Claim: One way to assure the health of a discipline is to nurture contrasting perspectives

Introduction

A perspective is a way of thinking to a group of people who share a common role. Today, there is a fundamental change in how people organize, produce and interpret knowledge.  In the production of academic knowledge, professionals from different areas of expertise are implementing various perspective to solve problems. Frontiers of academic knowledge from different disciplines such as sociology, law, psychology, history and other areas bring different disciplinary perspectives and employ integrative approaches to offer synergistic solutions to the problems. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the interdisciplinary work and the major concern is exploring whether contrasting disciplinary perspectives assures the health and credibility of a discipline.  In order to  understand  how  multiple perspectives and  intellectual diversity  may  assure  the health of discipline, the paper will  be guided by the  following   general  knowledge questions and real-life situations:

• To what extent do the contrasting perspectives strengthen the areas of knowledge of a discipline?
• Can the credibility of discipline be falsified by the experts’ different perspectives and disagreements?
• What shapes the experts' distinct perspectives?
• What drives the conflicting claims?

  The hypothesis of the paper is that professionals should use an interdisciplinary approach and contrasting perspectives as this approach will enable them to apply knowledge from a different background, interpret knowledge using opinions, life experiences and personal observation. Accordingly, contrasting perspective and subjectivity judgment are the important ways that should be used to maintain the credibility of discipline and draw a conclusion concerning the areas of knowledge.

 

            Concerning the areas of knowledge, the perspectives concept would help the experts to generate valuable knowledge by using empirical evidence rather than theory (Dilworth, 21). The theory contains a sentence which might be true and false and thus, the experts need to understand the discipline using empirical facts. Note that in formulating a theory or rather understanding phenomena, authors encounter incommensurability problem due to lack of competing paradigms. In other words, the problem arises when scientists analyze a problem using a similar description (Dilworth, 21). However, the scientific revolution has helped the scientists to understand that a good formulation of the theory requires different concepts and different views. It is important to understand that the scientific revaluation did not only develop the scientific knowledge but it brought great advances in the areas of knowledge.  In addition, there were conceptual changes and this means that the older concepts in defining and solving problems were modified. The conceptual changes mean that the theoretical terms are used refer to different things with reference to the type of theory (Dilworth, 23). Today, various disciplines or areas of knowledge require the discovery of new facts and new theoretical principles. It is true that scientific disciplines have unique basic principles, specific perspectives, specific concepts and intended object that helps investigate the scientific reality and come up with a conceptual paradigm.  In order to find the reality and assure the credibility and the health of discipline, there must be an empirical-scientific agreement. In studying an area of knowledge, experts set a subject matter and come up with more advanced theories. In order to satisfy the subject matter, experts offer contracting perspectives toward creating a common reality (Cents, 20). In other words, experts create different theories that have different meaning about the discipline's subject-matter. The main point is that with the scientific revolution and scientific advance, contracting perspectives are needed to interpret the universal theories. 

 

  Personal and shared knowledge are two important elements that form a knowledge framework in the area of knowledge.  In the area of knowledge, individuals offer their personal knowledge which is gained through experience, formal education or academic research (Miller & Mansilla, 2). In the area of knowledge, personal knowledge play a significant role as it guides on the procedures of doing things.  On the other hand, shared knowledge comes from individual contributions and it plays a significant role in the area of it changes the common way of doing things by applying new experiments, new theories, and advances. It is also important to note that in the area of knowledge, people's perspective is influenced by their cultures, beliefs, and values (Miller & Mansilla, 4). Individuals involved in the area of knowledge differ in nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, race and more. The assortment of distinct groups allows international-mindedness where people offer different perspectives and share knowledge. The purpose of introducing the concepts of personal and shared knowledge is to support the claim that combination of contracting perspectives from individuals and groups from different background allows the experts to apply the differences in finding the scientific reality. 

 Hutchinson & Oltedal support this claim by arguing that today, a professional domain is made up of systematic and specialized knowledge. The author uses the social work academic discipline as an example of an area of knowledge and argues that the health of a social work discipline is derived from the combination of knowledge fields like geography, psychology, sociology, and history (Hutchinson & Oltedal, 2). All these domains are applied since the social work field demands a holistic approach in order to analyze the problem and offer solutions.  For example, the experts in the social work field are interested in understanding the problems affecting a group of people and the material needed to combat the issues. However, social workers derive other knowledge from the sociology field in order to understand the nature and pattern of society. This means that the social work field cannot fully implement the necessary changes as a single entity but it needs other sociology perspectives in order to understand the situation efficiently (Hutchinson & Oltedal, 4). Thus, there is a need for applying a contextual diversity to the social work Discipline in order to effectively and efficiently solve the societal issues and improve the living condition and the well-being of people.

