Change Trendlines: Community Colleges-A Sector with a Clear Purpose. Change, 1990, 22 (May/June) pp. 23-26.Data from the 1989 national survey of the professoriate by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching revealed differences between the faculty members at the 1,300 two-year community, junior, and technical colleges and those at other institutions. The faculty members at two-year institutions overwhelmingly indicated that their interests lay in teaching and not in research, and agreed, almost unanimously, that teaching effectiveness should be the primary consideration for promotion. The faculty members at two-and fouryear institutions generally agreed on the importance of various curricular elements to an undergraduate education, although the two-year respondents were somewhat less likely to see "enhancing creative thinking" as very important, and slightly more likely to endorse "shaping student values." Slightly more of the two-year than of the four-year faculty members reported that they were more enthusiastic about their work than when they began their career (47 versus 43 percent) and slightly fewer viewed their job as the source of considerable strain (38 versus 46 percent). The faculty members at the two-year institutions and those at the liberal arts colleges were more likely to rate the quality of life and sense of community at their institution as good or excellent than were the faculty members at research, doctorate-granting, and comprehensive institutions. The two-year college faculty members viewed their institution as better managed and more supportive of academic freedom and affirmative action than did their four-year college counterparts. More than half of the two-year college faculty members and only 29 percent of the four-year college faculty members rated their institution as excellent in providing undergraduates with a general education.From the 1978 Ladd and Lipset Survey of the American Professoriate, data were obtained on all faculty members at four-year colleges and universities whose primary field of research, scholarship, or creative work was in one of the 35 subject areas categorized in the Biglan Model. The disciplines were grouped into the four Biglan categories and the colleges were grouped into two levels: research and doctorate-granting universities and comprehensive and liberal arts colleges. A 4 x 2 analysis of variance was used to assess the effects of the four categories of discipline and the two levels of institution on conformity to each of the four norms of science as described by Merton.The results indicated that normative beliefs did not vary by institutional type, but endorsement of universalism and organized skepticism varied by disciplinary group. Post hoc tests indicated that the faculty members in the hard-pure subject areas such as science and biological science conformed less to the norm of universalism than did those in the soft-pure subject areas such as humanities and social science. The faculty members in the hard-pure areas gave greater endors...

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun

What are students learning in university? Can this learning be measured? We do not at this time possess a conceptual framework for understanding what and how knowledge is acquired in different university disciplines. A framework for the acquisition of knowledge would have to account for the manner in which forms of knowledge differ. Disciplinars? differences could be expected to occur at four levels: in the nature of the concepts used; in the logical structure of the discipline; in the truth criteria used; and in the methods employed in the discipline. In this article, such a framework is tested on university courses representative of different disciplines. At the most basic level, characteristics of the most important concepts used in courses across disciplines are investigated. The characteristics include concept familiarity, generality and abstractness. At a second level, differences in the logical structure of disciplines are examined through analysis of the relationships between course concepts, the structure of propositions in the field, and organizing principles which play a major role in the discipline. The truth criteria used by various disciplines suggest more global differences which would affect the acquisition of knowledge. Finally, the methods considered important in different disciplines, and their effect on the development of students' intellectual skills, complete the portrayal of the parameters of knowledge and the university curriculum. Directions for future research are discussed.

Validation processes and truth criteria employed in a discipline define the discipline, govern knowledge production and dissemination in the discipline, and suggest ways of improving instruction.

No abstract