Chapter 12: The Temporalities of the Writing Experience of Part-time Doctoral Researchers in Education

Doctoral study in the United Kingdom has attracted ever increasing numbers of individuals over recent years, for example, in the academic year 2013–2014 there were 20,770 doctoral completions across the United Kingdom, rising to 24,850 by 2017–2018 (HESA, n.d.). This expansion has seen a rise not only in full-time doctoral researchers but also in part-time researchers, many of whom are completing their studies while remaining in full-time employment. In Schools of Education, this is a clear trend as the Doctorate in Education (EdD), a professional doctorate, is offered to educational professionals who undertake their study as a form of applied research focusing on an area of education which has application in their own contexts. Within many Schools of Education, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, those following an EdD are an important part of the doctoral community, supplemented by those professionals who decide to take a part-time PhD. However, while these doctoral researchers are an important part of the doctoral community, part-time study has received much less attention in the literature than has full-time study. This might be due to the fact that part-time researchers are often located away from the main university campus and are unable to take part in doctoral development regimes. They also make up a much smaller proportion of the total doctoral population than full-time doctoral researchers across a university. It is due to this perceived under-representation of part-time doctoral researchers in the research literature that we decided that we wanted to understand their experiences more. The study reported here focuses on the experiences of part-time doctoral researchers from one UK institution and, therefore, is contextualized within the UK higher education system.