Thinking Skills and Creativity 3 (2008) 143–153

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Thinking Skills and Creativity

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Promoting creativity in PhD supervision: Tensions and dilemmas

Denise Whitelock ∗, Dorothy Faulkner, Dorothy MiellThe Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 10 April 2008

Keywords:Academic creativityDoctoral studentsDoctoral supervisors

a b s t r a c t

In this paper we argue that the processes of collaborative creativity are just as importantwithin the sociocultural context of PhD supervisory practice, as they are in other organi-zational and educational settings. In order to test this claim a series of interviews withsupervisors and students were undertaken to uncover the pedagogic processes used toencourage and support creativity within supervision sessions. The findings from this small-scale study suggest that whilst the more formal instruction and monitoring processes thatlead to the acquisition of transferrable research skills are both usefully and necessary aspectsof doctoral training, the more open-ended and creative developments required at this levelof study should be given equal weight. There needs to be space, time and encouragementfor the types of interactions identified here (e.g. informal reflection, relationship buildingwith peers and supervisor, playful exploration and risk taking) as well as mandatory skillsdevelopment.

© 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Over the past decade there has been a considerable resurgence of interest in the role of creativity in educational andorganizational contexts and in understanding the conditions and processes that appear to enable creativity (for generalreviews see Craft, 2000; Cropley, 2001; Henry, 2004; Jeffcutt & Pratt, 2002; Rickards & Moger, 2006). Within the domain ofpsychology, research on creativity has focussed on exploring the practices of creative individuals (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996;John-Steiner, 2000); on understanding the processes that take place when people are engaged in creative activities such asmusic making or writing (e.g. Sawyer, 2003; Wirtanen & Littleton, 2004; Vass, 2004) and on understanding the conditions thatfoster creativity in organizational contexts (e.g. Henry, 2004; Zhou, 2003). Building on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theoryof creativity as outlined by Moran and John-Steiner (2003) and on Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) account of the processes thatsupport creative ‘flow’, we take the view that creativity is necessarily collaborative and social. Unlike early explanations thatviewed creativity in terms of the qualities or personality traits exhibited by highly gifted individuals (e.g. Guilford, 1950),Csikszentmihalyi (1996) takes the position that ‘Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads but in the interactionbetween a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context’ (p. 24). It also involves, ‘Real-time collaborations between livingpeople who depend on each other and contribute jointly to a common goal of transforming their domain, which neither coulddo alone’ (Miell & Littleton, 2004, p. 12). Together with colleagues working within these two theoretical frameworks, our ownresearch and that of our research students (e.g. Wirtanen & Littleton, 2004; Vass, 2003) has identified some of the processesand conditions that are important for collaborative creativity. In this paper we argue that these processes are just as importantwithin the sociocultural context of PhD supervisory practice, as they are in other organizational and educational settings.Within the particular context examined here, the collaboration between supervisor and student can be characterised as one

∗ Corresponding author.E-mail address: d.m.whitelock@open.ac.uk (D. Whitelock).

1871-1871/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2008.04.001

144 D. Whitelock et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 3 (2008) 143–153

involving a long-term engagement that ideally allows the development of trust and the negotiation of meaning around ajointly chosen research project that ultimately leads to the creation and communication of new knowledge that must, ‘passmuster with experts in the field [. . .] and be included in the cultural domain to which it belongs’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p.27). As with other kinds of creative collaboration, the relationship between student and supervisor is likely to be emotionallyintense. Emotional intensity within creative collaborations has been shown to sustain the intrinsic motivation that drivesimagination, thinking, risk taking and the creation of shared meaning (Moran & John-Steiner, 2003).

While considerable effort has been devoted to developing creativity in the primary and secondary education sectors (e.g.Craft, 2004; Jeffrey & Craft, 2004), this seems to have been a neglected area in higher education even though creativity andoriginality are frequently cited as highly prized qualities of PhD graduates. This is surprising, given Hockey’s (1997) argumentthat, ‘Autonomous originality lies at the core of the United Kingdom social science PhD, students independently pursue aresearch topic particular to themselves, eventually producing an original contribution to knowledge’ (p. 50).

As a first step, the research reported in this paper attempts to address this neglect by investigating social science doctoralresearch students’ and supervisors’ accounts of the supervisory process, their views of the role, extent and nature of creativityin this process, and their views on the conditions that encourage or hinder the development of original ideas leading to newknowledge or transformations of existing knowledge. We had two main aims. Firstly we wanted to understand how super-visory practices within broadly social science disciplines might foster and encourage student creativity (we acknowledgethat different training and supervisory models operate in other disciplines such as science, engineering and technology).Secondly, we wanted to establish whether students’ and supervisors’ accounts of the processes and practices involved inPhD supervision at our university had anything in common with those identified as important for creative collaborationsaccording to cultural-historical theory and research.

