Skills versus pedagogy? Doctoral research training in the UK Arts and Humanities

Abstract

The traditional ‘lone scholar’ view of an Arts and Humanities doctoral student sits uneasily with the skills-based discourse underpinning policies aimed at enhancing researcher development and employability. This paper reports on a case study of a research training programme for doctoral students in the Arts and Humanities at a UK university. It calls for the embedding of the generic skills agenda within a more clearly articulated pedagogic discourse and formulates four pedagogic principles for research training programme design. Additionally, the paper problematises the research trainer role and highlights the importance of paying attention to the students' own learning agendas and the learning value they are prepared to derive from training.

Keywords:

• doctoral pedagogy
• Joint skills statement
• research training programme

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Open University, UK, for providing funding and supervisory expertise towards the completion of this research, to the reviewers of this paper for their inspired and inspiring comments, and to the research participants, who generously offered insights into the doctoral learning experience.

Notes

The document was revised in March 2011 by Vitae (www.vitae.ac.uk). Currently, a new document, the Researcher Development Statement, informs research training provision.

See note 1.