Abstract
Professionals have increasingly taken up doctoral study as a means of engaging in advanced professional learning. This growth in doctoral study within the professions raises an important set of questions: what happens when professionals undertake doctoral research degree study? What kinds of knowledge are produced and what kinds of identities are formed in the nexus between the worlds of their workplaces and their professions and that of the university in which they undertake the research? What changes for them in relation to their own professional practice? This chapter is concerned with the knowledge and identity work involved in undertaking a doctorate in a professional field. It considers a set of theoretical questions concerning doctoral becoming, with respect to knowledge, identity and advanced professional practice and questions concerning relations between knowledge and practice, where knowledge making (research) is understood as a form of practice and practice as a kind of knowledge. A narrative of a doctoral candidate undertaking a professional doctoral degree in organisational learning is used to reflect on the complex dynamics of being and becoming, knowing and learning – the processes and practices of resubjectification, or becoming-other, that are at the heart of the transformative experience of undertaking a doctoral research degree.
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Lee, A. (2011). Professional Practice and Doctoral Education: Becoming a Researcher. In: Scanlon, L. (eds) “Becoming” a Professional. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9_8
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