- Title
- On knowing, problems, and inquiry: an exploration of the foundations of doctoral cognition
- Creator
- Hazel, Gavin J.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- In the ongoing contestation about the nature and purpose of higher education, much of the middle ground in this debate has come to be dominated by a type of knowledge that can best be labelled as technical. The rise of a narrow instrumental and technical modality in higher education has contributed to an increasing neglect of the underlying, or fundamental processes, that shape thinking, learning and development within the university domain. The work presented herein is intended to contribute to addressing this gap by laying down a theoretical footing for Doctoral cognition. Doctoral cognition is seen to involve, at is core, productive or constructive thinking. Productive thinking is thus construed as the creative and adaptive capacities that allow us to seek out solutions in circumstances where we are unable simply to apply pre-prepared responses. This goal of this thesis is to contribute to the reinvigoration of pragmatic, phenomenological and constructivist lines of inquiry within educational thinking. This is an attempt to illuminate a problem in two theoretical dimensions – firstly the unnecessarily restricted nature of our standard model of cognition; and secondly to demonstrate the contribution that a rediscovery of the productive nature of thought would make to our capacity to explain cognition and learning. In doing so this work seeks to re-introduce the ideas of productive thinking, construction, intention and connotation. This work seeks to identify within both philosophical and psychological traditions implicated in Doctoral activity. To do so has required the reviewing and integration of concepts, theories and research findings from diverse literatures including those relating to cognitive science, complex systems theory, intentional conceptual change, situational awareness, metacognition, and intelligence. It follows that the philosophical perspective offered in this thesis, which accommodates both existential and phenomenological traditions, is aimed at gripping up smart moves, problems, intelligence, learning, agency, regulation and self-maintenance and applying them to a particular exemplar – Doctoral research activity. The use of a system’s perspective is seen to be the most effective model for revealing the relationship between being, doing and meaning. This work is proposed as a part of larger program of activity that seeks to provide a means of realigning basic and applied thinking to the question of higher education and learning. Put plainly this work should be recognised as a contribution to an ongoing conversation about the nature of cognition, mind and learning. This conversation stretches beyond the immediate to long held debates about the nature of thought, identity and being.
- Subject
- cognition; higher education; intelligence; agency; personal construct theory; doctrateness
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1039675
- Identifier
- uon:13688
- Rights
- Copyright 2013 Gavin J. Hazel
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Abstract | 114 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Thesis | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |