This study examined three questions about measures of accomplishments--notable attainments that have been publicly recognized: their pseudoipsativity, the correspondence between quantity and quality scores, and their dimensionality. Comparable samples of graduate students described their accomplishments on a questionnaire or judged the similarity…

This paper takes the position that "the general phenomenon of meta-disciplinarity should find a place in contemporary investigations into the organization and production of knowledge." In the meta-disciplinary triad of art, science, and the humanities, the humanities originated out of a distinction between the human and the divine. The history of…

This paper examines whether the social science-based typology of Yvonne Lincoln and Egon Guba (1994), in which social science scholars are divided into positivist, postpositivist, critical, and constructivist paradigms based on ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions in the discipline, can be adapted to the academic discipline…

This paper discusses the current division of knowledge at the college and university level, its historical roots, and the application of Actor Network Theory (ANT) to arrive at an explanation of the permanence of the current division of knowledge as well as what form a new division of knowledge might take. It finds fragmentation and disintegration…

Departments of speech communication need to strengthen their positions within their institutions now in order, not only to survive, but to contribute to the changes in higher education needed for the new millennium. To have the necessary strength, a department must be and be seen as high in quality, central to the mission of its institution, and…

This analysis of Ontario's returns to investment and implications for tuition fee policy updates a 1989 publication titled "Focus on Fees." The paper examines: data on public and private return on investment (ROI) from university education, pattern of ROI rates over time, and impact of tuition fee levels on estimated ROI for various…

Writing across the curriculum (WAC) will forever be caught in the following paradox: the rise of the research university has allowed for specialization that generates writing embedded in differentiated knowledge communities. However a WAC program may characterize the overarching importance of writing, its conception can never be the same as that…

A discussion of the theoretical and practical work of Peter Newmark on translation asserts that despite his claims to the contrary, Newmark does have a single, coherent theory of translation, that it is a wrong and didactically dangerous one, and that he nonetheless has made a substantive and welcome contribution to the development of translation…

The professionalization of composition studies in relation to other disciplines has created a drive for standardization (in response to the need to be distinctive from other fields), which has as a negative consequence the devaluing of practitioner knowledge. Further, the process of projecting value on the discipline involves the…

This paper analyzes what is involved in patterning part of an introduction to politics along the lines of physical sciences, and it presents contents and results of a course in which the author did this. (Author/ND)

An academic discipline is created and embodied in discourse, which functions on two dimensions: the global, disciplinary level suggested by T. Kuhn and others, and the local, institutional level, such as the workshop or laboratory where practitioners carry on the discipline's day-to-day business of research, teaching, and writing. The discipline…

Data are reported on the characteristics of private school teachers, including: gender, years of experience, teaching status, academic degrees, undergraduate majors, types and purposes of additional training, and teaching fields. The data are organized on the basis of selected school and teacher characteristics. The data are displayed in eight…

The extent to which instructional contact and student credit hours are related to a number of variables reflecting the equitability of faculty workload assignments was studied. Simultaneous multiple regression analyses were performed on the fall 1980 and fall 1981 course and personnel records of approximately 2,220 faculty at four selective public…

Retirement policies and possible effects on teacher shortages were examined. Information was obtained concerning: a 5-year summary of faculty retirements by age, the age distribution of each institution's full-time faculty by academic area, and changes over the past 5 years in personnel policies and procedures in response to anticipated faculty…

The evolution of social knowledge into the social science disciplines has stilted intellectual activity; moreover, social education perpetuates these disciplines without critically examining the bases of their existence. Although the most widely accepted criteria for determining a discipline is that it have a structure of basic principles and a…