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  • Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD)

Professional Doctorate in Education EdD

As a Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) student at the University of Brighton, you are joining one of the pioneering institutions for this qualification.

The EdD at the University of Brighton was first validated in September 2000 and was recognised as unique at that time. Its focus was, and continues to be, on the contribution that critical, original professional knowledge from research and reflection can make to professional practice.

Your route into the EdD will first be via the Education MRes and this will provide a platform for development towards the EdD programme.

The EdD programme offers research-based professional development at doctoral level to experienced professional education practitioners. Students on the programme represent a range of educational settings including schools and higher education. Successful graduates of the programme are expected to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in professional practice within their field of educational responsibility.

Students gaining an EdD have used their expertise to enhance their capacity within existing senior roles in education or to go on to a variety of different roles including academic posts and management positions within their areas of professional expertise.

Since 2010, the University of Brighton’s EdD has also been offered in Mauritius in partnership with the Mauritian Institute of Education.

Apply now for your MRes/EdD

 

Please note that your route into the EdD will first be via the Education MRes.

MRes/EdD Professional doctorate programme details

Students are supported by a structure of stages. The programme provides a research-based, flexible, and practice-focused experience. Its developmental, ‘spiral’ model distinguishes it from many other national EdD models.

In stage 1 (two years part-time, 1 year full-time on the Education MRes) students are supported by a programme of small group seminars and assignments as well as individual tutorials to develop the skills and knowledge to conduct practitioner research and to prepare a Research Plan for their thesis.

In stage 2 (five years part-time only) students embark on their thesis research work.

As a student on the Professional Doctorate in Education, EdD, programme, you will undertake applied, practice-based research, combining theoretical analysis with fieldwork data collection to produce leading edge studies. In stage 2 of the EdD programme, when you are researching for your thesis, you will benefit from a supervisory team comprising two members of academic staff with expertise in your area of interest.

Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional external supervisor from another school or another research institution.

Key information

As an EdD student at Brighton, you will

  • benefit from a supervisory team comprising two or sometimes three members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional supervisor from another school, another research institution, or an external partner from government or industry.
  • benefit from access to a range of electronic resources via the University’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries.

Some of our supervisors

Profile photo for Prof Becky Allen

Prof Becky Allen

Becky is happy to hear from prospective students who are interested in studying research areas that are aligned with her own interests, particularly if they plan to conduct some quantitative analysis as part of their studies.

Profile photo for Dr Alison Barnes

Dr Alison Barnes

Alison’s supervisory interests include learning and teaching in primary schools and in particular, mathematics pedagogy and learning, including  the role of affect and emotions. She is interested in supervising studies in these areas and those adopting intervention or action research methodologies.

Profile photo for Dr Andy Chandler-Grevatt

Dr Andy Chandler-Grevatt

My research interests and supervisory interests include: Science education, formative assessment, classroom assessment, teacher assessment literacy. Science teaching and learning: including the nervous system, learning about the brain, microscopes in the classroom and moss.  organisms. Science teachers, teacher well-being, teacher recruitment and retention, emotional needs of teachers.

Profile photo for Dr Nadia Edmond

Dr Nadia Edmond

I currently supervise doctoral students (PhD and EdD), and am interested in supervising new doctoral students, in the following areas:

Professionalism/professional identities/professional development and learning;

Higher Education pedagogy and policy;

Diversity and inclusion in Higher Education;

The development of learning and professional knowledge through postgraduate study.

I am a critical realist and welcome supporting research from that perspective. 

Profile photo for Dr Mark Erickson

Dr Mark Erickson

I supervise students across a range of social science disciplines, although my main discipline is sociology.  I am interested in supervising projects in sociology of science and technology / science and technology studies, sociology of work and employment, social theory. Projects I currently supervise are researching science and technology, work and employment, climate change / emergency, communing / the commons, trade union studies, gender and design, children and migration, and mental health.

Applications to the following proposal are very welcome: Managing science: workers and management in the replication and reproduction of scientific knowledge

Despite Wajcman’s exhortation for management studies and science studies to combine to understand science and technology better (1) there has been very little collaboration or cross fertilization between these two areas of social science in the past two decades. Studies of the working practices of professional, academic scientists are rare, despite the importance of these workers in the knowledge economy, and there is little understanding of the relationship between HR practices, labour process and scientific knowledge production and reproduction.

This project will use a management studies perspective to consider a contemporary ‘crisis’ in formal science. The crisis of reproducibility – the inability for one research team to replicate the results obtained by another research team – has received considerable attention in the scientific press in recent years (2, 3). A recent survey in Nature found that 50% of scientists have failed to reproduce one of their own experiments (4).

This problem threatens to undermine public confidence in scientific expertise and opinion, a very major problem given the legitimised discourse of climate change denial (5). The project will investigate the management of scientists involved in knowledge production work, and will examine the labour process surrounding knowledge production (6, 7). It will consider whether it is constraints of work, managerial and institutional imperatives (8), an instrumental orientation to career (9), and a ‘publish or perish’ culture (10) that are barriers to replication and factors in low reproducibility rates.

