Tel: +44 (0) 1524 593572 E-mail enquiries
Doctoral Programme in Educational Research
Programme Director: Malcolm Tight
E-mail: m.tight@lancaster.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594239
This is a part-time programme, over 4 - 5 years, leading to a PhD in Educational Research and has been developed to meet the needs of experienced professionals in the areas of HE and FE. Students follow a four year programme where a significant portion of the work is structured, supported and assessed through modules which involve directed study and residential teaching. Students also produce a final research thesis (years 3,4 & 5).
Our primary focus is on HE and we expect to attract most people from that area. However, we do not exclude people from FE, and indeed we have designed the programme so that we can all benefit from a certain breadth of participation and experience.
In previous years, a majority of the participants have had a background in the social sciences or business/management studies. But this is emphatically not a requirement, and we have a considerable number of course members from right across the range of academic and vocational fields. You should, however, be prepared to engage seriously with social science concepts and modes of thought.
The programme's design depends heavily upon building a mutually supportive spirit among a group of people with overlapping professional and academic interests. Our current participants tell us that this is one of the most successful and valuable elements of the programme.
Although much of the programme is done at a distance it is not a distance learning programme and attendance at the residentials is mandatory.
Objectives
The aim of the programme is to provide an opportunity for experienced professionals to become autonomous researchers and to gain deeper and more critical insight into their own professional practices and concerns.
The main objectives will be to enable the programme participant to:
- acquire competency as an autonomous researcher, able to plan and
carry out research and to use and disseminate its outcomes and implications
- make an original contribution to knowledge through their own research
- understand the nature, origins and uses of theory and of theoretical
frameworks
- analyse their working situation with the help of insights from theory,
empirical research and practitioner-generated knowledge
- evaluate and apply the research of others to issues emerging in their
working situation
- understand academic research as a form of professional practice,
complementary to and in conversation with other communities of practice
- demonstrate intellectual leadership by developmental, managerial or dissemination activity across communities of practice
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