If I may chime in with my personal experience and my personal opinion as a current doctoral student... and by personal I mean it is my own and not that of my school.

I am currently completing my first year of doctoral studies at McGill University. My research questions are still not fully clear yet, let alone my theoretical framework! However, as you pointed out (which is something that I hadn't really thought off in those terms, but agree with), the difference between a master's degree and a doctorate's degree lies in one's ability to ground and frame a research problem in past theories and practices to address current and future issues. At this point in time, I feel that current Ph.D. students should have enough literature, research, and expertise on which to base themselves. At the same time, the growing nature of our interdisciplinary fields forces us to borrow from other fields (hard sciences, education technologies, educational psychology, psychology, linguistics, etc.). If anything, this should provide ample opportunities to clearly state and "back" our own research by clearly addressing the theoretical framework question. Although this isn't the focus of the various courses I took, it remains a requirement and certainly a fundamental issue, at McGill anyway. At least this is my understanding of our internal requirements, as well as of what is expected from any Ph.D. in our field. So while I did not answer your question, I think this remains a central and fundamental point in one's education, research and dissertation.

Now, the "previous research" "thing". In my opinion, one (student or not) should go as far back as necessary to inform their research, to justify the need to research a specific issue or issues, and to properly show that well... you know what you're talking about! While setting a specific date to cover the literature in a field may be acceptable for a class paper, or preliminary research, doing so for an entire dissertation is, well, I don't think I need to say it. However, if this specific student is studying a very specific topic which did not exist prior to 2006 (I don't know, say a bibliometric analysis of Tweets reposts) where completely new models are proposed and completely data analysis tools were employed, there might be an acceptable justification in setting this arbitrarily 2006 date. And then again... Why reinvent the wheel? Old solutions often apply to current problems with minor tweaks. Limiting my investigation of previous research was not a requirement in my program.

There are many different institutions out there, with many different requirements. Maybe the issues you are raising are only a mark of which programs/schools have higher expectations and which have lower expectations. Or maybe expectations were not clearly stated or misunderstood? That also happens.

On a much lighter note, if one plans on submitting a dissertation without a theoretical framework, I would expect the dissertation to be carved in clay tablets and defended in a cave. With a dinosaur bone in the hair or the nose!

Jonathan Dorey
Certified Translator, OTTIAQ
Ph.D. student – Information studies, McGill
MLIS – Archives, McGill
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De : Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum [[log in to unmask]] de la part de [log in to unmask] [[log in to unmask]]
Date d'envoi : 6 avril 2011 16:23
À : [log in to unmask]
Objet : Doctoral Expectations and Frameworks

Two incidents in the past month lead me to raise a question on this list about doctoral studies. I want to be very careful to frame the question so that it is clear that I am seeking to understand expectations not to criticize them.
At a recent doctoral student presentation the candidate was asked about the theoretical framework for the study. The response was that the institution did not require a theoretical framework (for some of us this is a distinguishing feature between master’s and doctoral work). Is this the case at your institution? Is this a change?
Today a doctoral student from another institution asked me about recent research in a specific area. The institution “requires that I use research no further back than the year 2006.” (I will set aside whether there is any relationship between the topic of study and the date prescription.) Again, is this the case at your institution? Is this a change?
I have not encountered these before and wonder if there are changes underway or I am less aware of expectations elsewhere or whether these are unique.
Thank you.
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Ken Haycock
voice: 778-689-5938