, the authors argue for what is possible, suggesting that universities should critically examine practitioner doctorates to accommodate new forms of knowledge formation.

As an invaluable guide through doctoral research, this book will be essential reading for both doctoral researchers and supervisors alike, as well as practitioner researchers working in professional settings more generally and those engaging in policy debates about doctoral research.

Chapter 1
Introduction

If you are reading this book you are probably a doctoral researcher, or you might be a doctoral supervisor. Quite probably you will be engaging with insider research that complements your professional life as a practitioner in the public sectors of education, social work and health studies. You may be a candidate for a professional doctorate such as the Education Doctorate, the Doctorate of Health and Social Care or the Doctor of Business Administration. You may be on a traditional PhD programme, or undertaking one of the new PhDs that closely resemble many professional doctorates, as a practitioner researcher, working at doctoral level. You may be at the beginning of your doctoral journey, or you may have come to understand, from your experience to date, that conducting research as an insider brings its own challenges and you may be addressing these. You may not be in the same country as the university in which you are registered, and you may be undertaking your doctoral study at a distance.

Insider research depends upon the researcher having some experience or insight into the worlds in which the research is being undertaken and this may be from a personal point of view as well as, or instead of, from a professional perspective. Whilst recognising that personal values are significant, and that many of the tensions elaborated throughout the book will be experienced also by those who are not engaged as professionals in the research field, this book is written with a focus on practitioner research by professionals seeking a doctoral degree. As has been pointed out by others (Merton & Storer, 1973), even though insider research undertaken by practitioners often means enquiring about one’s own work organisation, it is not a necessary condition. Rather, an insider researcher may be described as an individual who possesses intimate knowledge of ‘the community and its members’ (Hellawell, 2006: 483), and since the word ‘community’ has wider implications than a single organisation, possessing intimate professional knowledge does not necessarily mean being employed by a particular organisation.

The book is intended for all professionals working at doctoral level and researching practice, and for the doctoral teachers working with them. As doctoral education is undergoing a root-and-branch revision in the UK and elsewhere, some readers will also be engaging with policy debates about doctoral study.

The main objective of the book is to explore the idea that the critical position which doctoral researchers must achieve in terms of both their research and the research setting is extremely complex for practitioners conducting ‘insider research’. Doctoral researchers necessarily create new knowledge. Our central proposal is that, for the insider, the newness of this knowledge comes not from a single research domain but from combining understandings from professional practice, higher education practice and the researcher’s individual reflexive project. This confluence is unique for each researcher, and so new knowledge is generated in the relations between these three domains. For this to happen, the practitioner researcher maintains a fluid and flexible stance with respect to each domain, behaving sometimes as a professional, sometimes as a researcher and at all times as an author who is making meaning out of the interactions and presenting them to an external audience. This can result in nearly impossible tensions, for example, relationships with colleagues may impose ethical constraints on how to analyse research data gathered from the workplace. We argue that viewing practitioner research in this way generates new methodologies for insider researchers.

Doctoral theses of practitioner researchers are required to make an ‘original’ contribution to knowledge. Our case is that a practitioner researcher will have engaged with new knowledge at all stages of the project, from conceptualisation, through methodology, methods and empirical work, to the thesis. We suggest that new knowledge derives from all these dimensions of the study and informs all aspects under consideration at each stage, and is both directly connected to undertaking the project at all in a practice setting and unique to each researcher and their research.

Typically, debate about practitioner research at doctoral level tends to compare traditional PhDs and professional doctorates, regarding the production of academic and/or professional knowledge respectively. Such comparisons not only neglect the diversity of models of practitioner research at doctoral level, but also do not recognise that a paradigm shift has occurred and that the construction of knowledge in the social sciences is not limited to the type of doctoral programme through which it is engendered. Thus, such debates should, we believe, be consigned to history, for doctorates, be they professional or traditional, have moved on. However, researching in one’s own workplace does bring special considerations which must be balanced against traditional doctoral research training. The compromises necessarily inherent in practitioner research must be argued for, and doing so makes it a complex and demanding endeavour. The risks are high, for not engaging with this argument may render the doctoral research trivial or mundane. It is a very great challenge to do such research well, but when it is done well it has a transformative effect on both the practitioner researcher and their approach to their work.