This research will address these issues from a combined management studies and sociology of work perspective. In particular the research will consider the relationship between the construction of occupational identities, managerial control of work time and the decision making processes that take place inside work teams regarding identification of experiments to replicated and / or reproduced (10). The project will adopt a qualitative approach, including semi-structured interviews and an ethnography, and documentary analysis deployed across a range of disciplines and trans-disciplines.

Research questions

1. How is the academic science labour process organised, managed and resisted?

2. How do teams of scientists in different disciplines decide on replication experiments and how is this work allocated?

3. What is the role of reproducibility/ replication in the formation of occupational identities by academic scientists?

References

1. Wajcman, J. (2006) 'New connections: social studies of science and technology and studies of work', Work, Employment and Society, 20, 4, 773-786. 2. Harris, R. (2017) Rigor Mortis. How sloppy science, worthless cures, crushes hope and wastes billions, New York: Basic Books. 3. Freedman, L.P., et al (2015) 'The Economics of Reproducibility in Preclinical Research', PLoS Biol, 13, 6. 4. Baker, M. (2016) ‘Is there a reproducibility crisis? Nature 533, 452–454 (26 May 2016)  5. Makri, A. (2017) ‘Give the public the tools to trust scientists’ Nature 541, 261 (19 January 2017)  6. Thompson, P. (1983) The Nature of Work.  An introduction to debates on the labour process, London: Macmillan. 7. Thompson, P. and Ackroyd, P. (1995) 'All quiet on the workplace front?', Sociology, 29, 4, 615-633. 8. Bradley, H., Erickson, M., Stephenson, C. and Williams, S. (2000) Myths at work, Cambridge: Polity.  9. Erickson, M., Bradley, H., Stephenson, C. and Williams, S. (2009) Business in society: people, work and organizations, Cambridge: Polity 10. Erickson, M. (2015) Science, culture and society: understanding science in the twenty-first century. 2nd edition, Cambridge: Polity.

Profile photo for Prof Andrew Hobson

Prof Andrew Hobson

Andy is interested to work with applicants seeking to conduct research relating to the professional learning, development and/or well-being of teachers and other professionals. Specific foci include but are not restricted to studies of:

  • Teachers’ early professional learning
  • Teacher well-being
  • Mentoring and/or coaching for early career teachers / professionals
  • Mentoring and/or coaching across professions
  • Judgementoring
  • ONSIDE Mentoring
  • Co-mentoring (collaborative, compassionate mentoring and coaching)
Profile photo for Dr Rachel Marks

Dr Rachel Marks

My supervisory interests include teaching and learning in primary schools and wider society, particularly in primary and early years mathematics. I am interested in the social/cultural context of schooling, policy and assessment, including interests related to ability-grouping, popular images of mathematics and equity issues. I am interested in supervising projects involving a range of approaches including mixed methods, as well as large-scale literature reviews including meta-analyses.

Profile photo for Dr Jools Page

Dr Jools Page

I am working with PhD and EdD students within the field of Early Years and I welcome enquiries from prospective candidates who are interested in my specific areas of specialism which include:

  • 'Professional Love'
  • Infants, toddlers & children under 3 years of age
  • Attachment based relationships -  Love, Care and Intimacy
  • Theory, policy and practices with infants and toddlers
  • Quality and learning/ policy, practice and pedagogy
  • The Rights of babies and young children
  • Professional adult roles – e.g primary caregiving/key person approach
  • Parent roles

I have supervised seven students to successful completion of their doctorates and examined 17 full doctoral theses.

Profile photo for Dr Soo Sturrock

Dr Soo Sturrock

Soo is registered to supervise doctoral students and welcomes enquiries. She regularly supervise students on the Doctorate and MA programmes, both in the UK and in partnership with the Mauritius Institute of Education. She is involved in progression panels on the PhD. She also works with PG and UG students on extended projects at both level 6 and 7. 

Her particular interests are in critical policy research, primary and secondary education, insider research and primary English education.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.

Making an application

The normal entry requirements for the EdD (Professional Doctorate) are:

  • a qualification, normally at Masters level in a relevant subject or appropriate research experience. An application made by someone with research experience but with no Masters level qualification will be considered on its merits and will normally require independent academic references.
  • at least four years of appropriate professional experiences.

You will initially make your application for the MRes Education and take this qualification before moving to EdD.

You will apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Sign in to our online application portal to begin.

 

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistance during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2022–23

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK and international/EU students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
 Full-timePart-time

UK

£4,596 

£2,298

International (including EU)

£15,282 

£7,641

International students registered in the School of Humanities and Social Science or in the School of Business and Law

£13,464 

£6,732


PhD by Publication
Full-time Part-time
 N/A  £2,298 (UK)

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.

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