Disciplinary Epistemology Research Articles

A corpus-based study of signalling nouns in marketing and economics research articles

Signalling nouns (SNs, hereinafter) as grammatical metaphors serve as effective clues to disciplinary epistemology. Based on self-built corpora, this study explores disciplinary variation in the use of SNs by investigating marketing and economics research articles (RAs, hereinafter). The results show that marketing RAs employ SNs with significantly higher frequency than economics RAs. In terms of grammatical patterns, marketing RAs prefer the “SN+ to-infinitive” pattern, whereas economics RAs tend to use the “SN+ that-clause” structure. Semantically, marketing researchers prefer modal fact and idea nouns to show a greater tendency for writer visibility, greater interest in factors influencing consumer purchasing behaviors, and the more empirical and experimental nature of marketing. In contrast, economics researchers prefer fact and idea nouns to explore the decision-making process of economic agents, and reveal the more hypothetical, econometrical, and abstract reasoning nature of this discipline. The choices of SNs reflect distinct disciplinary epistemologies between marketing and economics. This study sheds new light on the significance of SNs in revealing disciplinary variations, and creates a database of detailing the characteristics of SNs used in both disciplines, which can aid EFL learners and EAP practitioners to better use SNs to construct interpersonal relations with readers in academic writing.

Discoursing disciplinarity: A bibliometric analysis of published research in the past 30 years

Diverging from the long-held homogeneous view of academic discourse, the issue of disciplinarity has come to the forefront in EAP teaching and discourse analysis. Although disciplinary discourse is a well-established and expanding line of inquiry, there has been limited retrospective analysis to unpack its evolutionary nuances. This bibliometric study maps its evolution from 1990 to 2022, tracing its journey from a fringe component within applied linguistics and language pedagogy to a globally recognized field. Using 921 articles retrieved from the Web of Science's core collection, our analysis reveals enduring scholarly interest in disciplinary literacy, writing, and socialization, with a marked shift since 2006 towards exploring the interplay between disciplinary knowledge-making practices and interpersonal features, such as stance, identity, and function. These studies, often using corpus approaches, highlight how these themes both reflect and are shaped by the disciplinary epistemology and ideology inherent in communities of practice. Emerging areas include student writing, spoken English, multimodal resources, and the temporal and interdisciplinary dynamics in various disciplines. The diverse authorship and geographical sources across various fields further underscore the global relevance of these topics. This overview could serve as a valuable resource for researchers, educators, and practitioners navigating this dynamic and significant field.

Epistemic positioning by science students and experts: a divide by applied and pure disciplines

Abstract It is one of the concerns of EAP to bridge the disparity of discursive practice between novice and expert writers, but the comparison is largely made across a broad knowledge field and little is known about the likely divergence within a disciplinary divide. In this study, we explore the epistemic positioning in research writing by PhD students and expert writers across applied and pure science disciplines. By focusing on hedges and boosters as its main devices, we examine their forms and functions in the academic texts. Results show that PhD students in applied disciplines use significantly fewer epistemic devices than experts but no significant difference was found in pure sciences. Apart from the differences in linguistic choices, student writers show a preference for authorial positioning at the outset of academic texts while professionals tend to comment on research findings and establish a persuasive interpretation of their value. Additionally, novice writers are inclined to hedge on numerical information (about) but expert writers hedge on claims (likely). We discuss the results from the perspectives of disciplinary epistemology and writer identity. Pedagogical implications are raised on the teaching of epistemic positioning and the enculturation of disciplinary stance in academic writing classrooms.

