Disciplinary Coherence Research Articles

Travel literature in French colonial and postcolonial encounters

If, as Christophe Campos has suggested, we accept that the disciplinary coherence of French studies “cracked” in the 1960s, then the rapid emergence of Francophone postcolonial studies as a credibl...

Increasing Math and Science Achievement: The Best and Worst of the East and West

IN MARCH 2005, during the annual session of the Chinese National People's Congress, a group of members of the Chinese legislative body introduced a proposal calling for an immediate overhaul of the New Mathematics Curriculum Standards for elementary and secondary schools. A similar proposal was introduced by members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the highest political organization representing non-Communist parties and social elites without party affiliations. Both proposals were initiated and supported by prominent mathematicians and scientists who believe that the New Math Curriculum Standards, released by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2001 and largely modeled after the 1989 version of the standards issued in the U.S. by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), are ruining education in China. The New Math Curriculum has been sharply criticized for betraying an excellent educational tradition, sacrificing mathematical thinking and reasoning for experiential learning, giving up disciplinary coherence in the name of inquiry learning, lowering expectations in the name of reducing students' burden, and causing confusion among teachers and students. 10 years, when we find our next generation cannot think logically and reason mathematically, says Jiang Boju, a professor at Peking University and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who sponsored the proposal, it will be too late. Similar concerns have been voiced by ministry officials, parents, mathematicians, and textbook publishers. BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE IRONY OF EDUCATION REFORM IN THE EAST AND WEST The math wars in China are also taking place in other East Asian education systems. Over the past decade, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Singapore have all engaged in dramatic curricular reforms and are now beginning to debate the results. (1 When they first embraced reform, these high performers in international and science tests appeared to be extremely unhappy with their own and science education. They seemed eager to abandon what the rest of the world, particularly the United States, would love to have: a rigorous, coherent, systematic and science curriculum instead of inquiry-based, constructivism-driven, child-centered, progressive and science education, which many American educators now seem similarly eager to throw away. The East Asian reformers were not crazy, nor were they agents of the U.S. government on a secret mission to wipe out America's competition by lowering and science achievement elsewhere, as some Chinese teachers jokingly accused. They were well-intentioned and diligently looking for a way to address their own problems: students' lack of creativity, an overemphasis on testing, a focus on memorization over application, a disconnection between school learning and real-life situations, and overworked students. In essence, what the East Asian reformers wanted for their future was America's past and present. In their eyes, students in the United States were happy, creative, and socially responsible--products of an education system that focused on children over knowledge, pedagogy over content, and the individual over the group--all traits seen as the secret to America's economic success and dominance. Comparing their own curriculum with that of the United States, the reformers found that they tried to teach too much and were knowledge--and teacher-centered. Thus they began to ease students' burdens by removing basic concepts, formulae, and computation skills; turning a staircase curriculum into a spiral one; and requiring students to construct and discover knowledge through inquiry. Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacific and in the land that exported NCTM and AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) standards and constructivism, Singaporean textbooks have become increasingly hot commodities for parents, (2) Japanese lesson study is viewed as an exemplary teacher professional development model, (3) Chinese teachers have become models of excellence, (4) and coherent and logical East Asian curricula are synonymous with the path to and science excellence in U. …

Reflections on public sociology: Public relations, disciplinary identity, and the strong program in professional sociology

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a “sociology for publics” instead of a “sociology of publics” imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a Utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas’ attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology.

EDITORIAL

In recent decades the discipline of history has experienced an unprecedented expansion of its range of subjects. As rich as the new diversity is, it may seem to sacrifice disciplinary coherence to sprawl. More striking, however, is the discipline's capacity to retain its grip on the interpretive and explanatory agenda that continues to make history a distinct way of understanding the human condition. Intellectual history has developed in much the same way. Not so long ago it was regarded by many as an endangered species, its natural habitat having been laid waste by social and cultural historians who rejected its elitism and by historians of ideas who preferred a habitat free of historical clutter. This prognosis notwithstanding, intellectual history has re-emerged as an expanded but still focused disciplinary enterprise, anchored in the belief that texts and the discourses in which they are embedded are multiple points of entry into human creativity in its profuse variety of historical forms, and that their study is essential to understanding the nature of cultural life and the meaning of civilization itself.

