Succeeding with Your Doctorate

My current interests and publications lie mainly two areas: firstly in the study of research methodology and methods; and secondly in the area of practice and policy in post-graduate education, particularly at doctoral level. In this second area, I am currently looking at the impact of the professional doctorate on people´s lives and professional practice. I am also writing in the area of educational publishing and how this has evolved, building on some of my earlier publications in this area. Research InterestsMy research is in the broad field of lifelong learning, focusing in particular on further education and vocational education and training.  I am interested in the relationship between policy and practice, and in how policy is experienced, formed and reformed at micro levels of practice. I have an underlying interest in social justice and in/equality in the context of people’s changing experience of learning, education and training, and the relationship between learning, education and people’s wider lives. I am on the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training and I convene the British Educational Research Association Special Interest Group in Post-Compulsory and Lifelong Learning.TeachingI am course director for the professional doctorate (EdD) programme. I also teach on a range of other programmes, including the Cert Ed/ PGCE in Post-Compulsory Education and Training and the MA in Lifelong Learning. My main areas are: the formation of learner identities and professional identities; 14-19 vocational education; widening participation in further and higher education; and qualitative research methods. Dr. Cheryl Hunt is an Honorary University Fellow in the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. She is interested in adult and inter-professional learning and has extensive experience of working with postgraduate students, including as programme director for professional doctorates, as a research supervisor, and as a tutor on professional development courses for university lecturers. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality; Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education; a Director of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality; and a long-standing Council (now Honorary) Member of the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA). My principal interests are in the history of education, including curriculum history, the history of secondary education, the history of teachers and teaching, the history of educational policy, historical perspectives on current educational issues, historical theory and methodology relating to education, and documentary research methods Pat Sikes is a professor of qualitative inquiry in the School of Education, University of Sheffield. She became interested in narrative auto/biographical approaches in the late 1970s and throughout her career has undertaken research which has used them to investigate topics around teachers’ lives and careers and, from 2014, the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with a young onset dementia. Research ethics are another key concern and focus of Pat’s work. In 2018, the British Educational Research Association awarded her the John Nisbet Fellowship for an outstanding contribution to educational research over a career.

• PART ONE: EMBARKING ON A DOCTORATEWhat is a Doctorate and Why do People do them? How Did I Get Here?An Auto/biographical ApproachLearning on the Doctoral Journey PART TWO: CONCEPTUALISING AND FOCUSING THE STUDYFraming the Research Reviewing the Literature PART THREE: THINKING ABOUT METHODOLOGIESDoing ResearchReflecting on Methods, Methodology and EthicsApproaching Research as Lived ExperiencePART FOUR: WRITING THE THESISWriting and the Writing Process in a Doctorial ProgrammeProduction Values in the Doctoral ThesisPART FIVE: PRESENTING AND SHARING RESEARCHPresenting Your Work at the VivaWhatever Next? Spreading the Word and Becoming Part of the Research Community