Anti-Christ in Egypt: Sexual Danger, Race, and Crime in a Narrative of Imperial Crisis

For a long time, women's crime has been quite a no-go area for feminist thinkers. With the lesser frequency of female crime seemingly encouraging quantitative-minded criminologists to dismiss a gendered approach as altogether irrelevant, theories of crime, in fact, have been mostly written by and tested on men. The emergence of a feminist perspective in criminology pluralized and decentered the disciplinary epistemology with important outcomes. On one side, it paved the way for the investigation of the distinctive ways in which individuals socialized as women commit crimes, deconstructing the die-hard stereotype of female criminals’ abnormality, that is, the idea that female offenders deviate from a female standard of nondelinquency. On the other, quoting Loraine Gelsthorpe, feminist criminology “has not only developed a critique of accumulated wisdom about female offenders and victims, but has illuminated institutionalized sexism within criminological theory, policy and practice.” Feminism has stimulated the production of criminological knowledge both empirically and theoretically. As far as empirical studies are concerned, historian Philippa Levine, in a seminal piece on prostitution, crime, and empire, remarked that prostitution, erroneously conceived as a quintessentially female crime, constituted an important exception to the unquestioned association of crime and masculinity, resulting in the neglect of serious gendered analysis of crime. Here the criminalization of commercial sex can be explained by the fact that prostitution is considered to defy the very norm at the core of the power gender system, that female sexuality has to be kept monogamous, reproductive, and conjugal to service the patriarchal social order. As Levine argues, prostitution “offers the prospect not only of women defined by their sexual nature but also of a more threatening vision of women actively putting that sexuality to work for their own benefit.” As a consequence, the agency of women exchanging sex for money promiscuously outside of wedlock has been conceptualized in two different apparently paradoxical ways: women prostitute themselves either because they are abnormal, so they act out of their deviancy, or because they are forced to do so, so they act under coercion. Completely lost to these split understandings, juxtaposing blame and compassion, was obviously the meaning of women's agency and rationality, especially when these were inscribed within a logic of survival and subsistence.

On Epistemology in Archaeology: Critique of the Text “Archaeological excavation from Epistemological Perspective” by Marko Porčić

The paper is the reaction to the contribution by Marko Porčić in this volume of Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, presenting his views on the epistemological character and status of excavation in the archaeological process of knowledge acquisition. Here it is argued that the analysis of Porčić is simplified, non-consequential and founded upon the outdated concepts of epistemological analysis of science, which takes into account only the internal disciplinary epistemology and sharply divides theory from practice, thus considerably lowering the potential for research of archaeological epistemology. Discussing a research field, especially a humanistic one such as archaeology, exclusively in the light of its own categories and concepts and ways of thinking inevitably leads to massive reduction in understanding of knowledge production. If the ideal of so-called hard sciences, followed by Porčić, was a severe detachment of objects from subjects, supposedly leading to guaranteed neutrality (objectivity) of knowledge – the first half of the 20th century ideal, today abandoned in many respects even in hard sciences themselves – the constitutive element in humanistic disciplines is (auto)reflexivity and interactivity of researchers in respect to “other people and their work”, and therefore a completely different role of “subject” and their surroundings. Following his internalist approach, Porčić attempts to approach the epistemic structure of archaeology and its modes of knowledge building from the point of view of the so-called (by the author himself) general epistemological model, according to which a research starts by shaping a previous statement (hypothesis), followed by testing and final verification of a new knowledge. Attempting to preserve the “neutrality” of epistemological analysis, Porčić does not take into account the fact that every knowledge, including the scientific one, is historically and culturally conditioned; this fact, which is the foundation of every consideration of knowledge and ways of its production, particularly apparent in humanistic disciplines, is also present in the epistemology of hard sciences, to which Porčić refers. His perseverance to remain strictly in the domain of “theory” and complete neglect of the role of practice in the process of knowledge acquisition is expressed in a string of completely false statements, such as e.g. (theoretical) redundancy of archaeological excavations, or finitude (limitedness) of archaeological inquiry, reached upon by simple syllogistic exercises, often starting by erroneous or tautological premises. Perhaps the most eloquent illustration of the inadequacy of the so-called general epistemological model for archaeology is the neglect of preventive archaeology – today amounting to more than 90% of all archaeological fieldwork in Europe. However, Porčić practically denies all epistemological value to this work, persevering in the extremely reductive view of archaeology, and at the same time neglecting important epistemological perspectives of the discipline.

