Abstracts - Earli

disciplines. Each professor was interviewed five times, thus providing insight into their thinkingabout teaching, their discipline and knowledge in general. Transcripts were analysed using amixed a priori/emerging coding scheme. The analysis of data led to the identification ofcomponents and dimensions of DPK corresponding to constructs from each of the three lines ofresearch. Simultaneously, the analysis led to the identification of relationships between thosecomponents and dimensions. As such, the findings provide a framework for the interpretation ofuniversity professors’ DPK. Furthermore, the analysis led to the identification of components,dimensions, and relationships common to the four professors, thus providing information aboutelements of DPK that are likely to be found in most university professors. Overall, the findingsprovide an empirical description of university professors’ DPK that captures the phenomenonmore accurately than previous approaches. Therefore, from a theoretical standpoint, it furthers ourunderstanding of the struggles faced by university professors in reconciling their pedagogical anddisciplinary knowledge. From an educational standpoint, it points to specific aspects of theexperiential learning of university professors that need to be supported by academic developmentefforts.Academics as creators of imaginary subjects: Academics’ ideas of their disciplinary curriculumdecision – makingGudrun Geirdottir, University of Iceland, IcelandAn important aspect of higher education is university teachers’ freedom and power to makecurriculum decisions; to decide what students are to learn and how. In this study, Bernstein’stheories on the different fields of reproduction of knowledge as well as his concepts ofclassification and framing are used to explore academics’ conceptions of the pedagogic discourseof their discipline. According to Bernstein, the pedagogic discourse selects and creates specialisedpedagogic subjects through its contexts and contents (Bernstein, 2000, p.31) and is composed ofinstructional as well as regulative discourses. The aim of the study is a) to probe in this light theacademics’ conceptions of these discourses within their disciplines and b) their participation in recontextualisingdisciplinary knowledge as an academic subject of study for students. The notionsacademics have of the pedagogic discourse, its creations and effects is here taken to be situated indifferent social contexts, most importantly the discipline but also the department, the institution,and the profession. The study uses qualitative research methods. Data is collected throughobservations at staff meetings and in-depth interviews with academics in three different disciplinesat the University of Iceland (anthropology, physics and mechanical and industrial engineering)chosen partly with reference to Biglan’s dimensions of soft-hard and pure-applied disciplines. Textanalysis of various documents related to the curriculum construction of the different disciplineswas also carried out. Data is analyzed through formal data structure and discourse analysis. Thestudy is still in progress but findings can be classified according to disciplines that differsignificantly even tough there are some very common threads across them. In particular it wasfound that even within disciplines academics hold disparate views with regard to the constructionof the pedagogic discourse and refer to different categories (institutional, personal, historical) forits justification.Re-disciplining generic attributesAnna Jones, University of Melbourne, AustraliaGeneric attributes have, for a long time, been viewed as super-disciplinary and hence as separatedfrom or overlayed onto disciplinary content. There has been considerable interest in generic skillsor attributes over more than a decade and there has also been interest in disciplinary specificity in– 160 –