Transformative interventions: Creative practices in an Education Doctorate programme

Abstract

This research explores the effects upon students’ doctoral research of the experience of engaging with a mandatory creativity component that was introduced into the second year of their EdD (educational doctorate) programme. The research focuses on the transformative potential of creative interventions upon the professional practices of students who previously had had little opportunity or experience of practising and theorising creatively. The course was run in collaboration with an international contemporary art gallery, which provided the stimulus and catalyst for the subsequent creative practices. Two case studies of students from diverse professional backgrounds, health and mathematics, disclose and discuss their personal experience of studying and utilising arts-based research methodologies, and consider the consequences of this for their subsequent approach to doctoral research.