Bridge Building: A Review of Rethinking Reading in College: An Across‐the‐Curriculum Approach

AbstractIn this review of Arlene Fish Wilner’s Rethinking Reading in College: An Across‐the‐Curriculum Approach, the author explores how Wilner leverages a rich understanding of college‐level reading to advocate for reading across the curriculum. By encouraging teachers to make explicit connections between discourse and disciplinary epistemology, Wilner’s book does important equity work that has the potential to bridge reading instruction from high school to the last year of college.

Performing Beethoven’s musical dynamics

Twentieth-century musicology frequently invoked the music of Beethoven to validate its work-centred, textualist and structuralist agenda. This article re-orients Beethoven’s music towards the performance studies paradigm, which places the music making body and material contexts of performing at the centre of its disciplinary epistemology, by weaving a novel discursive context around the composer’s unusual dynamics markings. Through a historical case study of the premiere of his Op. 70 No. 2 piano trio, I explore the connections between the performance experience of Beethoven’s dynamics and some of the philosophical and cultural discourses emerging in Europe during the early nineteenth century on the body and the self, and thereby construct novel meanings for his expressive performance practice. By bringing together interdisciplinary historical scholarship, phenomenological reflection, analytical thought and practice-based enquiry, I open up a neglected area of research that lies at the intersection of the performance experience of musical dynamics, sensory history and somatic musical archeology.

On Epistemology in Archaeology: Critique of the Text “Archaeological Excavation from Epistemological Perspective” by Marko Porčić

The paper is the reaction to the contribution by Marko Porčić in this volume of Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, presenting his views on the epistemological character and status of excavation in the archaeological process of knowledge acquisition. Here it is argued that the analysis of Porčić is simplified, non-consequential and founded upon the outdated concepts of epistemological analysis of science, which takes into account only the internal disciplinary epistemology and sharply divides theory from practice, thus considerably lowering the potential for research of archaeological epistemology. Discussing a research field, especially a humanistic one such as archaeology, exclusively in the light of its own categories and concepts and ways of thinking inevitably leads to massive reduction in understanding of knowledge production. If the ideal of so-called hard sciences, followed by Porčić, was a severe detachment of objects from subjects, supposedly leading to guaranteed neutrality (objectivity) of knowledge – the first half of the 20th century ideal, today abandoned in many respects even in hard sciences themselves – the constitutive element in humanistic disciplines is (auto)reflexivity and interactivity of researchers in respect to “other people and their work”, and therefore a completely different role of “subject” and their surroundings. Following his internalist approach, Porčić attempts to approach the epistemic structure of archaeology and its modes of knowledge building from the point of view of the so-called (by the author himself) general epistemological model, according to which a research starts by shaping a previous statement (hypothesis), followed by testing and final verification of a new knowledge. Attempting to preserve the “neutrality” of epistemological analysis, Porčić does not take into account the fact that every knowledge, including the scientific one, is historically and culturally conditioned; this fact, which is the foundation of every consideration of knowledge and ways of its production, particularly apparent in humanistic disciplines, is also present in the epistemology of hard sciences, to which Porčić refers. His perseverance to remain strictly in the domain of “theory” and complete neglect of the role of practice in the process of knowledge acquisition is expressed in a string of completely false statements, such as e.g. (theoretical) redundancy of archaeological excavations, or finitude (limitedness) of archaeological inquiry, reached upon by simple syllogistic exercises, often starting by erroneous or tautological premises. Perhaps the most eloquent illustration of the inadequacy of the so-called general epistemological model for archaeology is the neglect of preventive archaeology – today amounting to more than 90% of all archaeological fieldwork in Europe. However, Porčić practically denies all epistemological value to this work, persevering in the extremely reductive view of archaeology, and at the same time neglecting important epistemological perspectives of the discipline.