We believe that it is important to establish how best to support the development of students’ creativity at this point in timegiven the climate of PhD training and supervision that exists currently in universities in the United Kingdom. Over the past 20years, successive reviews and reports commissioned by government bodies such as the Higher Education Funding Council,the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education and the UK research funding councils have given rise to a significantcultural shift in the nature of the postgraduate experience of students pursuing a research degree (e.g. QAA, 2004, 2007). In thesocial sciences, this shift has manifested itself at institutional level as a move away from a model where a research supervisorwas regarded as the sole or main provider of support and training, to a model where universities and/or their graduate schoolsare required to provide organisational structures and training programmes conforming to the 27 precepts for postgraduateresearch programmes outlined in the QAA Code of Practice (QAA, 2004). The reasons why this cultural shift has taken placehas been amply documented elsewhere (e.g. Burgess, 1996; Hockey, 1997; Pearson & Brew, 2002; Pole, 2000). It is generallyaccepted however that the shift has been fuelled by the requirement that research councils and other providers demonstrateincreased transparency and accountability in relation to the funding mechanisms associated with postgraduate trainingand support, the requirement to improve submission rates and the quality of supervision and training, and the demands ofacademia, industry and employers for people with transferable skills as well as narrow, specialist subject knowledge.

A Joint Funding Councils Review of research training initiated in 2001 identified three areas where standards needed tobe monitored and improved:

• Ensuring that PhD student’s work is creative and original• Supporting and rewarding good PhD supervision• Increasing students’ participation in and learning from training in transferable skills (Roberts, 2002, p. 129).

A recent review of research degree programmes in England and Northern Ireland concluded that universities have beensuccessful in developing formal training programmes for both students and their supervisors (QAA, 2007), there seems tohave been little attention to developing practice that might ensure that students’ work is creative and original as well astechnically and methodologically competent. This is surprising given that the abilities to think both analytically and creativelyhave been identified as key qualities that PhD graduates have to offer the labour market (Roberts, 2002). This neglect has notgone unnoticed and there is considerable tension and controversy around negotiating an appropriate balance skills trainingand supporting the development of creativity and original thought. Some critics (e.g. Hockey, 1995; Pole, 2000) have arguedthat the current emphasis on skills based training has been at the expense of creativity and originality. This is born out byresearch on students’ experiences (e.g. Burgess & Pole, 1997) that has shown that doctoral students regard the acquisition oftechnical skills and craft knowledge (that is understanding how to manage all aspects of the research process from formulatingan initial research design to the publication, dissemination and exploitation of the research) as more important outcomesof the PhD process than becoming an expert or specialist in their field (Pole, 2000). This is not surprising, given that by theend of their doctoral training students are now required to amass a portfolio of evidence that demonstrates that they haveacquired the 36 competencies set out in the seven areas of the Joint Statement of Skills Training Requirements for ResearchStudents (2001). Other evidence, however, suggests that not all students are as favourably disposed towards prioritising thenew research training culture. Deem and Brehony (2000), for example, found that in social science departments within theirrespective universities, international students were more likely to embrace this culture than home-based students.

The fact that the introduction to the Joint Statement outlines the Research Councils’ ‘belief that training in research skillsand techniques is the key element in the development of a research student’ (p. 1, our italics) can only serve to reinforce themessage that research skills and the techniques of research management take precedence over the ‘core objective’ of the PhD

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process to ‘make a substantial, original contribution to knowledge in their area, normally leading to published work’. Only 2of the 36 competencies outlined in the Joint Statement refer to creativity. These come under the area of Personal Effectivenessand state that students should be able to:

• Be creative, innovative and original in one’s approach to research;• Demonstrate flexibility and open-mindedness.

The dilemma for supervisors and their students is that little guidance is given in either doctoral student or supervisortraining programmes as to how to develop these qualities, although in their 2001 review of research training, the JointFunding Councils regarded supervisors as being best placed to stimulate students’ creativity and analytical thinking. It isonly recently that the ‘personalised and privatized practices of PhD supervision pedagogy’ (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000, p.137) have begun to be examined in any detail (e.g. Cryer, 1998; Pearson & Brew, 2002).

There is, however, a body of research focussing on the benefits of fostering creative thinking skills and on the conditionsthat facilitate creative learning dialogues (e.g. Craft, 2000; Miell & Littleton, 2004; Vass, 2004). This work recognizes thesignificant roles played by the social and cultural context in relation to any form of activity (including creative activity) andis sometimes described as a ‘situated’ view after the approach to learning developed by Lave and Wenger (1991). Such anapproach emphasises the practical, social, intellectual and value-based practices in any domain of activity and sees learningas a form of apprenticeship into these. In a recent article on research training and supervisor development Pearson andBrew (2002) comment that a situated view of learning bears striking parallels to Delamont, Atkinson, and Parry (1997) viewthat PhD students must experience a process of enculturation into the social practices of the research laboratory over time.Building on the situated learning approach, and as supervisors ourselves, we were interested in exploring the process ofcreative development in our own communities of research practice and in probing:

• Students’ and supervisors’ perceptions of creativity during doctoral studies;• How supervisors might encourage creative thinking;• How students might support and develop their own creative thinking;• Identifying strategies to assist with the development of creative skills.

