I’ll stray into areas where I know what I know is limited… but I’ve found what follows to be a very useful model, even if it’s not quite right. Where I have it ‘not quite right,’ hopefully someone can fill in the blanks for me.
Substantive Knowledge
Knowledge accrued by the discipline.
e.g. History: knowledge of the past. Science: Newton’s three laws of motion. Mathematics: Pythagoras’ theorem.
Disciplinary Knowledge
How the academic discipline accrues said knowledge.
e.g. Source analysis. Empirical experimentation. Conjecture and proof.
I feel like there’s more to disciplinary knowledge that I’m not fully getting… Michael Fordham suggested that there is a ‘know-that’ component to disciplinary knowledge, as well as a ‘know-how.’ I wonder whether concepts such as ‘measurement error’ and ‘inductive reasoning’ would be ‘know-that’ disciplinary knowledge for science. They’re certainly not knowledge accrued by science, while they are necessary as a part of its processes for accruing…
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