Research, practice and education in the built environment

This thesis consists of two parts: the body of published work is presented as a portfolio of 10 publications and forms Part II. Part I consists of a critical review of those publications. In the context of the built environment sector, the overarching themes of the published works are the relationships between: research and emerging concepts in the field and the working practices of construction and property professionals; practice as an interdisciplinary activity and educational programmes; programmes and curricula within higher education and the relevance of research. The critical review explores the portfolio from a micro and macro perspective to demonstrate that the work is considered at an individual publication level, and also within the extended boundaries of the discipline. This opens up broader horizons and assists in comparing the knowledge claims being made with other key benchmark publications. The principal conclusion associated with the research-practice relationship is that practitioners are largely driven by commercial imperatives and the associated need to solve problems expediently. Positivist perspectives therefore have more influence on built environment practitioners than constructivist methodologies. This should inform the design of research projects if researchers wish to be relevant to practice. The main finding linked to the practice-education relationship is that normative interdisciplinarity requiring a collaborative transcendence is more relevant to built environment practice than a phenomenological position where interdisciplinarity exists within the individual. This should inform the design of undergraduate built environment curricula in order to adequately prepare students for practice. In the education-research relationship this thesis concludes that there is a need to develop a more comprehensive definition of scholarship or scholarly activity in support of built environment education to include applied/consultancy-based research, market-based studies, professional updating and the writing of textbooks. This should inform both the recruitment and promotion processes within universities.