[-empyre-] Practice in Research

[Adrian Miles]

On Sunday, 20 January 2013 at 1:18 AM, maria mencia wrote:

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> Another thing, I would like to bring up is practice PhDs which are only PRACTICE, has anybody in the list done one of these PhDs?  What makes this practice research? How do you defend it? What is the difference between this practice and an artwork/creative work, as it could well be a piece of creative writing for instance?
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Practice based research is one of those things that in the context of this discussion gets made more complicated than it perhaps is. Education PhDs, for instance, are very commonly practice based and have been for years as the basis of education research in many PhDs that are about teaching is the practice of teaching. Here you are expected (usually) to write a thesis that indicates what you have explicitly investigated in your practice, and the changes in your practice that have occurred as a result of this. For a PhD it would also require a looking 'outwards' from the implications of my practice to demonstrate its significance for others in the field (other practicing teachers).   

In my area (media studies etc) practice based research is reasonably common, though often confused with project based research. In project based research you do a project.The project is expected to be any/all of an enquiry/response/investigation/analysis of a significant research question realised through the doing of the project. In practice based research there may not be a specific project (or projects) but the key research question investigated relates very specifically to your practice. As with the education example it is defended by evidencing the significance of the change to practice for the practitioner and potentially the field.  

to use creative writing as an example. Project based research would be to write something. This artefact is the project component and usually an exegesis/viva/thesis/presentation accompanies it to demonstrate how and why it is research (and not just literature). Practice based research you might write something, you might write several things, but the research question is not about artefact that is produced but about the activities and actions of creating or making in itself. (In education you can't bring in a class as evidence, nor necessarily changes in students results, as it is about the change in your practice, not theirs.) Here people like Donald Schön often figure prominently. At RMIT where I work the architecture school has a very strong practice based history so the emphasis falls less on an analysis of the buildings or designs as artefacts than on the 'thinking-in-action" that they express and explore.  

Finally, in honours in creative writing a project would be to write a creative nonfiction travel book where the research problem might be "how can the contemporary memoir be used as a basis to write a travel guide?". A practice based one could be "While writing a creative nonfiction travel memoir I want to examine the relation of my practice to constraint to learn about the role of constraint to me as a writer."    

--  
an appropriate closing
Adrian Miles
Program Director Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours)
RMIT University - www.rmit.edu.au
http://vogmae.net.au/



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