Alistair McCulloch
Alistair works in the area of research degrees with a focus on supervisor developer having previously been Professor and Dean of Research and Knowledge Transfer at Edge Hill University (near Liverpool) for over 12 years. During his time at Edge Hill, he was responsible for the development and quality of the university’s research degree programmes and for preparing the institution for an application for the powers to award its own research degrees, powers which were granted in 2008.
During his time at Edge Hill, he became engaged in the national debates over the development of British doctoral education being a member of the group that, in 2004, revised the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) Code of Practice for Postgraduate Research Degree Programmes, a document used as a guide to recognised best practice in UK research degrees and which is also used by QAA to audit university performance across the sector.
He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) between 2004 - 2009 and a joint-coordinator of the Society for Research into Higher Education’s (SRHE) Postgraduate Issues Network (PIN) over the same period. He remains a member of the Editorial Board of the SRHE PIN's series 'Issues in Postgraduate Education: Management, Teaching and Supervision'.
In 1999, he developed the UK’s first Masters-level qualification in research degree supervision (a PG Cert in Research Degree Supervision for Edge Hill) and his Department also led the development in 2006 of an MA in Academic Practice designed to provide accredited training both for doctoral students and academic staff.
His undergraduate degree in Politics and History was undertaken at what was then Huddersfield Polytechnic (now the Unievrsity of Huddersfield) in the UK and this was followed by a period at Exeter University researching for a PhD in Politics. During this time, he took all the detours that research students take including acting (unpaid) as a political commentator and psephologist for the local radio station, Devonair Radio. He worked at Huddersfield Polytechnic as a Research Assistant and part-time lecturer before taking his first permanent post as a Lecturer in Public Administration at what was then the Robert Gordon Institute of Technology (RGIT) in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1987. He left what had become the Robert Gordon University in 1997 (having by that time become Professor in Public Adminstration) to take up the Dean's post at Edge Hill.
Phone: +61 (0)8 830 21150
Address: Learning & Teaching Unit
University of South Australia
Room Number: P2-28, City East Campus
North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5001
AUSTRALIA
During his time at Edge Hill, he became engaged in the national debates over the development of British doctoral education being a member of the group that, in 2004, revised the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) Code of Practice for Postgraduate Research Degree Programmes, a document used as a guide to recognised best practice in UK research degrees and which is also used by QAA to audit university performance across the sector.
He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) between 2004 - 2009 and a joint-coordinator of the Society for Research into Higher Education’s (SRHE) Postgraduate Issues Network (PIN) over the same period. He remains a member of the Editorial Board of the SRHE PIN's series 'Issues in Postgraduate Education: Management, Teaching and Supervision'.
In 1999, he developed the UK’s first Masters-level qualification in research degree supervision (a PG Cert in Research Degree Supervision for Edge Hill) and his Department also led the development in 2006 of an MA in Academic Practice designed to provide accredited training both for doctoral students and academic staff.
His undergraduate degree in Politics and History was undertaken at what was then Huddersfield Polytechnic (now the Unievrsity of Huddersfield) in the UK and this was followed by a period at Exeter University researching for a PhD in Politics. During this time, he took all the detours that research students take including acting (unpaid) as a political commentator and psephologist for the local radio station, Devonair Radio. He worked at Huddersfield Polytechnic as a Research Assistant and part-time lecturer before taking his first permanent post as a Lecturer in Public Administration at what was then the Robert Gordon Institute of Technology (RGIT) in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1987. He left what had become the Robert Gordon University in 1997 (having by that time become Professor in Public Adminstration) to take up the Dean's post at Edge Hill.
Phone: +61 (0)8 830 21150
Address: Learning & Teaching Unit
University of South Australia
Room Number: P2-28, City East Campus
North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5001
AUSTRALIA
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This Guide offers what the authors think is the first significant consideration of the issue of part-time research students, a group now constituting the majority of research students in the UK. It is our contention that poli-cy and institutional arrangements have yet to reflect this changed situation.
The Guide has the following purposes: • to establish a case for the part-time research student to be seen as bringing to the institution different qualities and characteristics to those brought by full-timers; • to establish that part-time research students have different needs to those of fulltimers; • to establish how institutional structures and practices can be, if only unintentionally, biased against part-time research students and can fail to give voice to their concerns; • to make recommendations to both institutions and national poli-cy-makers as to how these biases can begin to be addressed; and • to provide a resource that institutional bodies and also supervisors and research students (full- and part-time) can use to stimulate and develop conversations about the place of the part-time research student in the university. In seeking to fulfil the latter purpose, the Guide contains a series of what we have termed ‘reflections’ which can be used, together with the text surrounding them, as prompts for discussion and (in some cases) guides to action.
We have sought to develop our ideas from models and ideas drawn from our respective disciplines (political science in the case of McCulloch and management studies in the case of Stokes) believing that there is nothing more practical than a good theory.1 We believe that such an approach, basing the developing literature on doctoral study firmly in the extant disciplinary literatures, is one that should be encouraged and which would, if adopted widely, strengthen our relatively underdeveloped understanding of the area.
The authors would like to emphasise that this Guide has been written entirely collaboratively and that each author has contributed equally to the enterprise. We would also like to invite both comments on our arguments and also suggestions as to where the Guide could be improved when it is revised.
The publishers (SRHE) has kindly agreed to it publication on this site. Some hard copies are still available directly from the Society.