Extending collective practices of doctoral education from natural to educational sciences

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine how a collective knowledge-creation-oriented approach to doctoral education is being adopted in research within the field of education. The authors interviewed nine leaders of national centres of excellence in science research and 12 education professors whose research communities cultivate collective practices of doctoral education. In order to examine how the collective practices differ from the individual ones, the authors also interviewed nine education professors from well-known Finnish and other European universities engaged in supervising traditional monograph theses. Three principal features of the collective model (CM) of doctoral education were distinguished: (1) pursuit of collectively shared research objects; (2) pursuit of externally reviewed co-authored journal articles; and (3) focus on collective supervision. The results indicated that the principal features of the CM can be productively implemented in research in the field of education despite certain challenges and constraints addressed in this report.