Noetic dispositions: A model for intellectual excellence

ABSTRACT

A burgeoning body of literature discusses the process of being and becoming a doctoral scholar, suggesting that graduate students should move beyond performing the role of ‘good student’ and transform into doctoral scholars and stewards of the profession. More recently, research has been conducted to identify more commonly held competencies and attributes doctoral scholars should develop. Even so, clear models for developing scholarly identity and specific habits-of-mind are more difficult to identify. The literature ranges from discussing this process as a form of transformation or identity development, as a form of socialisation, as regulative epistemology, or as the development of a scholarly habitus. While it would be fruitful to derive a new model for scholarly dispositions, we look to perennial wisdom and metaphors of intellectual excellence and lifelong learning that already exist. In this paper we illuminate three Confucian notions, elaborating the development of scholarly dispositions and cultivating particular habits of mind, values, and ways of being. Confucian philosophy sets forth ideal ways of being, valuing, and knowing that are highly developed in their own right and add a more holistic understanding to the conversation of scholarly identity development.

KEYWORDS:

• Scholarly development
• scholar identity
• doctoral dispositions
• doctoral competencies
• educational philosophy
• Confucianism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth A. Roumell

Elizabeth A. Roumell is an Associate Professor of Adult Learning at Texas A&M University in the department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, where she is the leader of the Adult Education Program.  Dr. Roumell's research interests include adult and workforce policy, international and comparative education, and sociocutlural factors related to adult learning and identity development.

Xinyi Bian

Xinyi Bian is a doctoral candidate in the Human Resource Development doctoral program in the Educational Administration and Human Resource Development department at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Xinyi's research interests include the role of gender in career interruptions, and factors and effects of career interruptions, stop-outs, and vocational changes as experienced by individual workers.

Qi Sun

Dr. Qi Sun is an Associate Professor of Adult Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the Educational Psychology & Counseling Department, where she serves as the Program Coordinator. Dr. Sun's research encompasses Confucian perspectives on teaching and learning, global perspectives in adult and continuing education, international and comparative education, and transformational learning.