Inquiry Into Graduate Attributes: Reviewing the Formal and Informal Management Curricula

This article is aimed at any departmental faculty or head of school in charge of conducting curriculum review and presents a holistic approach based on Appreciative Inquiry and recently used by a University Business School in the Southwest of England. As a future-facing or strength-based approach, our Inquiry into Graduate Attributes brought together students, academics, employers, and employment consultants to agree on the most desirable generic attributes of business management graduates 5 years into the future, and to propose changes to course content, assessment, and cocurricular activities in line with these. The Inquiry into Graduate Attributes approach provides a methodological model for integrating the expectations of different stakeholder groups while acknowledging the various ways in which understandings of knowledge and outcomes are related to disciplinary epistemology. For researchers interested in the use of Action Research in the process of curriculum review, this article presents a relatively novel use of an applied Appreciative Inquiry technique, which we hope will initiate a broader conversation around the dynamics and reflective practices of curriculum design.

Saberes emergentes de las artes urbanas y cultura de paz. Un estudio de caso en San Salvador

Este trabajo se llevó a cabo en Majucla, colonia ubicada en el municipio de Cuscatancingo San Salvador, e involucra a los jóvenes del Comité Juvenil Expresión Hip Hop. El objeto del trabajo es presentar a Majucla, el barrio y sus calles, como cuna de saberes emergentes de las artes urbanas o cuna de actividades artísticas hip hop y lo que implica el concepto emergente frente al saber disciplinar y la epistemología. Por contraste con el saber académico es conveniente acuñar este concepto que alude a lo menor, lo excluido, lo subordinado, en analogía con la vida que pende de un hilo en los sectores deprimidos. Saberes emergentes es llegar a ser mientras las actividades de los jóvenes se dirigen a crear e intentar comercializar sus obras. Pese a las dificultades encontradas, principalmente por la violencia imperante y las barreras de acceso a la educación, los jóvenes siguen empeñados en crear arte y fortalecer el colectivo. Aprenden en la universidad de la calle aquellos saberes que les permitan identificarse como diferentes y resistir en las condiciones en que les tocó vivir.

Building qualitative study design using nursing's disciplinary epistemology.

To discuss the implications of drawing on core nursing knowledge as theoretical scaffolding for qualitative nursing enquiry. Although nurse scholars have been using qualitative methods for decades, much of their methodological direction derives from conventional approaches developed for answering questions in the social sciences. The quality of available knowledge to inform practice can be enhanced through the selection of study design options informed by an appreciation for the nature of nursing knowledge. Discussion paper. Drawing on the body of extant literature dealing with nursing's theoretical and qualitative research traditions, we consider contextual factors that have shaped the application of qualitative research approaches in nursing, including prior attempts to align method with the structure and form of disciplinary knowledge. On this basis, we critically reflect on design considerations that would follow logically from core features associated with a nursing epistemology. The substantive knowledge used by nurses to inform their practice includes both aspects developed at the level of the general and also that which pertains to application in the unique context of the particular. It must be contextually relevant to a fluid and dynamic healthcare environment and adaptable to distinctive patient conditions. Finally, it must align with nursing's moral mandate and action imperative. Qualitative research design components informed by nursing's disciplinary epistemology will help ensure a logical line of reasoning in our enquiries that remains true to the nature and structure of practice knowledge.

