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An education design architecture for the future Australian doctorate

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Abstract

Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia, but has been subjected to far less design and improvement compared with other facets of higher education. Governments and universities engage in ongoing change which helps respond to opportunities and challenges but also leads to a proliferation of options and approaches. The current research study was seeded and shaped by the ambitious view that despite such refinement the doctorate remains in need of much bolder and deeper design, and particularly design with an education focus. This paper reports outcomes from a four-year national project which sought to articulate a doctoral design architecture. The paper discusses framing contexts and concepts, design and characteristics of the doctoral architecture, then implications for sectoral, institutional and individual practice. It concludes that this kind of architecture can provide a useful guide for growth.

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Acknowledgements

An expert group provided invaluable support and advice, and the researchers thank Sue Berners-Price, Ross Coleman, Helen Klaebe, Nick Mansfield, Helene Marsh, Alastair McEwan, Chris Pakes, Laura Poole-Warren, Stephan Riek, Zlatko Skrbis, Dick Strugnell, Kate Wright, and Justin Zobel.

The researchers were advised by hundreds of national and international experts. We are extremely grateful to everyone for input. Noted thanks to Gill Clarke, Robert Harris, Futao Huang, Thomas Jorgensen, Alan Lawson, Ingrid Lunt, Suzanne Ortega, Seeram Ramakrishna, Chen Shiyi, and Debra Stewart.

As well, the authors of this paper gratefully acknowledge the research contributions of Jonathan Chew, Lijun Ma, and Ryan Naylor. We are grateful to Barbara Evans for evaluating the research. We are grateful to John Hattie for supporting this research.

The researchers thank all Australian universities which provided input into this project and in particular the 28 universities which participated in the survey fieldwork. We are deeply grateful to the graduates and institution experts who contributed data. In addition, thanks to many other people who were involved in consultations and workshops.

Fiona Zammit at the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) was very helpful throughout the research.

Funding

Support for this research was provided by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training (DOET). The views in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Department of Education and Training.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Hamish Coates

  2. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Gwilym Croucher, Umesha Weerakkody & Kenneth Moore

  3. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

    Mollie Dollinger & Emmaline Bexley

  4. Wells Advisory, Hawthorn East, Australia

    Paula Kelly

  5. KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Ilke Grosemans

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  1. Hamish Coates
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Correspondence to Hamish Coates.

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Coates, H., Croucher, G., Weerakkody, U. et al. An education design architecture for the future Australian doctorate. High Educ 79, 79–94 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00397-1

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