When Is a Boundary Not a Boundary? Exploring the Tensions and Potentialities of Creative Practice in Doctoral Research in Art and Design Education

Alongside their continuing growth in the popularity, both practice research in creative disciplines and arts‐based methods in research in the social sciences have histories now spanning several decades. In doctoral education, art and design education research sits within and across two distinct fields – the art and design doctorate and the education doctorate – each field with their own disciplinary traditions and conventions and expectations of doctorateness. For postgraduate researchers and supervisors alike, this brings challenges and barriers that are often perceived as hierarchical and othering. Reflecting on my attempts to locate in an existing global dataset those art and design education doctorates in which practice research and/or creative methods feature, I expose the complexities of the terrain. This paper reveals tensions and acknowledges where boundaries between disciplinary approaches may be artificial, porous or invisible to those interloping. It is imperative that postgraduate researchers and their supervisors acknowledge the complexity, slipperiness, and fluidity of distinctions between practice research in art and design, and creative methods in education research. I argue for the need for confidence in holding space for this uncertainty whilst seeing lineages of precedence that open up possibilities for future research.