We planned a series of interviews with supervisors from our own institution that in would hopefully uncover the pedagogicprocesses they use to encourage and support creativity within supervision sessions. We wanted to investigate whether thedialogues that take place during these sessions had features in common with those already established as important forsuccessful creative collaborations? Also, given that Pole (2000) has shown that students regard the acquisition of technicalskills and craft knowledge as a more important outcomes of the PhD process than becoming an expert or specialist in theirfield, we wanted to find out whether or not their PhD students regarded the development creativity as an important aspectof their apprenticeship as trainee researchers.

2. Data collection

In order to maximise our in-depth understanding of supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of any creative processesthat might be taking place during doctoral supervision, a qualitative research approach was adopted. Eight full-time maturedoctoral students in their second year of study at The Open University and six of their supervisors (some supervisors workedwith more than one of the students from this sample) volunteered to participate in the study. At the Open University, allresearch degree students have a supervisory team of at least 2 people, but not all 16 supervisors were available for interviewat the time of the study. The students (three women and five men) were engaged in research in education, educationaltechnology, and psychology. All were active participants in the mandatory, ESRC-recognised doctoral training programmesoffered by the University’s Institute of Educational Technology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Faculty of Education andLanguage Studies. Two of the six participating supervisors were women; three of the six were very experienced supervisors(two men and one woman) and three were less experienced. Two of the more experienced supervisors were supervisor tothree of the students interviewed.

Two semi-structured interview schedules were devised to probe participants’ understanding of creativity and mentoringprocesses that might be occurring during doctoral students’ supervision sessions (see Appendices A and B). Participants wereinterviewed individually and each interview lasted between 45 and 60 min. All interviews were taped and later transcribed foranalysis. The interviews were also designed to interrogate the participants’ past learning experiences, their descriptions of thesupervisor/student relationship, their definitions of what constitutes academic creativity, their views on if and how supervi-sors support creative thinking and any tools or techniques students used to support and stimulate their own creative thinking.

3. Preliminary analysis

Our initial analysis of the transcripts drew on previous research to generate an initial content analysis. Only 15% of thestudents’ and supervisors’ talk was seen as unclassifiable in terms of our key research questions. The interview data forthe students and supervisors were treated independently and were initially sorted according to several broad, descriptive

146 D. Whitelock et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 3 (2008) 143–153

Table 1Summary of students’ responses

Student identifier Category of response

Cr SuS SS TF

A 1 4 2 1B 3 2 2 2C 2 5 2 2D 2 4 0 2E 3 8 4 2F 3 5 5 1G 3 5 2 3H 1 7 3 2

Total 18 40 20 15

Key: Cr, creativity definition; SuS, supervisor support; SS, student support (i.e. tools and techniques used to support their own thinking); TF, taking forward(i.e. lessons and skills identified for taking forward into the future).

Table 2Summary of unique student responses

Category of response Total

Cr 14SuS 29Ss 13TF 11

Key: Cr, creativity definition; SuS, supervisor support; SS, student support; TF, taking forward.

categories by the authors. Subsequently, the interview transcripts were independently classified by a colleague not involvedin the research to establish inter-rater reliability for these categories (0.78, Cronbach’s Alpha).

Statements from the students’ interviews were categorised into four main areas:

• Definitions of creativity;• Descriptions of the type of support offered by their supervisors;• Descriptions of the tools and techniques they used to support their own creative and critical thinking;• Lessons and skills that they felt they had gained from supervision sessions that they would build on and take forward into

the future.

Table 1 gives a summary of the number of responses generated by students that fell into these four categories. While therewas a lot of commonality between students’ descriptions of their experiences of supervision, definitions of creativity andthe ways in which they managed their own learning processes, many of them also offered unique and personal reflectionson their own experience. Of the total number of responses in the four categories, Table 2 shows how many responses wereunique in the sense that they were generated by only one student.

Tables 1 and 2 indicate that there is more commonality in the students’ interviews in relation to their reports of about‘supervisor support’ and ‘student support’, than with their definitions of creativity. They found this a difficult notion to definewith respect to their own work. Despite this difficulty there was broad agreement among the students that they did have toproduce an original piece of research and this was the main creative component of their work.

A preliminary understanding of the support processes that supervisors employed to produce successful conditions forfostering creativity during supervisions was derived by analysing the supervisors’ responses according to the following fiveareas (see Table 3):

Table 3Summary of supervisors’ responses

Supervisor identifier Category of response

SA IA ESC DC SS

1 2 1 3 2 42 2 4 6 2 33 2 3 5 2 44 3 1 1 2 25 1 2 1 2 36 1 2 2 1 1

Total 11 13 18 11 17

Key: SA, supervisor’s approach (i.e. their personal approach to supervision); IA, influence on approach; ESC, enhancing student creativity; DC, definitioncreativity; SS, student skills (i.e. supervisors’ perceptions of students’ skills).

