Thank you for your comment, Paul. Appreciate your sharing this perspective, especially in advance of your forthcoming book (please, post or email me a link to it once it is ready!).

In many ways, you raised some additional items about this, especially regarding the cookie-cutter approach that is old reliable that a supervisor may suggest if he or she does not know about some of the intricacies of the design or methodology (cf. autoethnography, visual ethnography, etc.) or even cannot fully grasp some of the focused needs of a practice-based thesis (especially if the well-intentioned supervisor comes from a “pure” research-based tradition, as is common). While none of these examples come from my personal experiences with my supervisors, my own research http://silenceandvoice.com/doctoral-thesis/ points to disatrous consequences of mis-alignment, something that is more common than one may think by only comparing what is listed on a paper as descriptors!

One trend I see here in the US, where I live while engaging in an international study while engaging in my own formal studies in the UK, is the increasing amount of professional doctorates designed and developed and supervised by research faculty, many of whom have never practiced in their own fields of research!

These are the sorts of issues that I find so appealing in my research, especially as juxtaposed by the knowledge that I need to experience this myself; in that way I find my own struggles for how to “do” my thesis all conflated with seeing how others navigate these very processes, some with more success or smooth riding than others. Nevertheless, the adage that a good thesis is a DONE thesis points to the need to work in a structure that I find comfortable and sensible while still falling within the boundaries of what is “acceptable” to get approved.

Looking forward to seeing your work; perhaps it will help me with my own thesis!

Jeffrey