在学科与领域之间－制度化的高等教育研究

Between Discipline and Research Area: Institutionalized Higher Education Research

“学科”和“研究领域”在本文中是一对并列的概念，“高等教育研究”究竟是一门学科还是一个“研究领域”的争论因其本身的特征而由来已久并将持续。根据对研究领域制度化和学科化的分析，本文认为三十年来，我国高等教育研究完成的是社会建制和社会运作层面上的范式建构，观念层面的范式建构还远未完成。因此，高等教育研究依旧是一个“制度化”的研究领域，而不是一门“学科”。但“领域”和“学科”并无高低之分，只是在知识的“分化”和“整合”的进程中，各自在不同的层面上建构相应的范式而已。高等教育的基本内涵决定了高等教育研究的专门学者及其可能涉及范围的有限性、理论研究的实践导向性、学科化的有限性等特点，从而决定了高等教育研究未来学科化努力的方向主要是“观念层面上的范式”建构。

“Discipline” and “Research Area” are treated as parallel concepts in this paper. The debate over whether Higher Education Research is a discipline or a research area has lasted quite a long period of time and this situation continues to exist. According to the analysis of institutionalization and disciplinarization of research area, this paper argues that over three decades, its paradigm construction at the level of social institutions and social functioning has already been done by Chinese higher education research. Its construction at the conceptual level, however, is far from being completed. Higher education research is therefore still an institutionalized research area rather than a discipline. Nevertheless, there is no inherent inferiority or superiority between a research area and a discipline. Their difference lies in the fact that they construct their respective paradigm at different levels during the process of knowledge differentiation and integration. The nature of higher education determines such features as the specialized scholars in this area, the limitation of research scope, practice-oriented theoretical research, the limitation of disciplinarization, and so on so forth. Therefore the future direction for higher education research should mainly be focused on paradigm construction at the conceptual level.