Argumentation Studies in the Wake of the New Rhetoric

Those who resisted the Nazi tyranny, Jonathan Glover observes in his Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, tended to come from homes in which children were encouraged to reason through argument (382). Children raised by parents who used physical means of gaining compliance or an authoritarian style of childrearing were much less likely to rescue Jews. Glover cites research conducted by the Oliners, who carefully document why some chose the moral path during World War II. Glover and the Oliners conclude that habits of reasoning, expressed through argument and questioning, elicit concern for the other and recognition of values beyond one's own. Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca detected this connection between argumentation and moral action. Seeking a philosophical balm for the wounds of post-war Europe, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca re-discovered rhetoric and argumentation, seeing that they could foster the contact of minds necessary for the reconstruction of civil society. This is an odd phrase, but it reflects their aspiration that reasoning rather than violence should be the primary means of dealing with disagreement. Between 1947 and 1984, Perelman, alone and in collaboration with Olbrechts-Tyteca, translated this aspiration into the New Rhetoric Project (NRP), which was expressed in a number of books, articles, and conference papers. The most complete expression of the project was published in 1958 as Traite de l'argumentation: la nouvelle rhetorique (known in French speaking countries as Traite), which was translated into English in 1970 as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (known in English speaking countries as The New Rhetoric). Perelman set the agenda for the collaboration, as his solitary writings on a host of subjects before his collaboration with Olbrechts-Tyteca identified the key issues and problems addressed in the NRP. Olbrechts-Tyteca played a major role in the development of the examples and middle range theory (Warnick, 1998; Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1963). In this article, I consider the influence of the NRP on studies of twentieth-century argument in our field, and its relevance in the new millennium. My rehearsal of the argument in the NRP is not meant to duplicate the fine surveys of Perelman's work in Foss, Foss, and Trapp; Conley; and other anthologies and overviews of rhetoric. Rather, my purpose is epideictic in the Perelmanian sense in that I hope to strengthen a commitment to the study of argument as a humane art with philosophical and pragmatic expressions. I seek to recall the larger purpose Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca envisioned for argumentation and to trace the influence of the NRP on argument studies in the United States. In so doing, I will call attention to some key books and scholarship that draw from the NRP to develop insights on argument. In the conclusion, I suggest the NRP is the most important system of argument produced in the twentieth century and can serve as an ecumenical site for the development of argumentation theory. My purpose may seem benign, but it directly confronts two movements in the field. The first is the continued fragmentation of the field into a set of case studies with little shared sense of purpose, which David Zarefsky has rightly lamented as a failure of disciplinary coherence. Another movement, pragma-dialectics, originating in the Netherlands, begins with a misreading of the NRP to launch a system of argument with quite different goals than those set forth by Perelman. The pragma-dialecticians seek uniform standards for all argument and see conflict resolution as the objective of argumentation. I believe the NRP's system navigates between fragmentation and enforced uniformity, and remains the most ethical and powerful framework available to scholars of argument. The NRP is a blueprint for civil society, with a strength and coherence lacking in other systems. To better understand the tension among these movements, it is necessary to resituate the NRP and its influence on argumentation studies in the United States. …

Where is the ‘social’ reflections in social history?

In most methodology books published since the mid-1990s, historical research is described by working out a list of the usual topics of research; political history, social history and economic history, sometimes with the addition of others such as cultural, religious, imperial or gender history. Besides being a list of research topics, this larger group has no other specific characteristics, unless they are given unconsciously or only implied. Only the so-called post-modern historiography is excluded from the list as a “good enemy” against which solid and respectable “history” wants to defend itself. In Defence of History by Richard J. Evans is the best example of larger group of recent methodology books in both these respects. One of the problems of defining “history” as a list of research topics is that it makes theoretical discussion within historical studies difficult, because disagreement on important issues would endanger the picture of disciplinary coherence and unity. The description of social history in Evans' book is given as an illuminating example of this awkward situation.

The social life of literature: Cultural studies, cultural ethnography and the future of literary studies∗

Summary This study moves, by way of brief comments on the historical shaping of the discipline of literary studies, to an investigation of the methodological and disciplinary coherence of cultural studies. In turn, this leads to some remarks concerning cultural ethnography and its attendant epistemological constraints. The essay concludes with some thoughts in favour of a repositioning of literary critical activity.

About and Beyond the `Underclass': Some Notes on Influences of Social Climate on British Sociology Today

The concern of this article is with the influence of fashion and social climate on social speculation. The `underclass' notion is a nice example of fashion. Its various versions are influential less because they fit facts than because they are tuned well with tempers of the times. It seems then a sign of sound sense that, while sociologists have taken the notion on board for assessment, most have not gone overboard with it. This point prompts some wider reflections about the interplay between social science and the societal climate within which it exists. The balance between alertness to new agendas and purblind pursuit of them is a fine one. If sociology can now strike that balance tolerably well, it is in part a result of renewed disciplinary coherence: not least because theoretical and empirical analysis now mesh more closely than they once did. British sociology's general resilience to the pressures of the 1980s also reflects extended cross-disciplinary connections. Some of those pressures were unfriendly to academic free-thinking, but charges of ideological subversion or practical futility were never aimed solely at sociology. They seem anyway more muted, now that we and many partner-disciplines offer practical utility as prime targets for new growth in higher education. Welcome as this is, it sets challenges for the 1990s onward that may prove tougher than any pressures for intellectual conformity.

Reply by Carol Gilligan

Reply by Carol Gilligan

The Wildwood School for Children Aged Three to Six at Aspen, Colorado, U.S.A.

The need today for environmental education is now accepted as unquestionable by more and more thoughtful people. The stubborn ignoring of the ecological balance of life on this planet in many parts of the world has led to the formation of desert areas, air and water pollution, and depletion of the Earth's natural resources. Recently in the United States courses on ecology and environmental control have sprung up in secondary schools and universities in response to popular demand. These courses vary greatly in quality and in content. Many are firmly grounded in geology, zoology, botany and natural history. Others are simply seeds on a momentary wind. Nearly all, however, lack the disciplinary coherence provided by a continuing organizational base. In contrast to these patchwork efforts, the Wildwood School in Aspen, Colorado, represents a sustained long-term approach to environmental education. Wildwood is a pre-school for children aged 3 to 6 years, whose goal is to foster an 'environmental ethic' during a person's earliest, most receptive years. Development of an ethic, like that of a religion, starts early. The 'consumer ethic' is instilled by our culture from the day of birth. It is not merely the product of conscious commercialization, such as advertising, but of most of the manmade environment that represents American life. Our architecture lifts us away and alienates us from the land. Roadways and shopping centers level the landscape. Cars and planes-the mobility of which 20th century man is so proud-detach us from the land and reduce our sense of place. Despite the secularization of our culture, most men are still imbued with the Biblical injunction to 'multiply and subdue the land'. And most schools are merely reflections of this injunction. In contrast, Wildwood aims to replace this 'consumer ethic' with an 'environmental ethic'an understanding of the ecological balance on this planet and the mutual interdependence of man and nature. The program focuses on children during their earliest learning years, since even high school is often too late to change attitudes formed from