Toward a pedagogy of advanced studies in the University: the production of an inventive academic writing in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities

This article aims to contribute to a discussion, which remains to be done in Portugal (as well as in other European countries) - and which is necessarily theoretical and practical, but ultimately pedagogical -, that seeks to understand the reflexive ways through which it could be effectively possible to operate "a teaching paradigm shift" by means of "the transition from one educational system based on the idea of knowledge transfer" through mimetic writing, "to a system based on the development of competences" of inventive writing at the level of postgraduate training. This terminology was used by the Portuguese Government when, in 2006, it introduced the Bologna Process and established "the qualification of the Portuguese in the European area" as "one of the key objectives of the policy for higher education". Our attention will focus on the discourses produced around the third university cycle (leading to the doctorate), and on the possibility of advancing theoretical and empirical arguments in defense of a model of inventive academic writing in its potential articulations with the "experimental and project-oriented component" (MCTES, 2006). We emphasize postgraduate writing because this cycle of studies is "essentially a practice-oriented learning of high-level research". Centering our (self) reflection on the processes of academic writing in the social sciences and humanities, we seek to identify contributions and challenges offered by research in the arts as a paradigmatic case of how it is possible to write an "original thesis" (MCTES, 2009). Specific creative practices of the artist-researcher will be underlined.