Abstract:
Pressures to link higher education to the workplace and industry environment have created
a radically different climate for postgraduate research education, and, as universities struggle to
accommodate new ways of structuring doctoral degrees and new ways of producing knowledge, there are
indications that many traditional structures and management processes are under pressure to change. There
are also suggestions that the emergence of new degrees could provide opportunities for innovative practices
in the design of new curricula, new assessment methods and new types of supervision. As part of an
empirical study, this paper will report on two doctoral programmes that explicitly link the theory and
scholarship of the academy with the practice and professional knowledge of the workplace and community
environment. The paper will explore strategies for managing research in this new environment for doctoral
education, investigate the claims about new practice and discuss three aspects pertaining to the development
of knowledge and new doctoral identities in these two programmes: context, supervision and pedagogy, and
knowledge production.
