Disciplinary Growth Research Articles

Interview with Professor Chaitanya Mishra

Professor Chaitanya Mishra teaches Sociology to MPhil/PhD students at Tribhuvan University (TU), Nepal. His research focuses on macrosociology, politics, social change, and social stratification. He is an author/co-author, and co-editor of 10 books and about 250 articles. He believes that all sciences should contribute to public education, and frequently contributes to public debates through the media. He started his career in 1978 as a researcher at the Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies, TU. In 1981, he was appointed the founder Chair of the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, TU. He has written on the development of sociological knowledge in Nepal, its disciplinary growth, empirical and theoretical orientations, as well as strategies that could be adopted to meet contemporary disciplinary challenges. His contributions have led to theoretical debates on the issues of development or underdevelopment of Nepali society as well as the nature and causes of economic and political divisions and alternative trajectory of change. Professor Mishra served as a member of Nepal’s National Planning Commission (1994-95), founding president of Nepal Sociological Association (2017-18), Fulbright Visiting Professor and Hubert Humphrey Professor of Sociology at Macalester College (2015-16), and founding Executive Chair of the Policy Research Institute (2018-19) of the Government of Nepal.

Mind Map Construction for English Grammar Teaching Based on Knowledge Map

The analysis of the frontier issues of the English language teaching method in China is of great guidance for English language teaching. Based on the ontology model of English teaching domain, the knowledge map of English teaching in colleges and universities is constructed by fusing heterogeneous English subject data from multiple sources. Firstly, we obtain domain knowledge from relevant websites and existing documents through web crawlers and other techniques and clean the data based on BERT model; then, we use Word2Vec to judge the similarity between the research directions of characters and solve the entity alignment problem; based on the scientific knowledge map theory, we count the frequency of keywords in each year and analyze them to describe the association and union between keywords. It can explain the current situation and trend, rise and fall, disciplinary growth points, and breakthroughs of ELT. Through keyword analysis, the hot issues mainly revolve around ELT, English teaching, college English, grammar-translation method, curriculum reform, and so forth, to realize the quick query and resource statistics of ELT basic data, in order to promote the subsequent English discipline assessment work to be completed more efficiently.

Crossroads and Barriers on the Roman Border: Institutional Authority, Roman Heritage and the “Đerdap” Projects

Although “the archaeological research in the Đerdap area represents the most important crossroad in Serbian archaeology” (Bikić i Šarić 2017, 67), the role of the two large research projects Đerdap I and II in the development of the discipline and the local archaeological community remains to be thoroughly reconsidered. In search for the answer whether the vast corpus of archaeological material and information gained in the course of these projects influenced the shift in interpretation of the Roman past and in presentation of the Roman frontier on the Danube, the paper presents certain scientific and research aspects and the consequences of the projects for the interpretive framework of the Roman period.
 It may be expected that, just as the fieldwork itself was a large opportunity for professional training and growing, the huge amount of information on the Roman border collected during the projects became a constant source for further consideration and disciplinary growth. The innovations introduced – multi-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, preventive conservation and integral protection of heritage – foreshadowed the space for testing of ideas. However, the archaeological record of the Roman period, approached from the culture-historical point of view, dominant at the time, is still principally interpreted according to the concepts formed in 19th century and significantly reconsidered over the last couple of decades. The majority of the recovered material is not published yet, the limited access to the “finds in boxes” obliges current researchers to work on the base of available publications, and the confidence in “discoveries” induces the transfer of ideas of original researchers without further reconsideration. The abandonment of the concept of Romanization is slow, mainly due to the institutional “keepers”, as illustrated by chosen examples, e.g. the monograph Vivere Militare est. From Populus to Emperors – living on the Frontier (Golubović, Mrđić 2018) and the exhibition Roman Limes and Cities in Serbia, organized on the occasion of the 24th International Limes-Congress, as well as the new permanent display of the National Museum, opened in 2018. It may be concluded that the constant affirmation of institutional authority, where the archaeological heritage of the Roman frontier acts as an academic symbolic capital, is more important than multivocal interpretation and presentation.

