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This review has been accessed  times since Feb. 12, 2001
Smart, John C., Feldman, Kenneth A., and Ethington, Corinna
A. (2000). Academic Disciplines: Holland's Theory and
the Study of College Students and Faculty. Nashville,
TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Pp. xiv + 277.
$39.95
ISBN 0-8265-1305-0.
Reviewed by
Marc Cutright
Johns Hopkins University
February 12, 2001
The case put forward by the authors is that there has been
little common research connecting those who study college
faculty and academic disciplines, and those who study
change among college students over the course of their
experience in higher education. Further, they assert that
theory-based inquiry has been peripheral to inquiries in
either broad area.
Academic
Disciplines is an address to both perceived
deficiencies. The authors use John Holland's theory of
careers as an analytical framework, and through it examine
the choice of majors by college students, the changes in
those decisions that come from college experience, and how
the Holland theory explains differences in disciplinary
cultures and the influence they have on students.
Early on,
the authors present a summary of Holland's theory, and that
is appropriate here. Holland's theory of careers, although
a mainstay of counseling psychology and sociology, is very
rarely utilized as an analytical framework in higher
education, and particularly the study of student
experience. First author John Smart, in fact, is the only
scholar of higher education to have used this framework in
several circumstances and over time, and his involvement
gives particular credence to the chain of argument that
holds the book together.
Holland's
theory has evolved over more than thirty years. The
foundation of the theory is that behavior is basically the
interaction between individuals and their environments,
that individuals have identifiable personality types, and
that individuals flourish in environments compatible with
those personalities. While the descriptions that follow are
substantially summarized for the purposes of this review,
the reader should look forward to an extensive and
persuasive discussion in Smart et al.
The six
personality types posited and researched by Holland and
others are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social,
Enterprising, and Conventional. Realistic individuals
enjoy tools and objects, and can be described as
"practical, conservative, asocial, persistent, and
frank." Investigative types tend toward exploration,
understanding, and the acquisition of knowledge, and
perceive themselves as being critical, intelligent, and
skeptical. Artistic types prefer the arts and eschew
conformity with rules; they see themselves as sensitive and
open, while others may see them as creative if disorderly.
Social personalities are associated with helping
individuals through personal interaction, as see themselves
as empathetic and cooperative. Enterprising types are
drawn to persuasion, manipulation, and direction of others
toward organizational or economic goals; they tend to lack
scientific abilities, but are seen by others as energetic
and people-oriented. Finally, Conventional types prefer
order and routine, and avoid ambiguity; they value
accomplishment and power, and are seen by others as
conformists.
As with
other personality typing schema, these types are not
rigidly distinct but more relative, and individuals usually
possess some attributes of all six categories. But any one
dominant type is more related to a select few others. The
types are diagrammed in the book as being the corners on a
hexagon, with placement of Realistic, Investigative,
Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional types in
clockwise order. The Social type personality, for example,
would be most often related to, and share more
characteristics with, Enterprising or Artistic people,
while being usually most distant in personality from
Realistic individuals.
Holland and others have devised and verified a number of
instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, for
individual identification in the scheme. These have led to
the publication of directories of occupations and college
majors sorted by Holland personality type, among other
applications. These classifications are based on the
other, elemental basis of Holland's theory, that there are
environments that parallel the six personality types, and
that fit, productivity, and satisfaction result from
alignment of the person with the environment.
The empirical research design used by the authors of
Academic Disciplines is based on data drawn from
national samples of both students and faculty. The faculty
data is a subsample of the 1989 survey conducted by the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which
sought information from faculty about such matters as use
of their time, their perceptions of their disciplines and
local environments, and their expectations for
undergraduate students in their field. The broader
Carnegie sample was narrowed for this study to faculty
holding terminal degrees and working at four-year colleges
and universities.
The student sample was drawn from national data collected
by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP)
sponsored by the University of California, Los Angeles.
The focus of the present study is that group of students
attending four-year institutions, who completed the
entering-freshman survey in the fall of 1986, and who
completed the follow-up study four years later in the
winter of1990. For each subsample of faculty and
students, data from more than 2,000 individuals was
considered.
Prior classifications of disciplines were utilized.
Through a variety of analytical techniques, data from the
faculty survey was used to enrich the descriptions and
characteristics of the disciplines with personality-
environment types. Likewise, the student data was analyzed
using prior, established indicators of type, so that
students could be sorted not only as to choice of majors,
but as to basic, underlying personality categories. Smart
et al. detail their statistical procedures and assumptions
at great detail, on this matter and others, but for the
reader of more general interest and background, they
organize the book so that the reader may choose to
critically examine these data choices and findings, or
concentrate upon the findings.