 

            In the area of knowledge, experts develop a scientific theory which is either approved or disproved with a minimum claim. Thus, multiple contrasting perspectives are needed to formulate the theory, arrive at the final results and draw a conclusion. For example, in the social work discipline, there must be interactional perspectives. The purpose of this perspective is to create a linkage between the traditional social-political climate and modern organizational structure. The social work field supports the claim and draws the assumption that contrasting perspectives are an integral part of the credibility of a discipline.  Experts need to apply the new perspectives to the existing knowledge in order to compare the knowledge and come with credible research (Hutchinson & Oltedal, 230).  Another perspective is the psychodynamic perspective and it focuses on personality development at the individual level and the relationship between the individual and the surroundings.  For example, the learning theory provides a perspective that the environment controls human behavior and thus, the social worker focus on problematic behavior and its consequences (Hutchinson & Oltedal, 232). Another perspective is the conflict perspective that helps the social worker understand that in the society, people have different interests that leads to conflict and oppression, especially on women. Thus, the social worker may concentrate on the issues affecting a particular group of people such as the black people and address social issues (Hutchinson & Oltedal, 233). These different perspectives support the claim that for a discipline to be credible, it needs contrasting perspectives in order to connect and synthesize knowledge from different settings. 

 

             Grusec & Davidov support the claim by arguing that experts of psychological development employ different perspectives in order to understand the socialization discipline. They affirm that in every area of study, integration of knowledge is important since the knowledge from other relevant domains possess a special mechanism. For example, in the socialization field and in specific the study of caregiver-child interactions, it is important to employ contrasting perspectives since there are distinct domains that explain the child-caregiver interaction (Grusec & Davidov, 687). Each domain that talks about the social relationship employ unique principles and mechanism, rules, behavior change, and different outcomes. Thus, it is important to consider the interconnectedness of different aspects and articular different areas before arriving into the conclusion. Mazzei (216) also supports the use of contrasting perspectives by saying that in the Business field, experts who want to understand the knowledge of corporate communication can derive information from other fields like public relations, business communication, and marketing. These domains defer and overlap in various ways but the combination would help the expert in corporate communication to produce a better understanding.  In addition, the contrasting perspectives from different domains offer an integrative approach where experts examine the interrelationships and benefits from the cross-fertilization (Mazzei, 219). The different perspectives help the experts employ the most important approach in conducting research and the approach will increase credibility.  Contrasting perspectives add value to the area of study since the experts incorporate specific connotations and concepts from each domain and thereby generates valuable knowledge.

 

Conclusion

 Contrasting perspectives yields powerful ways of addressing questions. The integrative disciplinary perceives allows the experts to use analogical thinking and as a result, they are able to relate the concepts from another domain with the discipline thereby strengthening the credibility of the discipline. The research has also confirmed that the can assure the health of discipline in that the experts introduce compound concepts that promote integrative understanding. In other words, there are terms that when derived from another domain and applying to one domain,  they create a  relationship between the two different fields and the relations helps in linking the cultural and genetic factors and more important formulating a new approach of understanding the area of knowledge.  The research has shown that in order to assure that discipline is well researched, there must be multiple perspectives,  complex explanation of the area of knowledge, different concepts and findings, a complex line of inquiry such as culture,  and beliefs, values and experiences. Contracting perspectives will enable the experts to create mutual scrutiny and apply knowledge from other fields and as a result, the perspectives will yield action-oriented leverage. The paper has confirmed that the area of knowledge and the different disciplinary perspectives play a significant role in forming a dynamic relationship in defining the problem and applying tools from other relevant domains thereby strengthening the credibility of a discipline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work cited

 

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of Values and Tackling Grand Challenges. MS thesis. University of Twente, 2017.

 

Hutchinson, Gunn Strand,  & Oltedal, S. "Five theories in social work." (2014).

 

Miller, Matthew, and Mansilla B. V. "Thinking across perspectives and

disciplines." Harvard Graduate School of Education (2004).

 

Mazzei, Alessandra. "A multidisciplinary approach for a new understanding of corporate

communication." Corporate communications: an international journal 19.2 (2014): 216-

230.

 

 Grusec, Joan E., &  Davidov, M. "Integrating different perspectives on socialization

theory and research: A domain‐specific approach." Child development 81.3 (2010): 687-

709.

 

Dilworth, Craig. "The Perspectivist Conception of Science." Science Between Truth and Ethical

Responsibility. Springer, Cham, 2015. 21-25.