The development and future of occupational science: A budding occupational scientist’s reflections and assertions about the discipline

ABSTRACT As occupational science moves beyond 30 years as an academic discipline, reviewing its genesis and development is important in envisioning its future as a continually relevant, socially responsive discipline that addresses globally concerning issues. My positionality in writing this article is as a budding occupational scientist who has experience as an occupational therapy practitioner and educator, offering a multi-varied lens through which I am beginning to see and process concepts about the discipline. Thus, I reflect on aspects of the historical development of occupational science, offering my perspectives on the context that supported its genesis and identifying four foundational tenets that I perceive to have underpinned the science’s initial historical contributions. Then, pre-existing published literature forms the basis for an overview of where and how occupational science has developed globally and supports my thoughts about the relationship of occupational science to occupational therapy and its potential impact on continued disciplinary growth and maturation. A compilation of already established concepts guides my commentary on how research and theory development should study and measure occupation in a transformative and socially responsible way, how language factors have influenced expansion and incorporation of occupational science globally, the role of interdisciplinarity in shaping knowledge generation, and the influence of teaching and learning on the education of future generations of scientists. Finally, a synthesis of views from the literature shapes my recommendations for future disciplinary growth and societal contribution.

Interpretation and Translation as Disciplines and Professions in Zimbabwe: A Critical Appraisal

This article examines the status of translation and interpretation as disciplines and professions in Zimbabwe. A critical appraisal of both past and present Zimbabwean language policy documents, triangulated with data from semi- structured interviews and observations, reveals that the two disciplines and professions are still in their formative stages despite their long history. It emerged that translation and interpretation are para-professions and are neither fully-fledged nor well-established disciplines. The lack of an enabling language policy seems to account for this underdevelopment, at least to some extent. The marginalisation of the majority of local languages thus appears to stifle and thwart efforts to promote the disciplinary and professional growth of both translation and interpretation in Zimbabwe. These observations suggest that language policy, translation, and interpretation in the Zimbabwean context have an intricate and symbiotic relationship; thus the lack of an enabling language policy environment both past and present constrains their development.

Disciplinary Permeability, Academic Specializations, and University Presses

University presses select and publish intellectually significant scholarship. As they each occupy disciplinary space, particular to their publishing and editorial missions, university presses consider manuscripts per respective brands and imprimatur. This presentation will examine subject specialization within the larger context of disciplinary formation and disciplinary alignments university presses consider within their purview. To gain a greater appreciation of their missions in subject specialization, a definitional model will animate further discussion of publication trends, and disciplinary nomenclature utilized by university presses to capture their emphases within the constellation of scholarly publishing. Methodology and discussion will focus on data gleaned from the 2018 Directory of Association of American University Presses. Via a bibliometric approach, comparison with earlier Directories will situate discussion within the wider frame of disciplinary specialization growth. Disciplinary subjects and disciplinary nomenclature will constitute the focus of discussion as central to university press monographic publication trends. Special emphasis and illustrations will focus on fragmentation, hyper-specialization, and trends accommodating emerging scholarly domains, especially disciplinary permeability. Further broached vis-a-vis academic publishing and corresponding influence on scholars, especially, humanities scholars, as they navigate the scholarly communication system, exemplified by university presses.

Growth of Undergraduate Education in Design in the United States, 1988–2012

As part of a larger project that analyzes disciplinary and interdisciplinary growth in the United States, this article quantitatively investigates the expansion of undergraduate education in design at four-year colleges and universities between 1988 and 2012. It utilizes data from the US Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Survey (IPEDS), which is especially suitable for investigating field-level change. Results show that undergraduate design education is growing in both absolute and relative terms, but this growth varies according to different institution types and conditions. Hence, variables such as control type (i.e., public vs. private), Carnegie classification type, institution size, and institutional revenues have differential influences on the diffusion of bachelor's degree-granting programs and the share of bachelor's degrees. This study provides valuable insights to policymakers, administrators, and design educators who seek to make meaningful interventions within the academy, and it will advance our understanding of the changing institutional organization of design education and the future of design disciplines in the United States.

