Consuming and Producing Information
Long gone are the days of believing what you read (including this book). As a doctoral student, you will learn a variety of strategies to become a critical consumer of information. For example, critical reading is an approach to reading texts wherein the reader questions the methodology and findings of research papers, the theoretical underpinnings of concepts, ideas, and approaches to human problems, and the credibility of authors and theories used to explain human behavior and the social context. You will also learn effective ways to move from summarizing to synthesizing information, that is, critically evaluating and integrating information from diverse sources, establishing relationships between concepts and ideas, and using this integrated information to generate new ideas.
As we saw earlier, becoming a scholar involves moving from higher-order thinking skills, such as problem-solving, to critical analytical thinking, such as argumentation, problem-posing, and justification. Problem-posing is a concept found in the works of developmental psychologist Jean Paget and educational theorist John Dewey, who presented learning as a social process taking place through experiences and interactions (Nixon-Ponder, 2024) and later expanded into problem-posing dialogue into the critical pedagogy approach proposed by Paulo Freire (1970). Problem-posing dialogue refers to a dialogical approach to education where educators and learners actively and collaboratively engage in critical reflection and inquiry into real-world problems. This collaboration helps to promote learners as vital sources of their own learning as they seek to conceptualize, understand, and solve problems (Freire, 1970).
Problem-posing dialogues, critical analytical thinking, and other higher-order thinking skills will be fundamental in your doctoral education and particularly valuable in the process of producing information. As a doctoral student, you move from being a consumer of information to being a producer of information, taking your metaphorical seat at the table where other academics and scholars shape the future of the profession. Although you will not be required to publish academic papers during your doctoral program, this will be encouraged, along with other forms of information dissemination, such as conference and professional workshops, poster presentations, and opinion papers or editorials. As a scholar-practitioner, your practice experience and wisdom will be essential foundations for your academic work as you produce and disseminate scholarly knowledge, which we will further discuss in Chapter 5.
