Page 67 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

new narrow sub-disciplines of knowledge (Bochenski, 1993). On the other hand, the identification of new positions and the emergence of pedagogical sub-disciplines contribute to the development of pedagogy.
Muszyński lists the conditions that a field of enquiry must fulfil in order to earn the name of a scientific sub-discipline:
If we omit here all the requirements connected with its useful functions, and confine ourselves to only two, namely: the external function, which boils down to providing man with cognitive relations with the world, and the internal function, which consists in ensuring the continuity of its own existence as a sub-discipline, these conditions can be reduced to the following:
1. having one's own system of concepts necessary to exhaustively describe and analyse the object of scientific exploration;
2. having at its disposal certain rules concerning the way of performing cognitive activities, i.e. posing and solving problems;
3. to have certain rules according to which the knowledge constituting the effect of practising a given discipline is collected and systematised101. (Muszyński, 1997, p. 28)
Thus, the names of pedagogical sub-disciplines are defined precisely, and the scope of the studied phenomena is relatively narrow (Magier, 2012, p. 34). Language pedagogy as a hybrid applied sub- discipline of pedagogy (humanities and social sciences) would study the processes of learning (non- formal, formal) and language education (of the first language – including the language of national minorities and migrants– the second language, and a foreign language) for multilingualism, diversity (heterogeneity of learners) interculturality and multilingualism as an approach to language education, critical pedagogical reflection aimed at equality, and inclusive education (moving away from monolingual and monocultural programmes towards socially oriented teaching and plurilingual curricula). Language pedagogy would thus refer to language education and have a practical, applied character. The consolidation of language pedagogy would result both from the social, economic, and cultural changes taking place in today's world and from the development of science, as postmodernity requires the implementation of dialogicality, respect for differences, and constant interpretation of other people's cultures and needs (see Aviram, 2010, pp. 203–207; Kwiecinski, 2016, p. 32).
This sub-discipline, like other sub-disciplines of pedagogical sciences, could have at least two main functions: idiographic-diagnostic and heuristic-cognitive (Tchorzewski, 2019, p. 113). This means that, on the one hand, it would describe and diagnose pedagogical reality, and on the other hand, it would become a place for searching and posing new research problems that often require original solutions. The definition of this sub-discipline of pedagogy would lead to the improvement of research methods and gain knowledge about the processes that are important during empirical and hermeneutic
101 Referring the above formulations to general pedagogy, we can say that its distinctness, autonomy, and status as a sub-discipline within pedagogical sciences would be assured, if it was able to formulate judgments about education in general in the language-fulfilling requirements of scientific communication, if its representatives had clear and shared consciousness of how to practise and build it. Only a sub-discipline understood in such a way can also provide its own teaching content (otherwise, all that is left is the generalisation of knowledge accumulated by other sub-disciplines, and thus the abandonment of the actual practice of science as "acquiring new knowledge" – as Rummel puts it, opposing the proper understanding of the word "research" to the point of its abuse (cf. Rummel, 1964, p. 3. In Muszyński, 1997, p. 28).
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