Is it the teaching or the discipline? Influences of disciplinary epistemology and pedagogy on students adapting study behaviour and epistemological beliefs

This study examined the pace and degree of adaptation of study behaviour and personal epistemological beliefs between school and university through interviews with 110 final-year university students. The study took place in Hong Kong, where the highly competitive school system encourages remembering modelling answers for the public examinations; hence, students appear to hold naive epistemological beliefs on entry to university. Developing more sophisticated beliefs appeared to be a pre- or co- requisite to adopting study behaviour more appropriate for university study. The pace and degree of adaptation varied between disciplines and appeared to be influenced by both the nature of knowledge within a discipline and the type of pedagogy adopted. The influences are discussed in terms of a two-by-two framework, ranging from well-established to contested knowledge, and didactic teaching to active student engagement. Cases are given to illustrate each quadrant as well as progressive development. Perceptions or social constructions of disciplinary differences appear to play a part as there were cases where the pedagogy adopted was inconsistent with the nature of knowledge in a discipline.

Epistemology, Sociology, and Learning and Teaching in Physics

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the relationship between epistemology, sociology, and learning and teaching in physics based on an examination of literature from research in science studies, history and philosophy of science, and physics pedagogic research. It reveals a mismatch between the positivist epistemological foundation which seems to underpin the teaching of physics at the undergraduate level and the tentative nature of knowledge and the primarily social‐constructivist process of knowledge creation which characterise the practices of professional physicists. Attention is drawn to the consequences of neglecting this mismatch, which is detrimental to students’ understanding of the nature of the discipline, their conceptual development, and the acquisition of skills essential not only for a scientific career but also for students’ development as individuals and citizens. The paper argues for the explicit contemplation of disciplinary epistemology in physics teaching and in pedagogic research to improve student learning and for the avoidance of the dangers of epistemological essentialism.

Embracing Urbanism: The City as Archive

This article explores notions of archive and infrastructure in the construction of metropolitan urbanism in the West. Building on this exploration, the author proposes the concept of “city-as-archive” as a tool for studying contemporary urbanism and for moving beyond the political geography of disciplinary epistemology in the social sciences. The notion of “city-as-archive” elaborates a new way of understanding archives—as principles of ordering stimuli upon which future transactions are based, rather than as sites for the preservation of a past that has been deemed to be of collective significance. This understanding builds analogically upon theories about urban space, life, and experience. By deploying this concept of “city-as-archive,” the author suggests that we are in a better position to understand the city space of mediation between modern India and the modern West rather than as yet another site of Indian exceptionalism.

Redisciplining generic attributes: the disciplinary context in focus

This article discusses the findings of a recent study which demonstrates that generic attributes are highly context‐dependent, and are shaped by the disciplinary epistemology in which they are conceptualised and taught. Generic attributes have, for a long time, been viewed as super‐disciplinary, and hence as separated from and overlayed onto disciplinary content. There has been considerable interest in generic skills or attributes over more than a decade, and there has also been interest in disciplinary culture, and yet there has been little research which has examined the importance of disciplinary epistemology in shaping generic skills and attributes. This study brings together these two strands of research. The study examined the teaching of generic attributes in five disciplines – physics, history, economics, medicine and law – in two Australian universities. The study is based on in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with academic staff. The findings demonstrate that skills such as critical thinking, analysis, problem solving and communication are conceptualised and taught in quite different ways in each of the disciplines. This article suggests that a de‐disciplined approach to generic skills has led to problems in the areas of educational policy and practice. Instead it proposes a re‐disciplined theorising of generic skills and attributes, which frames them as part of the social practice of the disciplines, and so understood as in and of the disciplinary culture. This new conceptualisation of generic skills and attributes acknowledges the integration of attributes with disciplinary epistemology.