Our empirical research (Drake & Heath, 2008) into the experience of professional doctorate researchers provides some insight into dilemmas that need to be resolved for success to be achieved, and work by Sikes and Potts (2008), Campbell and Groundwater-Smith (2007) and Scott et al. (2004) have identified aspects of the special nature of practitioner research and the special conditions in which the practitioner doctoral researcher works. This work all indicates that questions including doctoral teaching and learning, ethical issues, relationships with colleagues, loyalty, duty and integrity place the practitioner in a situation that may not methodologically align with conventional approaches. In this book we take the opportunity to explore these themes in an holistic and integrated way so as to enable a developing sense of methodological coherence for the practitioner researcher at doctoral level.

We began this book because, having ourselves completed Doctorates in Education, we wanted to explore in more depth the dilemmas faced by practitioner researchers on doctoral degrees. Having subsequently undertaken an empirical study we realised that there was more to explore about the need for fluidity of the practitioner researcher position than could be dealt with in a single article. This book is intended to open up this discussion. We also have taken advantage of our own situation as insiders in higher education institutions to have ‘conversations’ with others involved in the doctoral journey; doctoral teachers and researchers and post-doctoral reflections from other people (from the UK and Australia) have all informed our thinking, either face to face or via email. Practitioner researchers have previously expressed their anxieties to us about the robustness of ‘interviewing your mates’ as a research method. Here we use ‘conversation’ unapologetically as a legitimate means for insiders to access the structures of the institutions in which they work. We quote from these conversations and all names are pseudonyms.

Participants in the original study in 2008, and in follow-up conversations in 2009, are shown in Tables 1.1 and 1.2. We are very grateful to everyone for their input, as each conversation added something interesting to the work.

In Chapter 2, ‘Professional doctorates: equal but different?’, we discuss the fact of researching one’s own practice frequently being central to professional and academic work. Research degrees such as the professional doctorate, the ‘new route’ PhD and indeed many traditional

Table 1.1 Participants in 2008 study, professional doctorates

PhDs may provide the opportunity for experienced professionals in education, social work and social care – and related public services such as health, youth service, police and probation, community development and voluntary organisations – to work at doctoral level on problems that are of direct relevance to their own professional interests and institutional concerns. In this chapter we consider these interrelated issues, pointing to the complexity of any practitioner research at doctoral level. We consider the naming of doctoral degrees and discuss differences between them, for example, whether the professional doctorate degree differs from a traditional PhD.

Chapter 3, ‘Relationship between doctoral research and professional life’, develops a perspective on the question of whether practitioner, or insider, researchers can achieve any meaningful degree of critical distance

Table 1.2 Participants in 2009 conversations

from their workplace, or their colleagues, for it is the development of this critical position with respect to research and the research setting which defines doctoral level study. Rather than focus on the binary view of the practitioner researcher negotiating the roles of insider/outsider at the same time, we argue that these researchers adopt a range of complex positions in relation to people connected to their study and move through them in a much more fluid way. In order to manage these positions the doctoral researcher needs to adopt multiple integrities, not least to manage the prevailing macro and micro climates in the workplace that are pervaded by power relations.

This leads into Chapter 4, ‘Approaching grounded methodology’, in which we explore how tensions emerge for such researchers in reconciling their position as a researcher and as a responsible practitioner. We propose that this pitches insider researchers into a place that forces methodological consideration of researcher distance and what this means in terms of research integrity, validity and objectivity. This consideration leads to a methodology that is grounded in the study, and that is flexible enough to accommodate approaches to research that incorporate ways of knowing about practice that practitioners bring to their studies.

Ethical issues arising from occupying space as both responsible practitioner and vigilant researcher are discussed in Chapter 5, ‘Thinking about ethical considerations’, drawing attention to how codes of professional practice and codes of research ethics each serve different purposes and may demand different responses. We argue in Chapters 4 and 5 that methodology is grounded in practices inhabited by the practitioner researcher, and that ethical considerations are also necessarily situated in these practices. In Chapter 6, ‘What does doctoral pedagogy bring to practitioner research?’, and Chapter 7, ‘The shaping of doctoral knowledge and supervision’, we consider what the implications are of this relativism for constructing new knowledge, how this impinges on ways that doctoral pedagogy is constructed and on the part that the doctoral supervisor plays in helping practitioner researchers develop their original contribution to knowledge. We present a position that doctoral work is individualised and undertaken successfully by those practitioner researchers who are able to understand the relations between higher education practices: research, professional and pedagogic. From this stance we question the place of taught elements in the context of emerging doctoral researcher identity.

