Creative Inquiry and Scholarship: Applications and Implications in a Doctoral Degree

Abstract

The doctoral dissertation is defined as an original contribution to a field. By definition, this makes the dissertation a creative product, and the result of a creative process. The creative process of doctoral work has historically not been highlighted. The same is true for education as a whole. While there is an increasing call for greater creativity in education, they remain aspirational. In this article we describe the underlying premises and some of the practices of a doctoral degree that has been designed with the intention of foregrounding the creative process.

KEYWORDS:

• Complexity
• creative inquiry
• creativity
• doctoral dissertation
• education
• narcissistic
• postnormal
• reproductive

Notes

1. The degrees in question, designed by the first author, is the online Ph.D. in Transformative Studies (TSD) in the Transformative Inquiry Department at California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, California.

2. Freire calls this the “banking” approach to education (Freire 2000).