Discipline and Subject
What is a discipline?
Discipline, in its simplest way, is defined as a specific domain of knowledge arising from the classification of human knowledge. Every discipline is characterised by its specific domain, a genealogy of problems, an epistemic base to guide research and a community of scholars with shared goals, values and modes of reasoning. Every discipline has its specific three-fold purpose of Engagement, Enrichment and Extension.
What is a Subject?
Subject is human construction (Deng, 2012). This construction emerges, like discipline, through the classification of human knowledge. However, the classification is not merely for the sake of knowledge. Rather knowledge is categorised with a more practical and social concern. According to Deng (2012), school subject is an academic response to the "social, economic, cultural, political, and educational realities and needs" of the society (p. 51), that has the potential to influence the individual's capabilities and attitudes within his or her broader social and cultural context. Thus the school subject is a material form of the intentions of educational planners. This material form has certain content organised in certain way following certain specific criteria and with certain specific way of translating the content in the classroom.
What are the different aspects of a School Subject?
Subject is characterised by
specified domain of knowledge (i.e the content aspect),
specific pedagogical purpose (i.e the objectives aspect) as sort of translation of broader social, economic and political desires of the society/community.
specific means to achieve those purposes through the content (i.e the instructional aspect) (Karmon, 2007; Deng, 2012). This aspect is the instructional aspect of the subject.
explanation of the criteria for selection and organisation of the content on the one hand and for pedagogical representation of the content in a particular way on the other hand.
More specifically, the subject can be construed as a
1. Selection of specified domain of content and
2. The organisation of the content for pedagogical purposes such that in the long run
3. It serves as a means to achieve social expectations.
What is the relation between Discipline and Subject?
Academic discipline and school subjects are related terms. They have overlaps in certain aspects and at the same time they have their own distinct character. The relationship between the two is not a fully settled issue and there exists opposing views on their relationships. Broadly speaking there are two general theories to explain the relationship between the two viz.
The theory of Doctrine of Disciplinarity
The theory of Dialectic Relationship.
What is the Doctrine of Disciplinarity?
Discipline represents a community of scholars engaged in knowledge creation and enrichment in a particular domain or content area following the canons of the discipline specific methodology. With respect to the discipline and the disciplinary knowledge, it is assumed that the “ intellectual activity anywhere is the same, whether at the frontiers of knowledge [i.e. at the research level by the community of the discipline] or in a 3rd grade classroom” (Burner, 1996, p.14). This assumption considers knowledge and the cognitive processes related to that knowledge, invariably to be the same everywhere. The purity and sanctity of knowledge thus created, organised and enriched are to be preserved at all levels and in all contexts.
With these fundamental tenets, it is assumed that the school subject has its origin in some parent discipline. It is assumed that the structure of the school subject needs to be in conformity with that of the academic discipline. (Here structure is the disciplinary ideas and concepts and the logical relationship between them).
DoD then states that
Both the discipline and the subject are human constructs and are embodiments of specific domains of knowledge.
The structure of school subjects necessarily follows the structure of parent discipline. This is to say that the knowledge structure of the academic discipline is retained necessarily as such in the subject.
The flow of content is from the discipline towards the subject. Thus the subject, according to DoD, is a “watered down” or diluted version of the knowledge from the parent discipline. Thus the emphasis on the purity of knowledge is retained in case of subject as well.
The learner and societal considerations are secondary to the purely academic and discipline specific structure of knowledge.
In a nutshell DoD states that discipline is the source for origination of school subject, is central to the idea of school subject, and determines the structure of knowledge in the subject. Bruner and Schwab are considered as the great proponents of DoD and they see a continuity in the relation between academic discipline and school subject.
What is Dialectical Theory of Subject-Discipline relationship.
The proponent of dialectical theory was John Dewey. Dewey rejected the watered down view of subject as watered down content and structure of academic discipline. Dewey accepted that the two entities are related. However, he negated the relation between them as a sophisticated and diluted version of one and the same thing. Rather Dewey believed in a dialectical relationship between the two. The dialectical theory goes like this:
School subject is a representation of a curriculum for a specific group
of learners with specific educational or developmental purposes.
Curriculum includes a set of experiences involving content, processes,
skills etc.
The selection of experiences is determined by the educational goals
which in turn is a product of interaction among the social concerns, psychological principles for learner and learning, and the disciplinary content (Ralph Tyler, ). Relevance to the community life of the learner and its appropriateness to the psychological state of the learner is the primary focus of curricular selection and hence subject selection.
The creation, enrichment and refinement of the content following
strict logical and methodological norms is the primary focus of the academic discipline and the disciplinary pursuits are pure intellectual pursuits. Content emerges out of this intellectual pursuit. Refinement, Purity of knowledge and Methodological soundness are the primary focus of academic discipline.
Now the two different worlds,i.e. the academic discipline, are in a
dialectical relationship with each other. The school subject provides an avenue for the learner’s to acquaint themselves with the content and the inquiry/reasoning mode of the discipline.
The academic discipline on the other hand creates an overall boundary
within which the content can be selected and pedagogically translated. The discipline can provide general guidelines for the selection and organisation of the content in the school subject, even though the relevance and psychological considerations are more important for any deliberation over the subject.
Thus psychological (school subject) and the logical (academic
discipline) instead of being opposed to each other (or even independent of each other), are connected as the earlier and the later stages in one continuous process of normal growth. This is the dialectical relation between subject and discipline.
No comments:
Post a Comment