Characterising creative-production doctoral projects in art and design

25-44
The first three of the four papers submitted by Scrivener for assessment address the field of practice-based research and are interrelated. Although these papers speak for themselves in terms of research content and imperatives, the statements and single portfolio, provide additional evidence in support of research significance and interconnectedness of outputs.

This paper, the first published of the three, appeared in a special issue of the International Journal of Design Sciences and Technology on practice-based research, edited by David Durling and Ken Freidman, and built on earlier papers published in the conference proceedings of Useful and Critical, Helsinki (1999), Doctoral Education in Design, La Clusac (2000) and Research into Practice (2000), Herfordshire, the latter a conference keynote presentation.

The paper sought to reveal something of the character of art and design thinking and making, by seeking to explain problems encountered in the supervision of doctoral students in terms of Simon’s (1969) problem solving and Schön’s (1983) reflective practitioner theories of practice. Schön’s (1983) theory is shown to provide a better explanation of these problems, and is then used to provide practical guidance on framing doctoral programmes in art and design.

The paper advocates that art and design research should be understood as original creation undertaken in order to generate novel apprehension and that the commitment to satisfying shared norms distinguishes this activity from everyday practice. These ideas rest on assumptions only touched on in the paper, that art and design is not essentially a knowledge acquisition process and that these disciplines already embody a transformational function (i.e., that satisfies the norms postulated in the paper). These assumptions are explored in the second and third papers put forward to assessment.

Since its publication, this paper has formed the basis of national and international keynote and invited presentations (see portfolio).