Practice-based doctorates and questions of academic legitimacy

Over the last six years there has been a massive increase in the number of students studying for practice-based doctorates in Art and Design. It is now possible to do a practice-based PhD in over forty departments, although what is expected from doctoral students varies considerably across institutions. In 1997 the United Kingdom Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) addressed the variance between practice-based doctorates in the report Practice-Based Doctorates in the Creative and Performing Arts and Design. This paper examines the recommendations made by the report and asks to what extent does it acknowledge art as a legitimate research practice within the university. The UKCGE report recommends that all practice-based PhDs have a substantial theoretical and contextualising element that will demonstrate general scholarly requirements and render the artwork accessible to judgement. I argue that this proposal is problematic on several counts; it draws a firm line between theory and practice, places academic research in opposition to practice generally and artwork specifically, maintains the stereotype of art as anti-intellectual and forgets the degree to which theory is itself a practice. In addition it suggests that art practice can only be legitimised as research when it is framed by a conventionally academic enquiry. I suggest that instead of trying to make art practice fit academic regulations it would be more productive to use the practice-based PhDs as a way of re-thinking academic conventions and scholarly requirements

Approach to design practice based on collaborative platforms: application to bicycle mobility system in Porto

This research aims to create collaborative strategies and operative tools for design practice, applied in an urban sustainable mobility scenario. We find that co-creation platforms encourage an active approach involving the people in the development process leading to effective and holistic solutions. Initially we catalogued tools and collaborative met hods based on case studies, to identify and propose new approaches to various project phases, action modes, creation, development, testing and implementation of proposals. Through action-research methods we want to validate a toolkit applied in developing a bicycle mobility system in Porto (Portugal). Designers, users and stakeholders actively collaborated defining a real context of action, developing and implementing solutions. Started by a bottom-up approach, bringing together groups of city cyclists and sustainable mobility activists, and then the local authorities, the project enabled positive and local impact based on a democratic design approach. The replicative potential of this action model is a next challenge to various application scenarios

Evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence

This policy brief outlines the complexities involved in selecting interventions for early childhood services. It advocates for a broader method of assessing outcomes of interventions through incorporating practice-based evidence into our understanding of evidence-based practice. For services in the early childhood sector, choosing the most effective interventions for children and their families often involves a challenging examination and evaluation of the available evidence. Traditionally, researchers have looked to evidence stemming from trials that incorporate rigorous methodologies as a way of selecting the ‘best’ evidence for evaluation. However, this narrow approach is not the only way of identifying effective interventions, nor is it necessarily always the best way

A proper anxiety: practice-based PhDs and academic unease

Like any other PhD, practice-based PhDs are also the focus of much anxiety but, significantly, those anxieties reach beyond personal doubt and are shared by supervisors, examiners and senior academic management. Here, I suggest that the anxiety concerning practice-based PhDs should not be lightly dismissed because it is a product of the institutional relations practice-based doctorates put into place. At least in the short-term anxiety is structured into the qualification and the aim of this paper is to examine why. I argue that the demarcation of disciplinary boundaries is important for judgements concerning academic and artistic expertise. To become an expert you have to have a specialised field, which can only be only mastered if it is clearly defined. Practice-based research crosses many of these borderlines thereby creating anxiety about criteria of competence, assessment and authority. Significantly, however, the practice-based PhD has involved a shift in the institutional arbitration of competence. In the past art that crossed disciplinary boundaries was nevertheless evaluated within art colleges and in relation to their traditions and practices, whereas in this instance art is being judged within an academic context and with a different set of expectations in mind. Unlike other previously contentious forms of art practice, this is not a change in medium or subject matter that nevertheless remains within the parameters of the art college, but is a shift in the way that the art object is legitimated as such. The paper goes on to examine the practical and conceptual consequences of art practice being acknowledged as academically valid, exploring in particular the advantages and liabilities of anxiety for all concerned

How does one do a Practice-Based PhD in Filmmaking?

