The death of a discipline or the birth of a transdiscipline: subverting questions of disciplinarity within Education Studies undergraduate courses

Abstract

As non‐teacher training courses in UK higher education in Education Studies have grown and developed in recent years they have received enormous interest. All of these Education Studies degrees claim to integrate a number of disciplines using an interdisciplinary or a multidisciplinary paradigm. Traditionally the systematic integration of disciplines within courses has created a range of lenses for focusing upon issues such as in medical sociology and health. However, by their very nature, Education Studies courses are complex and influenced by a number of factors such as the socio‐economic climate, political factors, changing technologies and the contemporary views of childhood as well as the changing and evolving socio‐constructions of childhood. Currently, Education Studies courses integrate a number of disciplines to investigate the learning process in context. There is a trend for Education Studies degrees to shift between terms of disciplinarity such as multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. This paper examines the nature of Education Studies degrees and tries to provoke the debate about the mono, inter, and multidisciplinarity nature of Education Studies. The paper promulgates that Education Studies by its nature and complexity cannot seek identity with any one of these approaches. It will suggest that, given the complexity of the context it serves to match, that instead Education Studies is embedded within transdisciplinarity.