Discovering Unheard Voices: Explorations in the History of Education, Childhood, and Juvenile Justice

What establishes and what ties together a scholar's research agenda—the lines of inquiry along which he or she seeks to make original contributions to knowledge? In my discipline of history, geography and chronology, both defined narrowly (e.g., Massachusetts during the Revolutionary era), set the main boundary lines. Within that boundary, scholars usually probe one or two specific topics or themes, such as the role of the militia and/or gender roles, and seek to explain patterns of change and continuity over time. Most often, except in textbooks, they do so from an identifiable subdisciplinary perspective such as political, cultural, or economic ...