Developing Interdisciplinary Researchers: What Ever Happened to the Humanities in Education?

Abstract

In response to changing federal priorities, much discussion has taken place recently about the need for graduate education programs to firmly embrace interdisciplinary research, or “interdisciplinary integration across related fields” ( National Research Council, 2004 , p. 6). The related fields usually are understood to be certain social and behavioral sciences. From the perspective of the humanities, the author challenges an emerging view, widely regarded as commonsensical, about the proper nature of interdisciplinarity in education and what counts as good education research ( Hostetler, 2005 ). He devotes particular attention to the problem of determining and distinguishing ends and means and the dangers of narrowness, and provides examples of the value of the humanities to education research.