Knowledge Production - The MultiDisciplinary Cohort

The proposed by the author multidisciplinary cohort is an academic task force, in a form of a research team that operates in a defined academic/professional content area, conducting a cooperative research. The research will endeavor outcomes that will in turn increase both theoretical knowledge and applicability for professional practice. The multidisciplinary cohort is independent from the presence of a specific researcher, but depends on the cooperation and feedback of different researchers dealing with different perspectives of the given issue in question. The multidisciplinary cohort restructures and accelerates existing scientific research processes by conducting it systematically.

According to the proposed model, researchers in doctoral programs will join the cohort fitted their interests and skills of research in the specific academic content area. The participants will join forces for common purposes along with development of their own academic interests, and will enjoy the freedom of an academic research. The gathering in a cohort formation will enhance their academic and professional skills and maintain a continuous contribution in the academic/professional content area.

The cohort combines professional practitioners, students of Ed.D. Program, interested in a specific professional practice development, and students of Ph.D. program, interested in pure research at that specific academic content area.

Mixed Methodology framework will enable the practitioners (Ed.D. students) to perform qualitative research and interpreting their own practice, using interpretive methods such as first person methodology. Being a part of a cohort will ensure that the research will be producing rigorous, accreditable, précised knowledge, which can be reviewed, while using interpretive criteria for evaluation. The Ph.D. students will then run sets of quantitative research on the phenomena identified by the Ed.D. Students. Ed.D. Practitioners can then use the conclusions reached in the academic research in their practice and produce feedback from the field on the applicability and consequences of the conclusions.

Lab research has been widely criticized as being detached from the field (Markman 2009). This way, all research won't be conducted only in laboratory environments, which are currently widely used in Ph.D. research, but also in the real world, in vivo.