'Doctorateness' in the Making Disciplines. What do experts say on the issue?

Paper in proceeding, 2014

The expectations with regard to quality of research in the fields of Architecture, Design and Arts as well as its education are constantly higher. In organised research education, academic standards of ‘designerly’ research are being taught and discussed, and the PhD students learn to master the research craft. The final trial is the assessment of the doctoral thesis, where a committee decides whether an expected level of ‘doctorateness’ has been achieved. During the last years a discussion has emerged on how to define the concept of ‘doctorateness’ in the contemporary situation of developments in different fields of knowledge, both in traditional academic disciplines as well as in creative fields. This research project “’Doctorateness’ in the Making Disciplines” studies how the concept of ‘doctorateness’ could be considered in our own field of architecture, design and arts, and arts and design education. The aim of the project is to provide a more operative definition of ‘doctorateness’, which could become a pedagogical tool to be used in research education, in dialogues with professionals on field-specific knowledge and in assessment of doctoral work. The earlier stages of the project were reported on the previous conference on Professional Doctorates (Dunin-Woyseth and Nilsson, 2012). This paper concerns the most recent stage which is based on the planned expert symposium where a group of international experts in assessment of doctoral work in creative fields will be requested to elaborate on their understanding of concepts of “doctorateness” and on field-specific criteria for adequate assessment of research in the Making Professions. It is expected that the insight derived from the symposium will be the next step in the research project on the way to developing approaches for establishing appropriate protocols and standards for doctoral examination processes in practice-based fields.