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• Their personal approach to supervision;• What had influenced this approach;• How they enhanced student creativity;• How they defined creativity;• Their perceptions of students’ skills.

In spite of students’ difficulties in defining ‘creativity’, and their several individual definitions of creativity there was stillsubstantial overlap between students and supervisors definitions. All supervisors agreed that doing research was indeeda creative activity. Also, they believed that the linking of new ideas together was an important component of the creativeprocess. They defined creativity as constructing new stories and finding evidence to convince others of the worth of thesenovel narratives. Supervisor A stressed the creative process in as fundamental to both research and teaching: ‘It’s in everyaspect of what we do. I mean in teaching and research, in courses, you’re putting together ideas from all kinds of sources.’

All students agreed that some of the academic skills they were developing during the course of their doctoral studies werecreative. Some of them felt they were not creative with a big ‘C’ as in the case of an artist or theatre director, but concededthat creative thinking was part of the doctoral process. Students wanted to define what they meant by creativity at the startof the interview. This later assisted their reflection on their own personal encounters with creative processes. Student A,who had struggled with the definition suggested, ‘It’s about finding something which isn’t what you put into it in the firstplace – it isn’t always there when you started. It’s actually being surprised and something unexpected happening.’ Producingsomething new seemed to be at the heart of the creativity process for several students as student B explained: ‘So yes I thinkit’s creative throughout but I think for me, probably the most exciting creative bit is actually coming up with new ideas andworking out how to put them.’

In agreement with their supervisors’ ideas there was a consensus amongst the students that the PhD examination requiredthem to produce research that was novel and original. The students explained how they constructed novel ideas in terms ofhow they carried out a literature review: they scanned the literature in order to find gaps. They identified this as a creativeprocess although they were also concerned to use literature reviewing activities to find evidence to ground their new ideasand findings. For example student D claimed: ‘You have to be critical about. . . you know being mindful of the issues and howto justify that stuff.’

Having established that there was some agreement between students’ and supervisors’ notions of what counted as cre-ativity, the next step in our analysis was to see whether the interview data yielded information about the processes andactivities that the participants reported as important contributions to the development of creativity in doctoral supervi-sion. We interrogated the supervisors’ and students’ interview data separately, and then looked to see whether and howthe processes and activities they identified were in any ways similar to those proposed by researchers as contributing tocollaborative creativity in other institutional and educational contexts. This analysis is reported next.

4. Analysis and discussion

4.1. Supervisors’ views

In this section of the paper we discuss the various processes that supervisors identified as contributing to the developmentof academic creativity. These fell into categories describing sets of processes and activities that we have identified as: (i)providing guidance whilst promoting autonomy; (ii) building confidence through positive feedback; (iii) encouraging risktaking; (iv) filtering knowledge and identifying problems; (v) modelling and sharing practice.

4.1.1. Providing guidance whilst promoting autonomyWe found that the majority of supervisors identified the processes involved in guidance as developmental rather than

directive and controlling in nature. They saw this form of guidance as making a highly salient contribution to studentcreativity. Their descriptions of this suggest that developmental guidance is a subtle pedagogical practice that needs to becarefully tailored to students’ developmental needs. Much of the evidence for this comes from the students themselveswho suggested that their supervisors supported the creative process through these subtle guiding techniques. Supervisorsencouraged them to think in a more flexible way and to discuss their ideas with peers and to be open to constructive criticismby presenting papers at conferences. Student E exemplified these processes when she said:

‘If they guide you along but don’t push you through then I think that is creative but it’s quite a subtle process. . . So Ithink it’s kind of sort of guiding and being there but sort of allowing the student to develop themselves and expressthemselves through their own work.’

Moran and John-Steiner (2003) have established that genuine creative collaborations are emotionally intense and lateron in her interview Student E also touched on this point. When she outlined how emotional support within the context ofher relationship with her supervisor allowed her to take risks, an activity which she considered creative:

‘I’m able to say, to sort of take a risk and say this is what I want to do and I suppose feeling that I can take a risk allowsme to be creative. Whereas if I maybe felt quite anxious or felt that I was trying to impress my supervisors all the

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time then that would inhibit my creativity because maybe I wouldn’t have the courage to say that I want to do this orwhatever and for them to let me take that risk.’

It could be argued that this type of guidance and emotional support assists students’ progression through their individualzones of proximal development and implies that as students become more self-confident, they should need less and lessdirect guidance. This interpretation was supported by student C who said, ‘They try to encourage (you) into a position whereyou are proactive and where you are self sufficient in terms of moving forward so don’t sit around waiting to tell you to dosomething . . . they won’t do that.’

