Course-5 Understanding Disciplines and School Subjects pmd

ii. Hard vs Soft ( or paradigmatic vs non paradigmatic disciplines)
Hard disciplines: Some Disciplines like Physics, Engineering, Computing and Chemistry
etc. tend to use quantitative data, which tend to be predictive and use experimental methods,
are called as hard disciplines. These hard Disciplines use experimental methods to build
their repository of knowledge. Braxton (1995) represents the hard disciplines as being
characterized by greater concern for career development and cognitive goals (such as the
learning of facts and concepts).
Soft Disciplines: Soft disciplines are those disciplines that rely on qualitative data. They
generally do not use experimental methods and hence cannot make conclusive predictions
concerning the future. Examples of soft disciplines are Languages, Law, Anthropology and
Education. The soft disciplines as being characterized by greater concern for general
education development, character development, critical thinking and ‘scholarly’ activities
(such as the reading of research articles)
iii. Concerned with life systems vs those not concerned with life systems.
The third classification of Academic Disciplines given by Biglin (1970) is concerned
with life systems and those not concerned with life systems.
Academic Disciplines like Biology and Psychology that deal with life systems or
living beings are classified into one group and Academic Disciplines like Physics,
Mathematics, Geology that deal with inanimate objects are classified into another category.
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Emphasis of Academic Disciplines as Knowledge integration and
application
Further, a study by Smart and Ethington (1995) reports the opinions on the goals of
undergraduate education from over 4000 university faculty members who regularly taught
undergraduate students. The conclusions were that soft and applied disciplines place greater
emphasis on knowledge acquisition, and hard disciplines have more concern for knowledge
application. Knowledge integration and application were both perceived to be more
important in the applied disciplines than in the pure.