Postcolonial discourse as an analytical framework to explore disciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in higher education

Despite national requirements for accredited teaching qualifications promote understanding of ‘how students learn, both generally and in the subject’ (Higher Education Academy, 2006), there is a lack of published evidence of disciplinary differences in student learning in higher education. Academics at a research intensive university were asked to report on the existence of literature or folkloric knowledge concerned with how students learnt in their subject. No relevant literature or folk lore were identified but unexpectedly responses did demonstrate a discourse in which the academics constructed their discipline as ‘better’ than other disciplines; it is this finding with which the present paper is concerned. The discourse of the distinctiveness and superiority of ones own discipline can be understood as a form of ‘Orientalism’ through the application of postcolonial theory, which explains the difficulty in establishing transdisciplinary activities in higher education, such as postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching, as valid.

This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the journal Studies in Higher Education © 2009 Taylor & Francis. "Disciplines, discourse and Orientalism: the implications for postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching in higher education" is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070902929519