Making classroom assessment more accountable to scientific reasoning: A case for attending to mechanistic thinking

AbstractWhen teachers or students assess the quality of ideas in science classes, they do so mostly based ontextbook correctness; ideas are good to the extent they align with or lead to the content as presented in the textbook or curriculum. Such appeals to authority are at odds with the values and practices within the disciplines of science. There has been significant amount of attention to this mismatch in the science education research literature, primarily with respect to experimentation and argumentation as core disciplinary means of assessing ideas. In this article, we call attention to another aspect of scientific reasoning: a focus on causal mechanisms in explaining natural phenomena. We highlight examples and research from the history and philosophy of science to clarify what scientists mean by “mechanism” and to make the case for its centrality. We then present an excerpt from a second‐grade class in which a student provides an incorrect mechanistic explanation, and the teacher gives priority to textbook correctness. As the conversation proceeds, the student shifts from mechanistic sensemaking to quoting terminology she does not understand. We argue that attention to mechanism in the classroom would better support student reasoning and better reflect disciplinary epistemology. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Sci Ed93:875–891, 2009

Different values, different skills? A comparison of essay writing by students from arts and science backgrounds

This article reports the findings of a 3 year research project which investigated disciplinary variation in student writing. Within an Open University course in the history of science, students from an arts background were found to achieve significantly higher grades than those from a science background. Textual and interview data suggest that differences in their essay writing may be related to differences in disciplinary culture and epistemology. The results thus support the hypothesis that students' writing is shaped by their disciplinary background, and call into question the extent to which communication skills are transferable across disciplinary contexts.

Studying human origins: disciplinary history and epistemology

Studying human origins: disciplinary history and epistemology

Formative assessment in higher education: Moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice

The importance of formative assessment in student learning is generally acknowl- edged, but it is not well understood across higher education. The identification of some key features of formative assessment opens the way for a discussion of theory. It is argued that there is a need for further theoretical development in respect of formative assessment, which needs to take account of disciplinary epistemology, theories of intellectual and moral develop- ment, students' stages of intellectual development, and the psychology of giving and receiving feedback. A sketch is offered of the direction that this development might take. It is noted that formative assessment may be either constructive or inhibitory towards learning. Suggestions are made regarding research into formative assessment, and how research might contribute to the development of pedagogic practice. Knowledge of results Learning depends on knowledge of results, at a time when, and at a place where, the knowledge can be used for correction. (Bruner 1970, p. 120) Bruner's dictum contains an important truth, but it is not the whole story. 'Correction' implies the existence of a right answer, and suggests a homeo- static or single loop (Argyris and Schon 1974) view of education that contrasts with the title of a collection of his writings: Beyond the informa- tion given (Bruner 1974). The quotation is from a chapter whose emphasis is on school education (although there are allusions to a broader range of educational contexts), in which considerable weight is placed on getting things right. Whilst 'getting things right' is of obvious importance in higher education as well (examples from medicine, science and engineering come quickly to mind where 'not getting it right' had direct and seriously damaging consequences), there is a significant dimension to higher education that can, following Barnett (1997), be labelled as 'emancipatory' and which implies

Inter- and transdisciplinary university: A systems approach to education and innovation

In response to various pressures for change arising from the present situation, the university will have to adopt a new purpose which may be recognized as a means of increasing the capability of society for continuous self-renewal. With this new purpose in mind, the structure of the university will be determined by the concept of an integral education/innovation system for which four principal levels are considered: empirical, pragmatic, normative and purposive levels. From multi-, pluri-, and crossdisciplinary approaches, all pertaining to one systems level only, the university is expected to develop increasingly interdisciplinary approaches, linking two systems levels and coordinating the activities at the lower level from the higher level through common axiomatics. Ultimately, the entire education/innovation system may become coordinated as a multilevel multigoal hierarchical system through a transdisciplinary approach, implying generalized axiomatics and mutual enhancement of disciplinary epistemology. Current university approaches to develop interdisciplinary links between the pragmatic and normative systems levels are discussed. Finally, a transdisciplinary structure for the university is briefly outlined; its main elements are three types of organizational units-systems design laboratories, function-oriented departments, and discipline-oriented departments-which focus on the interdisciplinary coordination between the three pairs of levels in the education/innovation system, i.e., on method and organization rather than on accumulated knowledge. An important role for policy sciences is seen in the linkage between the top pair of systems levels.