From application to completion of your submission and viva voce, you will benefit from high-quality individual guidance and support. A supervisory panel will be responsible for giving you advice and support, and monitoring your progress.

You can expect reasonable access to your supervisory panel throughout your period of research; there is a minimum requirement for some face-to-face contact each year.

The programme aims to:

• provide a framework within which you can conduct an original piece of research relating to your own experience and interest
  
• facilitate your development as a fully-trained and competent educational researcher, able to understand and use research techniques appropriate to your subject area, and to be knowledgable about approaches used by other social scientists
  
• enable you to think through how you can use your existing knowledge and skills to different contexts and apply them to a variety of problems and to your future research activities.

Learning occurs in several ways:

• Supervisory team – through working with two academic advisers (your supervisory team) you will develop both your research skills and your research study.
• By undertaking courses provided through resources from our Doctoral College, which aims to develop your research skills and engagement (see section below on professional development). In addition, it is sometimes possible for you to audit units from other programmes.
• Through becoming part of the Department of Education’s research culture for example, by participating in research seminars and research cluster activities.