Academic Disciplines: Holland's Theory and the Study of College Students and Faculty (review)

Smart, Feldman, and Ethington are on a mission to promote Holland's (1997) person-environment theory in higher education research, and this book provides ample support for their cause. While Holland's RIASEC theory is primarily recognized as a theory of careers, professionals in higher education know that Holland's early jobs involved research programs at the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (1957-1963) and the American College Testing Program (1964-1969). He sought to identify factors other than test scores that would predict student success and retention. This work eventually led to the development of the Self-Directed Search and a classification system of college and work environments.

The authors review prior research and report original research in this book. Since the mid-1970s, Smart and his colleagues have used Holland's theory to study the behavior of students and faculty in higher education. This has led to the publication of more than 20 journal articles. In this book, the authors studied a sample of 2,755 faculty members from 4-year institutions, and 2,309 undergraduate students who entered a 4-year university in 1986 and remained at that institution to obtain their degree in 1990. Finding a lack of representation of Realistic and Conventional environments and choices of major in the student sample, the authors report findings only for the Investigative, Artistic, Social, and Enterprising types in Holland's theory.

Smart et al. focus on Holland's theory as "the guiding framework to further our understanding of how academic disciplines influence the professional lives of college faculty and the educational lives of college students" (p. x). They examined research related to three of Holland's assumptions. The first assumption is labeled the self-selection assumption: students and faculty choose academic environments compatible with their personality types. The authors characterize the second assumption as the socialization assumption: faculty in different environments reinforce and reward different patterns of thought and action, and longitudinal patterns of change in college students are dependent upon their academic environments. Finally, the third assumption is the congruence assumption: students and faculty flourish in environments that are congruent with their dominant personality types.

The overall findings reported in this book are supportive of the three assumptions. The authors note that the findings are not equally strong for each of the four student or academic environments studied. Moreover, the results vary according to gender or whether students chose to enter a major congruent with their Holland code initially upon entering college (primary recruit) or switched later after initially entering a major that was incongruent with their Holland code (secondary recruits). Overall, the findings based on the three assumptions were strongest for the Investigative and Enterprising types and environments. The authors provide explanations for why the findings for Artistic and Social findings were not as robust.

This book is a research publication aimed primarily at other researchers, but of potential interest to practitioners. It includes 224 references, including 17 by the first author. The narrative is supported by 30 tables, 15 figures, and 15 appendices, which provide rich details about the research findings for readers interested in such matters. In spite of the research focus, we believe this book has important implications for academic advisement and career/major counseling in higher education. If counselors, advisors, and administrators are more aware of the way in which students, faculty, and the departments on their campuses function in reference to Holland's theory, they may find use for Holland-based materials in service delivery. Holland has operationalized his theory through inventories (e.g., Self-Directed Search, Vocational Preference Inventory, Position Classification Inventory, Environmental Identity Scale) and other tools (e.g., Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes, Educational Opportunities Finder). These devices can improve...