The stifling silence around scholarly creativity in doctoral education: experiences of students and supervisors in four disciplines

Eva M Brodin

doi:10.1007/s10734-017-0168-3

Abstract

The demand for developing creativity among doctoral students is found in a number of educational policies all over the world. Yet, earlier studies on Swedish doctoral education suggest that doctoral students’ creativity is not always encouraged. Based on a critical hermeneutic approach and cases in four different disciplines, the aim of this study was therefore (1) to explore different shapes of doctoral students’ creativity in Swedish doctoral education and (2) to reveal and find possible explanations to some of the conditions stifling doctoral students’ scholarly creativity. Interview data was collected from 28 participants, constituting 14 dyads of students and supervisors in four disciplines. Through hermeneutic interpretative analysis of the disciplinary cases, the results show that creativity kept on playing in musical performance, was an unexpected guest in pedagogical work, was captured in frames in philosophy and put on hold in psychiatry. Across the cases, students’ scholarly creativity was essentially encapsulated in silence. This silence seemed to emanate from controlling intellectual, political and economic agendas that enabled stifling conditions of the students’ scholarly creativity, where it was as follows: restricted by scholarly traditions, embodying supervisors’ power and unrequested in practice. Based on these findings, the article ends in suggestions for preventing such conditions, holding that it is important to establish a discourse on scholarly creativity in doctoral education, to view doctoral students as capable creative agents and to actually ask for their scholarly creativity.

Highlights

Creativity is fundamental to scholarly and societal development through its potential of moving existing knowledge to new dimensions
Based on the data from these studies, the present analysis attempts to probe into causes that might impede the development of creativity in Swedish doctoral education
Otherwise the silence showed itself in that the students’ creativity was ‘implicitly’ requested in philosophy, unexpected in pedagogical work and frequently impossible in psychiatry. These findings suggest that an explicit discourse on scholarly creativity was frequently missing in the studied cases, which led to stifling conditions, where creativity was restricted by scholarly traditions, embodying supervisors’ power and unrequested in practice

Summary

Introduction

Creativity is fundamental to scholarly and societal development through its potential of moving existing knowledge to new dimensions It is a central learning outcome at a doctoral level in many countries across the continents (e.g. Association of American Universities 1998; Australasian Qualifications Framework Council 2013; Cloete et al 2015; League of European Research Universities 2014; Swedish Higher Education Ordinance 1993:100). Academia embodies certain tensions between intellectual, political and economic agendas (Enders and de Weert 2009), influencing doctoral students’ development in diverse directions (Elmgren et al 2016; Lee and Boud 2009). Such variation obviously affects the conditions for doctoral creativity. Based on the data from these studies, the present analysis attempts to probe into causes that might impede the development of creativity in Swedish doctoral education

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Discussion

Conclusion