Points of departure academic disciplines overlaps, boundaries and specialisms aspects of community life patterns of communication academic careers the wider context implications for theory and practice. Appendix: research issues.

Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines

Multidimensional scaling was performed on scholars' judgments about the similarities of the subject matter of different academic areas. One hundred sixty-eight scholars at the University of Illinois made judgments about 36 areas, and 54 scholars at a small western college judged similarities among 30 areas. The method of sorting (Miller, 1969) was used in collecting data. Three dimensions were common to the solutions of both samples: (a) existence of a paradigm, (b) concern with application, and (c) concern with life systems. It appears that these dimensions are general to the subject matter of most academic institutions.

The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED338629.pdf

Students' evaluations of University teaching: Research findings, methodological issues, and directions for future research

The long anticipated retirement of significant numbers of senior faculty members is occurring at a time when societal expectations of academic institutions are expanding. Parents, employers, and legislators are interested in the quality of teaching provided by colleges and universities. Learning outcomes are emphasized, including traditional subject matter expertise and skills as well as abilities to use technology effectively, integrate and apply knowledge, and solve open-ended problems. Legislators and community leaders call for greater attention by faculty members to apply knowledge to solve societal problems. These same constituencies expect university research to aid local and regional economic development. All of these expectations take place for the most part within tight financial constraints. Without doubt, the individuals replacing retiring faculty members must demonstrate a wider array of talents than their predecessors, as well as higher levels of productivity (Fairweather, 1996; Massy & Wilger, 1995). In this context, the experiences of new faculty (Boice, 1992; Sorcinelli & Austin, 1992; Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000) are characterized by stress, pressure, and uncertainty. Institutional leaders who hire new PhD graduates for faculty positions, analysts of higher education, and potential faculty members, including graduate students, raise questions about the appropriateness of graduate program preparation for the changing workplace contexts that the next generation of faculty will face. My thesis is that the socialization process in graduate school must change substantially for new faculty members to work effectively in the ever changing world of higher education. Assessing the quality of the PhD experience as preparation for the professoriate is complex. Many PhDs will work outside of academe instead of becoming professors. Moreover, much of the structure of graduate programs serves as much to make the institutions work effectively as to prepare graduate students for future professional roles. Graduate students serving as teaching assistants provide much of the undergraduate instruction at the typical large university. The research mission of the American university depends in part upon the work of graduate students who serve as research assistants for professors. Although teaching and research responsibilities surely can provide training opportunities for the future faculty, these assistantship roles sometimes are structured more to serve institutional or faculty needs than to ensure a high quality learning experience for graduate students. A graduate student teaching Freshman English, for example, might already have taught the class several times and could benefit from a different teaching experience. This article examines doctoral education as socialization for the professoriate. It addresses the question of whether or not the graduate school preparation process is adequate and appropriate given the academic workplace these scholars will enter. In the first section I discuss key points from the literature on preparation for the faculty career, arguing that the doctoral experience is the first stage of the academic career. In the second section, I examine the workplace context into which PhD graduates will move for employment. The argument here is that the academic workplace is significantly different from that which has characterized higher education in the past. In the third section I analyze graduate education as experienced by graduate students. I use data from a four-year qualitative, longitudinal study that examined the graduate school experience of a group of individuals preparing to be faculty members. In the fourth section I compare key findings from this qualitative study with findings from othe r recent quantitative studies of PhD students to identify discrepancies between the academic workplace context into which new faculty will be hired and the graduate school socialization process. …

http://www.csub.edu/~isumaya/GST%20305/Austin2002.pdf

Preparing the Next Generation of Faculty: Graduate School as Socialization to the Academic Career

Performance indicators (PIs) in higher education have focused chiefly on research outputs. They have largely ignored the teaching function of universities and colleges. This article outlines the development of a student evaluation instrument designed to measure the teaching performance of academic organisational units. The theory of teaching and learning that underlies the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is described. The instrument's statistical qualities and its ability to discriminate intelligibly between different courses are discussed in the context of results from national trials in Australian higher education. The principal conclusion reached is that the CEQ offers a reliable, verifiable and useful means of determining the perceived teaching quality of academic units in systems of higher education that are based on British models. Several technical and political issues remain unresolved in its application as a PI.

A performance indicator of teaching quality in higher education: The Course Experience Questionnaire

The social structure and output of scholars at the University of Illinois are examined in terms of the characteristics of their academic subject matter. On the basis of an earlier multidimensional analysis (Biglan, 1973) academic areas were clustered according to their (a) concern with a single paradigm (hard vs. soft), (b) concern with application (pure vs. applied), and (c) concern with life systems (life system vs. nonlife system). Depending on the characteristics of their area, scholars differed in (a) the degree to which they were socially connected to others, (6) their commitment to teaching, research, and service, (c) the number of journal articles, monographs, and technical reports that they published, and (d) the number of dissertations that they sponsored.

Anthony Biglan

Papers

The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas.

Relationships between subject matter characteristics and the structure and output of university departments.

Measurement of the Distribution of Potential Influence and Participation in Groups and Organizations.