The instructional practice that supervisors identified as developmental guidance is very similar to Rogoff’s (1990, 2003)notion of guided participation whereby children and other apprentice thinkers learn, through interaction with more experi-enced adults and peers, to think or act in ways that are beyond the ‘zone’ in which they are able to perform without assistance(Rogoff, 2003). The students in our study confirmed that their supervisors assisted their learning through the mutual explo-ration of the students own ideas, and by encouraging them to experiment with new methodologies. This helped studentsdevelop a sense of confidence in themselves as researchers. Student E felt that the guiding techniques her supervisor usedto foster her confidence in her own creativity were an essential component of her supervisory sessions. She explained:

‘I do have a lot of autonomy, that helps me to be creative, and also because I feel confidence that they are not goingto laugh at my ideas, they are so encouraging that it gives me the confidence to try something different or to at leastapproach it and talk about it and I think those are the important things. I’m much more focused and clear now on whatI want as well.’

For this student, the relationship that she has with her supervisors seems to be based on trust and as Csikszentmihalyi(1996) argues, trust is fundamental to the successful negotiation of meanings and new knowledge and understandings withina creative collaboration.

4.1.2. Building confidence through positive feedbackIn their interviews, several supervisors mentioned that their guidance should empower the student. Most importantly

there was a feeling among the supervisors that they must try to encourage the student to do what they want to do, ratherthan impose their own views as in this way students will become more autonomous and confident. In fact supervisor 6 said:

‘Always given positive re-enforcement and say if you have an idea go and do it.’

In the introduction to this paper we argued that creative collaborations (such as those that might develop betweensupervisors and their students), characteristically involve a long-term engagement that ideally allows the development oftrust and the negotiation of meaning around a jointly chosen research project that ultimately leads to the creation andcommunication of new knowledge. One supervisor mentioned that enhancing creativity was a very slow process and thatalthough they did not teach creativity per se they felt that the whole of the student’s study journey was creative, fromidentifying the initial problem, finding a strategy to investigate it, analysing the findings and finally, evaluating the approachtaken to solve the particular problem. Another very experienced supervisor mentioned that there was not a set of identifiableskills or processes associated with the development of creativity and originality, even though originality of the final product,the thesis, was one of the main assessment criteria for judging a PhD.

Supervisor 2 argued that finding a combination of topics that might lead to a new question provided opportunities for hisstudents to illustrate creativity. Like student E, this supervisor also mentioned that offering emotional support to overcomeblocks to creative thinking as well as encouraging his student’s confidence were both important. The need to offer emotionalsupport was reiterated by supervisor 3 when he claimed that he did not, ‘Want to shut them down emotionally.’ Like hiscolleague, he too wanted to broaden his students’ horizons by encouraging them and at times pointing them towards theexploration of new possibilities. These supervisors clearly felt an important part of their role was to maintain a positiveemotional climate that would enable the students to become confident, adventurous and creative.

4.1.3. Encouraging risk takingSome of the students mentioned that risk taking was part of the creative process. For example student A stresses this

function of the supervisory sessions saying, ‘They allow me to say what I want and what I think and they listen. They encourageme to take risks.’

Student D also mentioned that one way to develop new ideas was by being unconventional and taking academic risks,‘You have to be creative to move forward in thinking. Yes sometimes you have to do things a little bit unconventionally.’For some of the supervisors, supporting risk taking was encouraged through an atmosphere of playfulness. For examplesupervisor 6 said:

‘It is important that however rigorous one has to be there is also a kind of play behind research which is “hey, let’stry this, if it doesn’t work then let’s try something else” so I hope that we give them the confidence to think “I can trysomething else” and really try something and see what comes in.’

By encouraging students’ playful exploration of ideas and possible avenues of research this supervisor could be seenas creating a relatively low risk environment that allowed his students to take risks without fear of failure. Again there

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are parallels with the processes identified as contributing to creativity in non-academic settings. This kind of low risk,high challenge environment has been identified by Zhou (2003) as optimal for fostering the intrinsic motivation necessaryto sustain employees collaborative engagement with the generation of novel and useful ideas concerning procedures andprocesses used at work.

4.1.4. Filtering knowledge and identifying problemsAnother facet of the supervisors’ approach to encouraging creative thinking was that of identifying problems in a piece

of research. Four out of six supervisors mentioned that students would have adopted a more creative approach to their workif they were able to adopt a more critical stance, since then they would be more confident and secure with their ideas andwriting skills. They would be more focussed and be able to communicate ideas clearly. This was echoed by several students.One of the skills they valued was learning to be objective and not emotional about the research. Student D voiced this bysaying, ‘One of the best skills I have acquired is not being too, how do you say it, emotional, being subjective. Being openminded and being critical. . .er being flexible.’

Supervisors felt they were prompting students to be creative by challenging and filtering their ideas. Two of the supervisorsequated creativity with problem solving processes such as exploring and evaluating a range of possibilities with their studentsby helping them to reject or select novel ideas and solutions. Supervisor 2 said:

‘Trying to get them to see other possibilities, to see a range of possibilities and make one or two choices among them. . . Challenging them you know, not aggressively, just oh that’s an interesting idea but what about so and so . . .? . . . Iwould call a very important aspect of creativity, of recognising of being able to see the world from another’s point ofview of your reader.’

