Abstract:
This paper argues that an essential point, of postgraduate research supervision, is to enable students to be creative in their pursuit of coming to know things that are as yet not known. The supervisor's role is not only to teach extant knowledge, skills and values but encouraging students to discover their own.
This paper introduces the concept of the perturbative analogy as a strategy whereby deliberately unrelated items are to be reconciled analogically in order to stimulate as yet unconsidered means of overcoming problematic threshold concepts in postgraduate research students. We consider the use of perturbative analogies in both Wave Mechanics and Cognitive Psychology as examples of disciplines where knowledge is often represented analogically in terms of abstractions and potentialities rather than literally as directly verifiable propositions. In particular we focus upon the question of how the use of perturbative analogies can foster, nurture and support creativity amongst postgraduate research students. Finally we consider the use of perturbative analogies more generically in higher education.
This paper introduces the concept of the perturbative analogy as a strategy whereby deliberately unrelated items are to be reconciled analogically in order to stimulate as yet unconsidered means of overcoming problematic threshold concepts in postgraduate research students. We consider the use of perturbative analogies in both Wave Mechanics and Cognitive Psychology as examples of disciplines where knowledge is often represented analogically in terms of abstractions and potentialities rather than literally as directly verifiable propositions. In particular we focus upon the question of how the use of perturbative analogies can foster, nurture and support creativity amongst postgraduate research students. Finally we consider the use of perturbative analogies more generically in higher education.