TESOLas a Professional Community: A Half‐Century of Pedagogy, Research, and Theory

This article reviews the developments in significant pedagogical and research domains inTESOLduring the 50‐year history ofTESOLQuarterly. It situates these developments in the shift from a modernist to postmodern orientation in disciplinary discourses. The article also considers the changes in modes of knowledge dissemination in the journal by examining the changes in locations of research, authorship, article genres, and research methods. While there is an evolving diversity in the disciplinary discourses ofTESOLthat can appear to be a threat to the field's coherence, the article argues that this diversity can contribute to a more plural knowledge base and constructive disciplinary growth forTESOL.

The origins of Penrose diagrams in Physics, Art, and the Psychology of perception, 1958–62

Penrose diagrams gave mid-twentieth century physicists studying General Relativity (GR) a new tool for understanding Einstein's theory of gravity. Starting in 1962 they allowed new understandings and conceptualizations of the mathematical objects of theoretical physics. One origin of the diagrams is found in Roger Penrose's engagement with the art of "impossible objects". These new understandings contributed to the "renaissance" GR experienced starting in the late 1950s. By following the diagrams through the GR community, the interrelation of research and pedagogy is explicated. This interrelation rapidly disseminated the tools to new workers in the field, further amplifying the effect of this new theoretical tool on disciplinary growth.

Critical Differentiation and the Twice Oppressed

Within disciplines, certain theoretical, ontological, and heuristic frameworks evolve toward axiomatic status over time. This evolution can limit disciplinary growth. Interdisciplinary theorizing can introduce trouble into such frameworks and add the tension necessary for the creation of new knowledge. This theoretical essay provides educators with new ways of thinking about teaching disadvantaged gifted youth. Differentiation, an educational philosophy, is reconceptualized as a form of critical pedagogy termed critical differentiation. The concept of the twice oppressed is presented. This concept suggests that it is possible for children to be oppressed based on social category as well as gifted classification. As in the case of the twice exceptional child who may struggle in classrooms with both dyslexia and giftedness, the twice oppressed child may struggle with both poverty and giftedness. Critical differentiation, or a merger of critical pedagogy and differentiation, may become a step toward resolving this conundrum. The concept of critical differentiation is explicated in this essay, along with sample lesson ideas and suggestions for framing research endeavors.

Journalism in the Service of Communication

This article discusses the role of journalism in the disciplinary growth of the study of communication. It traces the initial role that journalism played in communication studies' development, considers how it has taken shape differently in some of the discipline's sub-fields of inquiry, and charts how it has developed in different geographic regions. Addressing journalism's contemporary positioning around the world, the article argues that the study of communication could profit by acknowledging more fully journalism's centrality in helping keep communication studies a singular and vibrant field of academic inquiry.

Introduction to Roundtable on Bringing the Plague

Postmodern psychoanalysis differs from the original practice of postmodern writers in a way that highlights the particular demand placed on psychoanalytic theory: to mediate between traditional practice and theoretical innovation. The argument is made here that it is postmodern theory to which relational psychoanalysis turns for auto-critique and to expand the horizons of practice, a process of disciplinary growth that is evident in the roundtable on Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis. This introduction locates the roundtable in a critical moment when postmodern theory, as it becomes an -ism in practice, copes with inevitable and necessary innovation and strives not to jettison the field's operational principles while retaining its critical edge.

The “Cycle of Life” in Ecology: Sergei Vinogradskii’s Soil Microbiology, 1885–1940

Between 1907 and 1915 Albert Francis Blakeslee transformed both himself and the Connecticut Agricultural College at Storrs into things neither had been at the beginning of the century. Using the varied commitments of the agricultural college and experiment station at which he worked as resources with which to build his career, Blakeslee began as a botanist and instructor in botany and ended as a geneticist and teacher of genetics. Moreover, he left behind at Storrs a legacy of genetic research and instruction in the form of an autonomous department of Botany and Genetics. The story of Blakeslee’s career at the Connecticut Agricultural College reveals the multifold ways in which agricultural researchers identified unique institutional resources and built unexpected careers and unanticipated institutional structures, a process which had a significant impact on the disciplinary growth of genetics in the United States.

