Session Information
13 SES 11 B, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
This is a conceptual paper that considers the debate about the place of education in relation to academic disciplines. While recognising the force of some of the arguments involved (Bridges, 2006; Furlong & Lawn, 2011), the paper questions if the concept of disciplinarity is at all helpful in framing education as an academic activity and focus of study. Education has traditionally been seen as a field in which several discrete discourses operate largely independently - psychology, sociology, history, and philosophy. However, Biesta (2009) has argued that in much of continental Europe, particularly in Germany, there is a tendency to view education as having disciplinary integrity.
The paper explores the disciplinary field in its various forms – interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, pluridisciplinary, transdisciplinary, supradisciplinary, postdisciplinary – arguing that the debates have become somewhat stale and unfruitful. Even if there were to be some universal acceptance of education as a discrete discipline, it is not clear how beneficial that might be. Acknowledging some of the critiques of the notion of the academic discipline (Giroux, 1992; Sayer, 1999), the paper argues that the concept is sufficiently problematic to warrant a new approach.
The paper identifies three key problems with the recent attempts to defend the disciplines of education from the threat of erosion; firstly, the epistemological consequences of the lack of emphasis on the historical emergence of the disciplines and their contingent epistemological status in the modern academy; secondly, a corresponding failure to acknowledge their social construction and development, which gives rise to a tendency towards reification and the ascription of objective ontological reality to entities that are in fact rather more fluid; and thirdly, that the disciplines of education are interwoven with hugely troublesome issues around power, intellectual imperialism, conservatism, and control.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Biesta, G. (2009, September). Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the academic study of education: Comparing traditions of educational theorising. Paper given at the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association, Manchester, UK. Bridges, D. (2006) The disciplines and discipline of educational research, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40 (2) 259-272. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock. Furlong, J., & Lawn, M. (Eds.). (2011). The disciplines of education: Their role in the future of education research. Abingdon: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1992). Border crossings. New York: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. McCulloch, G. (2002). Disciplines contributing to education? Educational studies and the disciplines? British Journal of Educational Studies, 50 (1) 100-119. Post R. (2009). Debating disciplinarity. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 164. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/164 Sayer, A. (1999, April). Long Live Postdisciplinary Studies! Sociology and the curse of disciplinaryparochialism/imperialism. Paper presented at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association, Glasgow, UK.
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