Conditions for Criticality in Doctoral Education

The demand for developing profound critical thinking in doctoral education is a serious concern since today’s doctoral students are the academics and societal leaders of tomorrow. Thus they need to be well prepared for handling the rapid changes of academia, and society at large, in deliberate, transformative, and responsible ways. Such a concern extends beyond the traditional understanding of critical thinking in terms of critical reasoning. It also involves critical self-reflection and critical action (Barnett 1997). Underpinned by a range of scholars who argue for a close relationship between critical and creative thinking (Baer and Kaufman 2006), I shall in this chapter argue that criticality of this all-embracing kind involves an ample amount of creativity.