This paper seeks to explore the issues raised by the process of engaging in a practice-based PhD in Filmmaking. As a sole practitioner the screenwriting doctoral student is able to explore her practice through the development of a screenplay, but what of the potential doctoral students who may wish to explore their specialist and professional filmmaking practices but who are unable to operate as sole practitioners, because of the collaborative requirements of the professional filmmaking model. Using the experience of the screenwriting doctoral investigation, and particularly the exploration of the relationship between methodology, exegesis and the creative artefact, we explore a potential model that would enable all filmmaking specialists to engage in doctoral research. Art students engaging in practice-based doctoral research do so in an environment formed by Government requirements that demand cultural, environmental and economic impacts as well as a methodology that to a large extent is formed by social science measures of value. Using this framework as a starting point we attempted to identify a suitable model that would enable filmmakers to undertake practice-based doctoral research

National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems: 2011-2012 Wave

Since 1998, researchers have followed a nationally representative cohort of U.S. communities to examine the types of public health activities performed within the community, the range of organizations contributing to each activity, and the perceived effectiveness of each activity in addressing community needs. This information, obtained through a validated survey of local public health officials, provides an in-depth view of the structure and function of local public health delivery systems and how these systems evolve over time. Originally conducted with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems (NLSPHS) was fielded for the first time in 1998, with a follow-up survey conducted in 2006 as part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project to develop an evidence-based typology of local public health delivery systems. Each wave of the survey has been linked with data on local health departments collected from the prior year’s National Profile of Local Health Departments survey conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), allowing for an in-depth view of how local health departments relate to the multi-organizational delivery systems in which they operate. These data, linked with still other data sources on community demographic, health, and economic characteristics, have supported a wide array of studies regarding the organization, financing, and delivery of public health services and provided considerable insight into policy and administrative mechanisms for improving the practice of public health

Evaluating Practice-based Learning and Teaching in Art and Design

The University of the Arts London is host to the Creative Learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL), which has funded a number of small course-based evaluative and developmental projects. These projects have been designed by course tutors in conjunction with the CLIP CETL team, who are evaluating them to better understand and extend the pedagogies of practice-based teaching and learning. Practice-based learning is a way of conceptualising and organising student learning which can be used in many applied disciplinary contexts. Such pedagogies we argue are founded on the claim that learning to practice in the creative industries requires engagement with authentic activities in context (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 2000). This short paper will describe some of the initial evaluation and research activities in two colleges; identify and define practice-based activities in the context of the courses where the research is being carried out; identify emerging pedagogic frameworks; and discuss implications for further development. Activities identified in the projects undertaken include: Opportunities to develop students‟ direct contact with industry Simulating work-based learning in the University Event-based learning Enhancing professional practice and PPD The authors are seeking to elicit, analyse and evaluate what is often implicit in practitioner-teachers, and the experience of developing pedagogies for extending practice-based learning. We will be theorising from statements made by practitioners in semi-structured interviews and evidence provided in progress reporting from the project teams

Using Public Health PBRN Research to Inform Policy & Practice

The Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks Program is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports research networks dedicated to producing new scientific knowledge on how best to organize, finance, and deliver public health strategies in realworld practice settings. This body of scientific inquiry, known as Public Health Services and Systems Research (PHSSR), is a rapidly developing area of scholarship within the larger fields of public health research and health services research. A public health practice-based research network (PBRN) brings multiple public health organizations into collaboration with an academic research center for the purposes of designing and implementing PHSSR studies in real-world practice settings. Participating public health professionals and researchers collaborate to identify pressing research questions of interest, design rigorous and relevant studies, execute research effectively and efficiently, and translate findings rapidly into practice

It's Very Different Here: Practice-Based Academic Staff Induction and Retention

The sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920), suggested that few could withstand the frustrations of academic life. As the strategic management of human resources begins to differentiate higher education institutions (HEIs) in league tables, the costs of voluntary staff turnover (attrition) become more significant. In this paper, we consider links between induction (orientation) and retention for academic staff. We report on a qualitative study of thirty academic staff in five United Kingdom HEIs who were recruited on the basis of their professional experience. Their practice-based knowledge lends our participants particular insight into their HEI induction experience which, where found wanting, led in several cases to resignation. We analyse the induction experiences of our participants to glean explanations for these perceived shortcomings. Since induction interventions are thought to lead to improved retention, we recommend policy and practice changes to induction which may benefit all academic staff