Do you know books/articles written before 1970 that are still relevant for your akademic work? If so, can you give an example? In some programmes at bachelor and master level there seems to be a pressure to take away tekst from the curriculum that are over 10 years old.
Looking back at my doctoral thesis I can see that I found very few sources pre 1970. My exploration into grounded theory, for example, referenced a few in the late 60’s (Glaser). I used a reasonable number from the 1980‘s which provided starting points for further exploration of key ideas Around my topic (mental representation). More often than not these would lead to more recent research. I would say that many of the older texts are useful as triggers for further reading and are thus valuable documents.
Yes, e.g. Lev Vygotsky's books, Vladimir Propp's, Maria Montessori's, John Dewey's etc. There is a lot of it.
There are a few classic articles that are still usable eg:
1) Katz (1974) on managerial skills. useful for basic learning for Diploma and first year undergraduates
2) McClelland (1950s - original work) related to Needs from both a motivation and leadership perspective. Still useful as subsequently he continued to strengthen his theories all the way through to the 1990s
3) Maslow (1948) hierarchy of needs. The theory itself may be deemed as irrelevant in many settings, however, understanding those needs are still of importance to undergraduates when studying about motivation. However, should commence by introducing the original 5 needs, and then progressing unto the 8 needs that were later added on
There are many more classics including the RBV (VRIO); Azjen; and many more.
Just sharing my personal thoughts
Yes, agree. Seminal works are valuable - difficult to extract the full extent of a theory from subsequently developed research only.
There are plenty of them. Among academic articles there the works of Harry Levinson on executives and Harvey Leibenstein on X-inefficiency. However, I use in my classes many non-academic books. The best is the eternal Parkinson's Laws (1958), but also some pieces of Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, "War as I Knew It" by George S. Patton (concluding remarks), Tropiques Tristes by Levi-Strauss (the last chapters) . In addition, although it is not that famous in English, some works of a Polish S-fiction writer and philosopher S.Lem (https://english.lem.pl/), especially "Professor A.Donda" are just jewels.
I wonder what informs the specified 1970s amputation specified the question. Is it the time period, or lapse of time? In one of my areas of interest, dispositions for learning, much research and discussion has emerged from Bandura’s work around the the 70s. This period does appear to have been particularly productive for the constructivists. So the question is, has enough time elapsed (50 or so years) for the original work to become ‘classical’, as such? If you only included works from the most recent ten years, as suggested in the question, would you only include fledgling experiences and theories? And therefore miss valuable sources. In the case of learning disposition, it appears to have taken some decades for Bandura’s work to inform the current educational interest in developing learning character, or what Costa and Kallick termed ’habits of mind’. There may therefore be some interest in a study designed to gauge the rate of interest and growth for any given ‘theory’ in relation to specified time periods, the outcome of which may inform the inclusion or otherwise of temporally relevant curriculum materials.
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