Earlier in this paper we identified Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) theory of creativity as being important for understandingsupervisory processes. He argues that there are three parts to any system that sustains creativity: the domain (in our case thisis an academic domain) or shared symbolic rules and procedures of any particular culturally accepted knowledge framework;the field or those individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain and who determine whether new ideas and knowledgeshould be included in the domain and the individual, who generates new ideas or products. By challenging problematicideas and encouraging their students to be more objective, selective and critical, supervisors in our study were assuming therole of responsible gatekeepers or field. Although, ‘Creativity is any act, idea or product that changes an existing domain orthat transforms an existing domain into a new one’, this can not happen ‘Without the explicit or implicit consent of a fieldresponsible for it’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 28).

4.1.5. Modelling and sharing practiceFinally the supervisors mentioned that they encouraged creativity by sharing their own work and experiences with their

students. They did this by talking about their own research and writing processes as well as by inducting them into academicpractice by giving them a realistic task to do, such as working on some of their supervisor’s data or jointly presenting someshared work at a conference. They argued that this allowed students to develop the confidence to design and present theirwork and feel that they had become a member of the academic community. In Lave and Wenger’s (1991) terms, in workingwith students as apprentice researchers, our supervisors assisted their students to create their own professional identity andpractice by sharing their own practice or by situating the students’ learning in real life contexts, thus allowing them to learnhow to use the intellectual tools of the scholarly community. Supervisor 3 description of how he shared his own experienceswith his students represents this particular practice:

‘I want each student to come out with their own ideas and I suppose secondly, as I have already mentioned, trying toprovide examples from my own work which indicates the kind of creativity that I have been capable of.’

His colleague, supervisor 5 described the act of writing as creative.

‘When I write I think of myself as being creative especially when I write papers, bids. I read creatively in a sense oftrying to write something, trying to see how that relates to my own circumstances or to others and see what mightbe missing. When I am writing there’s creativity in the way you structure it and there’s creativity in imagining whatpoints you are making.’

These are skills which he tries to pass on to his doctoral student. He mentioned that he often used examples and anecdotesfrom his own experience as a research student to encourage students to find new ways to engage in the creative process ofacademic research.

4.2. Students’ views

The students identified two broad processes and activities outside the supervision sessions that promoted their creativethinking: (i) reflection and (ii) support from relationships.

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4.2.1. ReflectionStudents talked about a generic set of activities that fostered reflection in a space of uninterrupted time. All students

mentioned the role played by some type of reflective writing in helping them sort out their ideas and participate in acreative process. The majority of the students said they kept a diary. Some were prompted by the supervisors to keep areflective diary which they felt was one of the most valuable hints and tips passed onto them. Some of the supervisorsrelated to their own students how they had used diaries and what a help it was to the creative reflective cycle of research,which is another example of sharing practice. In fact student C remarked, ‘That’s one thing that my supervisor has givenme - to keep and update my weekly diary.’ The importance of the diary was elaborated upon in a number of differentways. Student F mentioned that it was not a conventional diary, but was a journal which contained a number of differentwriting styles. He said he often participated in a type of dialogue with himself, ‘Occasionally I try to write in a dialogueform. Actually ask myself questions which I found quite useful sometimes.’ Student G described how she annotated herdiary:

‘I do have a diary of just putting in ideas of what I want and what I want to do. When I am confused I draw a circle andI put a lot of things in it and then try and move ideas one by one so it’s like this circle, I move things out and movethings in. . .’

Student B found writing diaries a hateful experience but reflected on her work in other ways and always documented herthinking using her laptop. She offered the following insight into her creative processes:

‘I find as well that when you are creative you kind of sometimes need to come completely out of that situation (thediary) and do something completely different and then it’s almost like you subconsciously process it and then suddenlysomething will come to you and you’ll think oh yes. So I actually find sometimes not thinking too hard about somethinghelps.’

Writing was again emphasised as a creative activity and, as discussed above, all the students stressed that the skillsrequired to write a good literature review are indeed creative. They felt that what they were trying to do was to make a storyout of new connections and it was in this way that they believed academic writing to be creative. Student C talked at somelength about this:

‘I think also our conception of creativity is to write things as they come through your head so if you think it’s verydifficult to call a piece of writing, a piece of academic writing, creative but when you really think about it, it is creativebecause you construct or form an idea and in that you have to formulate in such a way that it’s a story to tell you whyI have reached this point and that’s creative. Otherwise it wouldn’t be creative if you don’t quote different people tosupport your ideas.’

4.2.2. Support from relationshipsBrainstorming among fellow PhD students was a strategy used by three of the students interviewed while another student

wrote up a blog which was also made available to two other students in her year. These three students, as a group, found thisexercise an invaluable form of peer support. Discussing ideas and sharing their experiences with their peers was mentionedby four of the other students as another important strategy which assisted their thinking, ‘Talking to others has helped mewell,’ (student D).

