JRP Submission ID#117
TITLE: Beyond the Realms of the Specialists: The Challenge of the
Generalized Issue
Submitted on Aug 6, 2007

ABSTRACT:

Scientific and scholarly activity has traditionally provided vehicles
for the dissemination of research findings in highly specialised areas
defined as academic disciplines. The term discipline refers to an area
or body of knowledge that is studied in a university or specialised
institute (such as mathematics, philosophy, physics, history,
geography, or languages). A discipline has the function of advancing
knowledge and technique, and also acting as a gatekeeper for the
admittance of new practitioners. Yet when examples from aerospace,
medicine, veterinary science, or ICT are studied, it becomes clear
that there are challenges still beyond the reach of the specialist
discipline. These challenges can be issues that are generalized in
that they affect many unrelated parts of society (in the same way that
cancer can be generalized). As science and scholarship addresses these
challenges, it becomes apparent that research will fall outside the
realms of the traditional disciplinary boundaries. What are needed are
new vehicles of multidisciplinary research, and a revisiting of the
specialist/generalist debate, and the writings of Presthus and Dogan
can be considered. While today's specialists rightly stand supreme
within their own disciplines, the risks of overruling specialists can
be catastrophic, as demonstrated by the Challenger disaster, to take
just one example. Yet an examination of examples drawn from some areas
of specialization will show that there are challenges still beyond the
reach of the specialist, such that there is in reality a task for
educators to create "specialists in generalization," and examples will
be provided of such "specializing generalists."

KEYWORDS: specialist; generalist; academic discipline;
interdisciplinary approach

Request interested reviewers to please respond.

DP
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