Soft Disciplines and Hard Battles

Abstract

Many of us who conduct research on and teach education in institutes of higher education have been socialised to think of education as a discipline. Yet not only do we find this status disputed, but we also frequently encounter challenges to our claims as experts and to the form and structure of our discourse, both by members of the public and, more disconcertingly, by fellow academics from other disciplines. Some of these experiences can be explained through the idea of ‘soft discipline’. More recent work on the characteristics of, and interactions between, disciplines, drawing on their epistemological, sociological and economic dimensions, further helps to put these encounters in perspective. I will present and discuss this issue here. I will then examine the experience of education and identify new dimensions of interactions between disciplines in the context of funding and interactions in the public sphere. I will end with reflections on the debate on according a disciplinary status to education and the nature of education, knowledge and action.