The nature of non teacher training courses in UK Higher Education and education studies have received a vast interest as they have grown and developed rapidly in recent in recent years. All of these Education Studies degrees claim to integrate a number of disciplines using an interdisciplinary paradigm or a multidisciplinary one to pedagogy and practice. This integration of disciplines traditionally is viewed in all courses that have an element of a systematic require through the lenses of a number of approaches such as medical sociology and health. Lombardo (1992) emphasised that the cogent element to these degrees is that they take into account the fact that disciplines change with time to encompass aspects of each other. This view is particularly applicable to education studies degrees as their content and emphasis are externally influenced by a number of factors such as the economy, government policies and initiatives, technologies, contemporary views of childhood as well as the changing and evolving nature of socio-constructions of childhood. Epistemologically education studies degrees integrate knowledge and methods from widely different disciplines. In doing this they develop a unified body of knowledge that systematically differentiates between terms of disciplinarity such as multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. To understand the nature of educational studies as a subject this paper clarifies discplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity within the educational studies context. The paper promulgates that education studies by its nature and complexity cannot seek identity with any one of these approaches. The three common levels of integration of knowledge between disciplines are called mutlidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Although there is no exact consensus about the meaning of each term, this paper will investigate interpretations of these terms and try to explain their significance within the context of education studies.

literature review

The paper will then provoke the debate as to why education studies cannot disguise itself within a single disciplinary identity. Nor is it associated with a mutlidisciplinary identity or an interdisciplinary identity. It will suggest that, given the complexity of the context it serves to match, that education studies is embedded within transdisciplinarity.