Publicity material for the practitioner research doctoral degrees is frequently couched in terms of the degree enabling participants, through research, to impact on their employing institutions. In Chapter 8, ‘Impact of doctoral research and researcher identity’, this claim is examined.

In exploring questions of impact, we draw upon the ideas of Engeström (2001), who argues that learning at work cannot all be anticipated, because learning in the workplace is situation-specific and under these conditions forms new knowledge, not predicted in advance. This forms a very individual scenario for practitioner doctoral researchers, in which, we argue, the notion of impact itself is problematic. We consider impact in relation to practice, to the research process, on the institutions involved and how these combine in helping to shape researcher identity.

In Chapter 9, ‘Integrating academic and professional knowledge: writing the thesis’, is a discussion of what is entailed in bringing the doctoral work out into a thesis. The relationship between concepts, ideas and theories and the relevance and application of these in professional settings is a central concept in both researching and writing (see, for example, Eraut, 1994) to bridge the theory–professional knowledge gap. However, this is far from straightforward.

The study, which may be ongoing in practice beyond the completion of the doctorate, and the resulting written thesis exemplify an endeavour of professional reflexion-in-action. In grappling with inherent challenges of research methodology arising out of overt personal involvement, the study also becomes a project in representation, in authenticity, in authorial and researcher voice. Acknowledging this dimension requires the author of the thesis to think carefully about the genre of their writing, of the extent to which they place themselves in the text and their authorial responsibilities as storyteller of other informants. The thesis becomes a representation of their own thoughts, even though these may be explicitly informed by the stated perspectives of others.

Chapter 9 concludes the book, and so ends with recognition that, in presenting, interpreting and analysing research reflexively, the author must take a stance on all of the predicaments and dilemmas presented throughout earlier chapters. This writing requires drawing on emotional as well as intellectual resources and working out what one thinks can be a painful and messy business as well as an intellectual one.

Chapter 2
Professional doctorates

Equal but different?

Research degrees, such as the professional doctorate, and new and indeed many traditional PhDs provide opportunities for experienced practitioners in education, social work, health and related fields to work at doctoral level on problems that are of direct relevance to their own professional interests and institutional concerns.

The professional doctorate is the most recent exemplification of accredited research development for practitioners. The name, professional doctorate, is an informal one, essentially arising from the expectation that the doctoral researcher is not undertaking research simply for its own sake, but with some specific and practice-oriented application in mind. Quite often the degree is part-time, in recognition that participants are also working professionally, and sometimes there is an expectation, even a requirement on the part of the providing university that the doctoral researcher is employed as well. Most frequently the professional doctoral programme includes some taught components, for the duration of which doctoral researchers work together in a cohort that may meet face to face, or may be connected to the university and possibly each other via some distance learning medium facilitated by the Internet. In the UK this distinguishes professional doctorates from other forms of doctoral study, although this distinction is not evident in Canada, the US or Australasia, where most, if not all, doctoral study includes some taught components.

The professional doctorate degree is equivalent in level to the traditional PhD, as doctoral researchers are required to successfully meet the same criteria, specified in the UK by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA, 2008), namely that the degree is awarded for original research. Despite there being in the same specification advice that any taught components of the degree should not outweigh the research components, the professional doctorate is commonly understood in the UK to be the ‘taught doctorate’ with, sometimes, associated connotations of inferiority of level. Furthermore, as ‘professional research’ becomes conflated in meaning with ‘practitioner research’, so does the research aspect become the victim of an unfortunate and, as Saunders (2007) argues, indefensible value system that equates ‘practitioner’ with ‘amateurish’ in research terms, polarised from ‘genuine’ academic inquiry. The crux of the objection is that because the researcher is an insider in the organisation or community of practice that is the context for the research, it is difficult if not impossible to achieve an appropriate degree of critical distance.

This is not a view promoted in t...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Professional doctorates
• Chapter 3 Relationship between doctoral research and professional life
• Chapter 4 Approaching grounded methodology
• Chapter 5 Thinking about ethical considerations
• Chapter 6 What does doctoral pedagogy bring to practitioner research?
• Chapter 7 The shaping of doctoral knowledge and supervision
• Chapter 8 Impact of doctoral research and researcher identity
• Chapter 9 Integrating academic and professional knowledge
• Notes
• References
• Index