While all the students mentioned that activities such as diary writing, brainstorming and making new connections intheir writing were important to the development of their own creativity, underpinning their confidence to make progressand experiment was the non-controlling guidance and emotional support offered by their supervisors. All the studentsmentioned that having a good relationship with their supervisors was a key formative experience. Student A had clearlythought quite deeply about how this relationship influenced his thinking and willingness to take risks:

‘I think also the relationship that one has with the supervisor is the one skill that I appreciate the most because itdoes make or break the whole process and it determines how the system works for you more than even the contentof the supervisory sessions. . . They allow me to say what I want and what I think and they listen. They encourage meto take risks.’

The students’ emphasis on a good relationship together with the need for non-controlling guidance and emotional supportmentioned by supervisors is (as discussed earlier) manifested through trust, which in turn encourages risk taking. Mielland Littleton (2004) and Moran and John-Steiner (2003) identify these features as contributing in important ways to theestablishment of the conditions conducive to the emergence of creative dialogue.

5. Conclusions and recommendations

Although there were some clear differences in the activities and processes proposed by supervisors and students as under-lying the development of creativity, there were important similarities which have implications for how we seek to improvepedagogic practice in doctoral supervisions. Chief amongst these was the clear emphasis in both sets of accounts on theimportance of fostering a positive interpersonal climate within which trust and consequent risk taking can be enabled. This

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emphasis on the foundational role of quality relationships is one which is well established in the creativity literature relatingto organisational contexts (Florida, 2002; Jelinek & Schoonhaven, 1991; Zhou, 2003) and also fundamentally underpins thenotion of collaborative creativity (John-Steiner, 2000). We believe, with Wirtanen and Littleton (2004), that advanced levelinstruction (such as in these PhD supervisions) can truly be seen as collaborative rather than as a series of ‘directive, didactic’(p. 27) interactions. In these types of collaborative relationships it is clear that positive regard, established trust, mutualunderstanding and shared goals are all important in creating an environment where participants feel empowered to takecreative risks and adopt new identities (Storey & Joubert, 2004).

The supervisors and students did however have some differences in their accounts, notably in terms of the supervisorspresenting a range of other aspects of their approach to fostering creativity. For example, they stressed the importance ofmodelling creative expertise and approaches, and the supervisors (who were all active in their own research fields) offered thestudents an insight into their own creative practices. This meant that the activities discussed had a really authentic quality.Previous studies have shown that authenticity is a significant aspect of successfully nurturing young people’s creativity(Murphy, McCormick, Lunn, Davidson, & Jones, 2004) and it would seem that this is also important in terms of academiccreativity in higher education.

Students valued brainstorming sessions (with supervisor and other students) where ideas were explored, modified andadapted in an open-ended and accepting manner. In a sense they were experiencing what could be termed as ‘playfulness ofacademic elucidation’ and this finding reflects observations by Craft (2004), Vass (2003) and Vygotsky (1995), that creativityis enhanced by a process of imaginative playfulness.

However it was important for students’ developing confidence that this playfulness was clearly contained within ‘safe’limits—that is, that the students’ could be sure that their supervisors would act as effective gatekeepers and would signalwhen and how they needed to start reigning in the brainstorming/experimentation phase and shift the focus to beingcritical and making reasoned choices between ideas. Moving from open exploration to critical reflection is an approachknown to support genuine learner engagement in the creative process (Jeffrey & Craft, 2004). This process relates onceagain to the earlier emphasis on the importance of established trust in the student–supervisor relationship. It was seen asimportant by both students and supervisors that the supervisors kept an overview of the doctoral study programme andtook responsibility for managing the process of creative development in order to allow the students safe space in which toestablish their identity as genuine researchers and develop their confidence to take risks through ‘playful exploration’. Thestudents in turn trusted their supervisors to take a broader view of their progress and ensure that, whilst playfulness wasimportant, it was appropriately contained and directed in order to meet formal deadlines.

It is clear from the above that a good deal of active management was being exercised by the supervisors in guiding andsupporting the students’ creative development. Another facet of this active management is the requirement that supervisorsengage with the formal monitoring processes surrounding doctoral studies. In principle (and perhaps this underlies therecent developments brought about by the QAA Code of Practice) these formal processes together with an expanding skillsportfolio provide further reassurance to students that their progress is satisfactory. The supervisors we interviewed, however,experienced tension resulting from the increased pressure to monitor and report on students’ progress through the skillstraining programme, which conflicted at times with their desire to ensure adequate time for other important aspects ofsupervision (notably the encouragement of risk taking and open-ended exploration of ideas).

The findings from this small-scale study suggest that whilst the more formal instruction and monitoring processes thatlead to the acquisition of transferrable research skills are both usefully and necessary aspects of doctoral training, the moreopen-ended and creative developments required at this level of study should be given equal weight. We would argue thatthe latter requires a less directive or restrictive form of pedagogy that mobilises the processes that take place during creativecollaborations. There needs to be space, time and encouragement for the types of interactions identified here (e.g. informalreflection, relationship building with peers and supervisor, playful exploration and risk taking) as well as mandatory skillsdevelopment. How we might develop a doctoral programme that ensures adequate monitoring of progress but that does notencroach on other important aspects of supervision for developing creative thinking remains a key dilemma for educatorsand researchers alike.

