Social Foundations, Disciplinarity, and Democracy.

Abstract

This article was originally conceived for a paper session at the 2000 American Educational Studies Association conference in Vancouver, a session designed as a “multilogue” on teaching the foundations. In the article we discuss the nature of the “disciplines” and disciplined thinking within the field. We are vulnerable, as are many in the social sciences and humanities, to understanding disciplines” as biased, political codifications that privilege the elite. Yet, as we argue here, we should avoid the modernistic discipline/antidiscipline binary by recognizing the “disciplines” as multivocal discourses. Teaching the “disciplines” that inform social foundations from this point of view presents our students with a historically grounded, critical view of education and schooling.