Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2020 number 2

Introduction. This paper is aimed at finding a solution to the problem of understanding education as an object of research interests of various scientific and disciplinary fields. The situation of knowledge of the object of the study is burdened not so much by the existence of the current and constantly replenished body of theoretical ideas about education, generated by disciplinary areas, but by their disorderly, diverse and heterogeneous applied scientific approaches. It is assumed that each disciplinary scientific field recreates, i.e. designs its inherent «disciplinary theoretical image of education». It is seen that the design of the latter is based on disciplinary research traditions related to the applied disciplinary methods and knowledge designs. It is argued that the constant production of theoretical ideas about education exclusively within a mono-discipline framework, not only does not clarify the ontology of such a complex social phenomenon as education, but also makes it difficult to understand the connections, properties, patterns and relations of educational realities as such. It is proposed to refer as a novelty of knowledge to one of the possible research strategies for solving the emerging kind of disciplinary dominance in education knowledge - to the idea of transdisciplinary design. It is disclosed that the transition to transdisciplinarity in case of solving the problem of theoretical understanding of education, will enable to cross the disciplinary «boundaries» and foundations, to transfer knowledge schemes from different disciplines, to go to the meta-framework of research and to acquire a holistic view of the problem. It is stated that the result of the reference to transdisciplinary design will be a synthesized product of disciplinary research - a transdisciplinary theoretical image of the phenomenon of education. Methodology and methods of the research. Theoretical analysis of literary sources in terms of disciplinary research on education allows highlighting the promising direction of his knowledge - transdisciplinary design of his theoretical images. The concept of transdisciplinary construction of theoretical images of the object of study is based on an appeal to one of the leading paradigm in the theory of cognition - constructivism (in particular, social constructionism), as well as the introduction of the author’s ideal-typical design of «theoretical image of the phenomenon of education». The ideal-typical design of «theoretical image of the phenomenon of education» is intended to act as an idealized design, integrating all attribution signs of disciplinary theoretical images of education, not excluding their substantive self-sufficiency. The results of the research. Increasing attention to the issue of education as a complex and multilevel phenomenon in its multidisciplinary research attraction is primarily related to the reflection of disciplinary heuristic possibilities. Numerous studies show that scientific fields and areas such as pedagogy, psychology of education, sociology of education and finally philosophy of education have a decisive influence on the emergence of an array of theoretical ideas about education. It should be noted that the theoretical judgements on education expressed by them are analytical and do not exclude other disciplinary views on it. It should be noted that these scientific mono-disciplinary studies, with seemingly extensive scope, demonstrate a narrow penetration into ontology of such a complex phenomenon as education. A fundamentally new solution to the declared problem of understanding the phenomenon of education is seen in the transdisciplinary focus of view. In this regard, the new field of research in terms of knowledge of the phenomenon of education is presented by us in the form of the following aspects: 1) reliance on the author’s ideal-typical design of «theoretical image of the phenomenon of education»; 2) implementation of transdisciplinary design of theoretical image of the education phenomenon by formation of disciplinary prototypes that are put in its foundation. The transdisciplinary theoretical image of the phenomenon of education, which is a synthesized version of disciplinary views on education, will allow not only to solve the above-mentioned problem of diversity of theoretical ideas about it, but also, most probably, to build a holistic vision on it. Conclusion. In understanding the ways of cognition of the phenomenon of education, disciplinary sciences and practices have gone a rather long and difficult way. Paying tribute to what they have done, it should be noted that in the context of complexity of the social phenomenon we are studying, which is the phenomenon of education, the search for other strategies to study it remains an urgent need. The circumstances identified by us, which allowed us to argue that disciplinary sciences design their own disciplinary theoretical study of education, served as a guide to changing the focus of the study of the phenomenon of education in its theoretical representations. At the heart of our research is the fact that the appeal to a transdisciplinary approach in designing and obtaining from it a theoretical image of the phenomenon of education, which in our opinion acts as a synthesized format of its disciplinary «predecessors», is very relevant and heuristically productive.