Current supervisor training tends to focus on institutional requirements and the formal aspects of doctoral supervision.One way to assist supervisors to develop the kind of practices reported in this study might be to offer more open-endedtraining sessions that allow them to share methodological and analytical expertise. For example, they could be providedwith a number of genuine, intellectual research problems generated by students and then asked to discuss the effectivenessof different types of responses drawing on anecdotes from their own work. In essence a rehearsal of research narratives anda repertoire of stories could then be more readily brought to mind during supervisory sessions. Another facet of supervisoryguidance identified by our supervisors was encouraging the students to be more critical of their own ideas as well as beingcritical of previous work. Training that involved paired role play, where one person acts as expert and the other as noviceto critique a research paper or sample of student writing could prove productive. These types of skills have often becomeembedded in the supervisor’s current practice and are tacit, which means they are no longer open to inspection and aredifficult to communicate to others. The objective of the role play would be to render these processes explicit. Promotingthese sorts of activities and encouraging supervisors to reflect on their experiences afterwards from different view pointsmight be effective, particularly for new supervisors, in rendering transparent the subtle, ‘personalised and privatized practicesof PhD supervision pedagogy’ (Johnson et al., 2000) that encourages students’ creativity and originality as evidenced by oursupervisors’ and students’ interview data.

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To conclude, this small study has identified a number of processes that might encourage the development of academiccreativity in doctoral studies. These are primarily concerned with the role adopted by the supervisors, the relationship thatdevelops between the student and the supervisor, and the students’ management of their own development in the creativeprocess. It would be useful to build on the insights from this study by examining a larger number of student/supervisorteams, perhaps across a wider range of subject areas. Such a study would allow us to establish in more detail the ways inwhich the very important aspect of doctoral training—‘Ensuring that PhD students’ work is creative and original’ (Roberts,2002, p. 129) can be supported and improved.

Appendix A. Creativity and the mentoring process during doctoral students’ supervision sessions

A.1. Questions for supervisors

• What experience have you had in supervising doctoral students?• How do you typically approach supervisions with students?• What sort of/what range of skills do you aim to develop in your doctoral students?

(a) How do you see academic creativity?(b) What approaches do you adopt in working with students to enhance their academic creativity?

• What experiences did you have in supervisions when you were a doctoral student that have influenced your own supervi-sory style?

• In what ways has any training you have received affect your supervisory style? What emphasis, if any, was placed onencouraging academic creativity?

Appendix B. Creativity and the mentoring process during doctoral students’ supervision sessions

B.1. Questionnaire for students

1. First of all, we would like you to think about your past learning experiences. How did you come to embark on a PhD? Whatexperiences had you had before which led you to consider an academic career?

2. How do you see your learning relationship with your supervisor/s and what are you hoping to get from this relationship?3. What sort of/what range of skills do you think your supervisor is aiming to help you develop over the course of your

doctoral study?4. How will these be achieved?5. As you are/when you were (depending on what stage the S is at) developing your academic skills, do/did you see any of

them as ‘creative’? If so, can you say something more about this?6. Do you keep a reflective diary of your learning experiences or reflect on them in any other way?

What things help you to think creatively in the context of your thesis? (e.g. free writing, brainstorming).How could you be supported to be even more creative?What things have you done or learnt in supervisory sessions that you will use again?Has the experience of being a doctoral student changed the way you look at things, do things or think about yourself?Is there anything else relevant that you want to tell us?

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Denise Whitelock has 15 years’ experience in designing, researching and evaluating online and computer-based learning and formative assessmentin higher education and adult education. Researching creativity has been part of that endeavour. She is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Technologyin the Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology, where she is currently director of the internally funded Computer Assisted FormativeAssessment (CAFA) project and the JISC funded OpenMentor Project. She was director of the eMentor team that won a 2004 OU teaching award andhas also acted as Director of the Research Master’s Programme.

Dorothy Faulkner is a Developmental Psychologist who has carried out a number of research studies on collaboration and learning in educationalsettings. Most recently she has been involved evaluating programmes of creative teaching and learning for Creative Partnerships, a UK Governmentfunded creativity programme for schools and young people. She was lead editor with Anna Craft, Elizabeth Coates and Bernadette Duffy of ‘Creativityand Cultural Innovation in Early Years Education’, a special issue of the International Journal of Early Years Education (2007). She has considerableexperience of postgraduate supervision and has acted as Postgraduate Supervisor and Sub Dean Research in the Faculty of Education and LanguageStudies at the OU.

Dorothy Miell is a Social Psychologist who is interested in exploring the ways in which creative collaborations are affected by the nature of the commu-nication and relationships, and has published three related edited texts: Collaborative Creativity (2004, with Karen Littleton), Musical Communication(2005, with David Hargreaves and Raymond MacDonald) and Musical Identity (2002, with David Hargreaves and Raymond MacDonald). She is currentlyDean of the Social Sciences Faculty at the OU and has supervised 10 PhD students working in the fields of Psychology, Education and Music.