Professional Doctorates—A Better Route for Researching Professionals?

Abstract

This paper explores the model of professional doctorate (D.Prof) as a route for those immersed in professional practice but who wish to undertake research at the doctoral level. One definition of the professional doctorate given by the United Kingdom Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) describes it as ‘a programme of advanced study and research which, whilst satisfying the university criteria for the award of a doctorate, is designed to meet the specific needs of a professional group external to the university’.

Central to the heart of the D.Prof is professional practice. It has been described as developing ‘researching professionals’ rather than ‘professional researchers’, and as part of the move towards the knowledge economy in higher education, can be seen as part of the transformation from ‘autonomous scholar’ into ‘enterprising self’.

This paper explores my choice of a professional doctorate over a traditional PhD, and the role that reflection and reflexivity have in informing the research focus, methodology and practice development aspects of my study. It is argued that as social work is a practice based discipline, and one in which research is aimed at providing practice improvement, models of doctoral study which have at their heart the centrality of professional practice are more appropriate vehicles for those practitioners who wish to become ‘scholarly professionals’.

Keywords:

• Social Work
• Professional Doctorates
• Reflection
• Reflexivity
• Practice Development

Acknowledgements

The author would like thank Professor Jonathan Parker and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on previous drafts of this article.