There are a series of assumptions against which this data
is tested: that students choose academic environments
compatible with their personality types; that faculty
reinforce and reward behaviors consistent with their
environmental types, to which student behavior and attitude
respond over time; and that people flourish in environments
consistent with their personality types. Each of these
three broad assumptions is considered against the data in
an individual chapter devoted to it. Generally, the
assumptions are supported by the national data.
The
last chapter of the three is perhaps of broadest
interest to higher education scholars, particularly those
whose primary interests are on student experiences and
outcomes. Generally, those students who have selected
disciplinary foci consistent with their personality types
make the most substantial moves toward congruence with the
values and intellectual frameworks of their disciplines.
Those who have studied against type move toward the pure
characteristics, but to a lesser degree. These patterns
hold for both "primary" recruits to a discipline
(those who chose and stay with a field over four years) and
"secondary" recruits (those who change majors),
but the congruence of personality and field values is
stronger for primary recruits. A great many useful
subanalyses are conducted by the authors on environmental
classifications.
The authors assert that the general affirmation of Holland
to be found in their analyses have a multitude of
implications for scholars of higher education.
Organization theory and behavior studies, for example,
might consider the difference among faculty perspectives
and values that Holland's theory suggest, and consider what
implications these might have for such matters as
stability, satisfaction, and the success of individuals.
Those who study student outcomes and changes have tended
toward general factors, and services and cultures that are
institutionally based; Holland's theory suggests that more
specific attention be given to the acculturation and
behaviors that are shaped and reinforced by academic
departments.
Further
research and affirmation of the theory in this context
might lead to even more sweeping changes in college
curricula and organization. For example, as the authors
note, general education requirements in most institutions
front-load many and conflicting disciplinary demands into
the first year of college. To the degree that there are
poor person-environment fits in these requirements, lower
levels of accomplishment and satisfaction may contribute to
higher levels of attrition and failure. Perhaps the first
year of college should be more closely tied to personal
attributes and interests, with a spreading of interest, a
formal or informal prodding toward the unfamiliar and
others ways of examining the world in the second year of
college and beyond.
Even more provocative is the suggestion that the
conventional collegiate organizational structure itself
should be rethought. A college reorganized around
Holland's Investigative environment and values might draw
to it science education, math education, and educational
research from the current College of Education; business
economics, systems analysis, and operations research from
today's College of Business; and economics, math, and
physics from Arts & Sciences. While traditional structures
may be congruent with such factors as external
accreditation agencies and their standards, they are likely
incongruent with Holland or other theory-driven groupings
of disciplines and what they value, either among faculty or
as student outcomes.
Beyond those inquiries that the authors suggest are many
other possibilities. For example, their student analysis
is based on those who are retained in higher education for
four academic years, the persisters. Studies that focus on
those who voluntarily or involuntarily withdraw from
studies may offer affirmation of the theory from a
"negative" perspective, i.e. such individuals may
have been particularly misfit to their choice of college
studies. Smart et al. consider gender in many of their
analysis, but not race or other pertinent socioeconomic
factors; those differences could be fascinating. College
failure among minorities, first-generation students, or
other groups for which inclusion is desirable, but for
which desired levels of success proves elusive, is often
attributed either to personal handicaps (e.g. poor academic
preparation) or institutional shortcoming (e.g.
exclusionary nature of college cultures). Might analysis
indicate that such students are more often personality
misfits with their college majors, and if so, might this
misfit arise from such factors as tracking into
economically "practical" majors against their
type, poor secondary school counseling, or an absence of
knowledge about and role modeling by type-representative
professionals? Although the authors focus on a
"horizontal" distribution of people to the six
environments, potential exists for the study of
"vertical" distribution within types. For
example, what factors might lead one to a major in dental
technology rather than pre-medicine, and are these
decisions "correct," or unfortunately influenced
by race, gender, or other ideally-irrelevant
characteristics?
These thoughts, and ones that other readers might have, are
not to suggest that Academic Disciplines is flawed
in its reach. To the contrary, it is an ambitious and
highly successful work. Rather, as with the articulation
of any good theory and its consideration in new domains,
more questions are raised than answered. Any number of
sound research agendas could be launched from this base,
and deserve to be.
A final word on the authors is in order. John C. Smart, as
noted above, is a professor of higher education at the
University of Memphis. Kenneth A. Feldman is a professor
of sociology at SUNY-Stony Brook. Corinna A. Ethington is
a professor of educational research, also at Memphis. The
strength of this collaboration is obvious in the extensive
consideration of existing literature, the broad and
ambitious reach of the project across disciplinary lines,
and the soundness of the methods of analysis through which
the data and assumptions are considered. The book deserves
to be warmly regarded in each of these specializations, and
as a source for those concerned about and willing to
rethink the fundamental assumptions of higher education and
the institutions that serve it.
About the Reviewer
Marc Cutright is communications director for the Center for Social
Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University. He is editor of
Chaos
Theory & Higher Education: Leadership, Planning, and Policy, to be
published later this year by Peter Lang Publishing.
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