Disciplinary Differences in Teaching

Overview

Academic disciplines are specialized territories of knowledge marked by jurisdictional boundaries. Each discipline’s knowledge domain is articulated, disseminated, justified, and protected by subject matter specialists known variously as teachers, professors, and researchers. These specialists’ professional identities are wedded to their home discipline, and their research, teaching, advising, and outreach-engagement activities promote it.

Scholars of higher education have developed classification systems for the disciplines. For example, scientific disciplines can be pure, that is, the aim is to advance the frontiers of knowledge and understanding; or applied, that is, the aim is to disseminate and use knowledge in service of humankind. Disciplinary descriptors such as hard and soft also are employed to describe the varying methods for generating knowledge, the criteria employed in its evaluation, and the extent to which variable views of and approaches to generating knowledge are embraced by scientific and scholarly leaders. For example, physics is a hard science, while the humanities with their multiple perspectives are soft.

Student recruitment, teaching, and advising are special priorities in every discipline because when student numbers diminish, degree programs are imperiled and perhaps also imperiling the field’s future. A discipline’s teaching, learning, and advising practices are a primary mechanism for reproducing and sustaining it.

Joint Development of Disciplines and Higher Education

[Page 371]The progressive development of academic disciplines is a prominent story line in every history of higher education. The original discipline, theology, was the signature feature of the medieval university. Known as “The Queen of Sciences,” it was based on the assumption that pathways toward truth involved God. Professors were religiously inspired and affiliated. Students sometimes were known as disciples, signaling the connection between this original discipline and the person’s intent on learning it.

As the enlightenment dawned, theology made way for secular philosophy. In the ensuing centuries, these foundational disciplines were followed by the sciences with laboratories conducive to scientific experiments which joined teaching, learning, and research.

Meanwhile, the humanities expanded to include the visual and performing arts. These disciplines required hands-on teaching and learning in performance halls and art studios.

The professional and applied disciplines, characterized by an emphasis on career preparation and knowledge application, developed later. Medicine, law, and the clergy were the first ones. Apprenticeships supervised by recognized practice experts became curricular fixtures.

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