Course-5 Understanding Disciplines and School Subjects pmd

d) Biglan-Becher typology
While Biglan’s work concentrated on the cognitive dimension of disciplines, Becher
in 1989 called attention to the social dimensions of academic disciplines. From this emerged
the Biglan-Becher typology of academic disciplines. According to this typology, four main
types of groups are possible.
1. Hard and Pure disciplines
2. Hard and Applied disciplines
3. Soft and Pure disciplines
4. Soft and Applied disciplines
Hard-Pure disciplines involve general areas of human understanding and are clustered
around limited number of problems. The nature of knowledge in these disciplines is
cumulative and concerned with universal phenomena. The result of such knowledge is
discovery of something new or expansion of already existing knowledge. Just like a crystal
grows as more and more molecules add on to it, so is it in case of this group of disciplines.
As new knowledge keeps adding, the older form of knowledge is enhanced. For example,
Emphasize
discoveries and
Explanations
Eg Mathematics,
Biology,
Chemistry, Physics
Emphasize
understanding
and interpretation
Eg. History,
Literature Art,
Theory, Socialogy
Emphasize Process
and Protocols
Eg. Education, Lae,
Information
Management
Emphasize
Products and
techniques
Eg. Medicine,
engineering,
Design
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consider the knowledge about an atom. As research on the atom progressed, our knowledge
about atoms made incremental progress. The relationship between the knowledge seeker
and knowledge is unbiased and very objective. There are very definite criteria to verify
knowledge in such disciplines. There is a high degree of consensus over significant questions.
For example if two scientists are studying the effect of temperature on the states of matter,
their results will be similar no matter which parts of the world they perform their experiments
in. Academic communities in hard-pure disciplines are well organized, their work is quite
competitive and publication rates are high.