ABSTRACT
Disciplinary knowledge is both the object of study which we look at and also the lens we look through. The disciplines within which specialised fields are organised serve not just as sources of knowledge and expertise but also as bases of personal identity for both teachers and students. This chapter first considers the nature of disciplines before examining a range of currently influential analytical frameworks for thinking about disciplinary teaching. These include signature pedagogies – the preferred fundamental ways of thinking and practising in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions – and ‘threshold concepts’, the conceptual boundaries that must be negotiated as part of disciplinary formation. The learning of a threshold concept frequently entails an encounter with ‘troublesome knowledge’ and with liminality. Consideration of these approaches, and others such as ‘transactional curriculum inquiry’ and ‘decoding the disciplines’, brings into view issues for subject and course design in the disciplines, which are illustrated through a series of case studies. The chapter goes on to explore disciplines in the 21st century and how ‘pedagogies of uncertainty’ can be used to combine disciplinary and important generic skills. The chapter concludes by thinking beyond discipline, discussing interdisciplinarity and collaborative pedagogies at module and course level.
