The Idea of the Doctorate in Art and Design: A Literature Review Using an Argument-Based Approach to Validation

Abstract

The literature about research education and the doctorate in art and design is fragmented and characterised by disagreement about fundamental issues. A key problem is that no one has published a systematic review of this literature. This dissertation investigates this problem by systematically reviewing what is known in the literature about research education and the doctorate in art and design. The dissertation synthesises the literature and provides a new understanding of the issues.

First, I review a book about doctoral assessment in art and design. I apply an argument-based approach to assessment using analytic concepts developed from validity theory. Second, I use these analytic concepts to inform the systematic literature review to ensure that I connect the results to their context of use. I report the systematic literature review in line with the PRISMA guidelines. I searched for records published between 1900 and 2022 and identified 5,673 records from databases and via other methods. After I excluded duplicates, I assessed the records for eligible studies. The full text of 1,082 publications were included in the review.

I produced a quantitative synthesis of the studies’ characteristics and a qualitative synthesis of the substance of their assessment arguments. The quantitative synthesis identifies the extent, range, and nature of the literature about research education and the doctorate in art and design. The qualitative synthesis appraises the inferences and assumptions that underpin the doctoral assessment arguments for arts, design, and practice doctorates. I conclude doctoral studies based on art and design works, or art and design practice, shift the focus from the public discourse and shared discourse of the research tradition to the private studio concerns of personal artistic and designerly development. The study contributes a new understanding of the idea of the doctorate in art and design as an argument that bridges claims about the scoring, generalisation, extrapolation, and implications of doctoral assessment.