ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the character of disciplines as they emerged and developed, as well as the idea of interdisciplinarity, in the British context. Educational studies and research have been powerfully shaped by the disciplines in interesting and distinctive ways over the longer term. Both disciplines and interdisciplines, Harvey J. Graff suggests, are products of the modern research university, with their origins in the nineteenth century. F. Christie and K. Maton have complained that the disciplines, despite their longevity and familiarity, are unappreciated for their enduring value and too little understood in terms of their theoretical and sociological characteristics. According to another senior colleague, Professor Brian Smith, Asa Briggs recognised that populating each school with staff who came from different disciplines would stimulate interdisciplinary research and create alternative models for teaching. In 1961, the University of Sussex opened, with ambitious plans, as its later vice chancellor, the leading historian Briggs, tellingly described them, of 'redrawing the map of learning'.
