Doctor of Counselling

School of Arts & Sciences, Fremantle Campus

The University of Notre Dame Australia is dedicated to building a strong and innovative research culture. The Doctor of Counselling offers an applied three-year or equivalent program leading to a thesis of approximately 80,000 words in length. Your thesis should bridge the theory-practice gap and make a practical contribution to a specific area of counselling and professional knowledge as well as making a contribution to current scholarship understanding.

The Professional Doctorate is a research degree designed to meet the needs of professionals who aspire to achieve academic excellence and lead the development of knowledge within their profession. The program seeks to examine crucial professional topics and integrate professional experience with scholarly inquiry. In particular, it aims to generate a research-based approach, providing answers to questions relevant to the professions or industry and encouraging a systematic approach to the collection, analysis and interpretation of data. For this reason, we recommend you seek the support of a relevant professional body, employer or industry group in defining your research area.

• RSCH7000 Quantitative Research Methods
• RSCH7001 Qualitative Research Methods
• RSCH7002 Scholarly Reading and Writing
• RSCH7003 Developing a Research Proposal
• RSCH7059 Supervised Research - Counselling

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The Professional Doctorate comprises coursework and a substantial research component leading to the submission of a thesis. The coursework component includes four compulsory research training courses to be completed as a prerequisite to your individual research project. The coursework will provide opportunities for you to formulate substantial elements of your planned research (e.g. topic refinement, identification and justification of the preferred research method(s), preparation of a draft proposal), and to develop personal competencies in critical analysis and scholarly writing relevant to your profession.

The completion of the coursework is facilitated by a course delivery schedule which takes into consideration that you may also be in employment during your candidature.

Full details of the program are contained in the Program Regulations.