Careering past the doctorate: supporting the career progression of doctoral students
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_C1001
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Vitae Occasional Papers: Volume 2 Researcher careers and culture
- Publisher
- Vitae
- ISBN
- 9781906774509
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/reports/vitae-occasional-papers-volume-2-2015.pdf
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research investigates current shifts in doctoral education, the issues that have arisen from it, and the ways they may be addressed. While there is a growing literature around doctoral education, recent work has focused on specific programmes, and although some of this work identifies difficulties of engagement, none examines the nature of these difficulties, their wider significance, or how they might be overcome. This work provides a basis for addressing these issues.
Based on findings from an AHRC-funded knowledge-exchange project which facilitated the development of professional skills, this article presents the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches adopted by academic supervisors and professional researcher developers. The aim was to present a model of delivery appropriate to a range of skills and settings and to ascertain how a project-based approach to doctoral education may facilitate skills development in an alternative way.
The methodology involved doctoral students collaborating with an external organisation—businesses, museums, galleries—to devise and deliver small, focused, research projects. Evaluation was undertaken through interviews with both students and the external partners, a student exit report, and a skills questionnaire. The process was overseen by a steering group. The research established difficulties encountered because of tensions between perceived academic demands and the subject focus, and the separation between the academic demands and the wider focus of professional development. This article presents these issues and proposes possible solutions, including collaboration between the two strands of development, a more inclusive research cluster, and the embedding of professional development in the research community.
This new approach to facilitating the development of skills currently considered central to doctoral education was also published as ‘Responding to the Darcy Model of Researcher Development’ in the proceedings of the International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education and Training (2016).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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