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Engaging in a major research project is likely to teach more about the art of research than can be gained from years of diligent attention to book learning. The continuing recurrence of this experience underlines the standing of the PhD as the traditional rite of passage for entry into academe. Such a proposition about the pedagogical value of field research does not in any way devalue the scholarship essential to any intellectually driven enterprise, but stresses that empirical inquiry enlivens theory and links it to practical issues. For me such a major research project developed from a traditional line of scholarly enquiry which had captured my intermittent attention for some years. I had been engaged in a critical examination of the literature on professions, searching for answers to questions prompted by observation of professionals at work and by my own participatory observation of academic teaching and research. This led through some serendipitous events to the research which is described in Medicine and the State (Daniel, 1990). In this chapter I will reflect on instructive aspects of that research process and abstract some principles of good practice which emerged from that experience.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4899-4497-9_1

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