The role of interest‐based facilitation in designing accreditation standards: The Canadian experience

AbstractThis article discusses the design and implementation of a national certification process for family mediators by Family Mediation Canada (FMC) in 1999, as well as findings from data collected during the pilot testing, of the certification process. Debates continue about theoretical orientation, best practices, and thus the feasibility of standards of practice. This article argues that although these debates are vital to disciplinary growth, they deflect attention from areas of fundamental consensus. Professional practice arid certification standards are designed using one of two approaches. The first approach is expert‐driven and evaluative and focuses on differences among practitioners. In this approach, experts evaluate differences and then propose the best model and standards of practice. The second approach is interest‐based and facilitative. It builds on areas of consensus among practitioners. Facilitators use mediation methods to support practitioner self‐empowerment and self‐determination in the design of practice and certification standards. This article argues that adoption of the second approach was the key to the success of the FMC process.

Prospects for Distributive Justice Theory

Theoretical progress is essential to the viability of any scientific subdiscipline. Ever since a growth spurt in the 1980s, however, and despite a very active research enterprise, distributive justice theory has developed very little. Our approach is first to discuss the role that theory plays in disciplinary growth. After noting the indicators of stagnation in distributive justice areas, we identify key problems with the way distributive justice theories are constructed and evaluated. Specifically, little attention is paid to the clear definition and consistent use of theoretical terms, or to the construction of explicit logical arguments from which empirical hypotheses may be derived. Weaknesses in these areas all but prohibit the evolution of improved theories over time. We conclude with a set of evaluative criteria that, if applied collectively by members of the field, would optimize the chances for theoretical progress. Ultimately this also would lead to more efficient empirical tests and better-informed practical applications of distributive justice theories.

Critical Discourse Analysis

▪ Abstract This paper provides a survey of critical discourse analysis (CDA), a recent school of discourse analysis that concerns itself with relations of power and inequality in language. CDA explicitly intends to incorporate social-theoretical insights into discourse analysis and advocates social commitment and interventionism in research. The main programmatic features and domains of enquiry of CDA are discussed, with emphasis on attempts toward theory formation by one of CDA's most prominent scholars, Norman Fairclough. Another section reviews the genesis and disciplinary growth of CDA, mentions some of the recent critical reactions to it, and situates it within the wider picture of a new critical paradigm developing in a number of language-oriented (sub) disciplines. In this critical paradigm, topics such as ideology, inequality, and power figure prominently, and many scholars productively attempt to incorporate social-theoretical insights into the study of language.

Bibliotecología y responsabilidad social

This paper critically examines the relations between librarianship and social responsibility. it does so in a number of ways; first the dominance of information technology in library and information science, then examines the discussion between 'pragmatism versus social responsability: finally the contribution reports the disciplinary growth of our profession as a social scientific discipline In this way, the author argues for the integration of this different trends ID librarianship, but without missing our social responsability.

Library and Information Science as a Social Science: Neutral and Normative Conceptions

When library education was institutionalized at universities in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, it pursued a social scientific path of disciplinary growth guided largely by perspectives in the philosophy of science. In this way, objectivity and neutrality became prominent professional ideals of library education. A different conception of social science denies a disinterested outlook and provides the basis for recent challenges to the profession's traditional perception of itself and its disciplinary growth. This article explores alternately the "neutral" and "normative" conceptions of library and information science as a social scientific discipline.

The Strength of Loose Concepts — Boundary Concepts, Federative Experimental Strategies and Disciplinary Growth: The Case of Immunology

The Strength of Loose Concepts — Boundary Concepts, Federative Experimental Strategies and Disciplinary Growth: The Case of Immunology

Applied communication research: Scholarship that can make a difference

Abstract Applied research is an important form of scientific inquiry that has been widely misunderstood and unappreciated within the field of communication. This article first debunks five common misconceptions about the nature of applied communication research. Four criteria for conducting effective applied communication then are posed. The article concludes by examining three ways in which effective applied communication research promotes the disciplinary growth of communication knowledge.