According to Ch. 1 of Wellington, Bathmaker, Hunt, McCulloch, and Sikes (2005)The rise of the professional doctorate: The professional doctorate is relatively new as compared with the PhD (one century rather than nine). Inevitably there is still considerable debate about the notion and it remains an essentially contested concept (Gallie, 1955). Some of the issues and questions that seem to recur are: The term ‘professional doctorate’ does raise the issue of what ‘professional knowledge’ might be, as compared to (say) ‘academic knowledge’. Your thoughts. No handwitten response.