Five Themes Of Scholarship

By Author: Jackey
Total Articles: 54
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The five themes of scholarship that I identified in the journal are mission and purpose, treatment effect, human development, student learning, and integrative/meta-analytic. Although some themes have starting points and segments of time when the research dominated the journal, it has more often been the situation that these themes ebb and flow throughout its history. Scholarship in JCSD follows the most common form of knowledge creation, moving from broad general observations to Replica Cartier Santos increasing specialization as theories and research that are more general are applied to specific groups and situations to reveal knowledge that is more specialized. This scholarship builds on accepted knowledge in the field to support the creation of less well-developed areas of research. In doing so, it expands knowledge beyond established research themes to the associated complementary forms of scholarship.

Some of the earliest scholarship in JCSD focused on the mission and purpose of student affairs. Articles by Hopwood, Shafer, and Trueblood ...
... are examples of that scholarship. Concurrent with this theme, experimental designs showing a treatment effect were used to describe, establish, and quantify the contributions made by student affairs to higher education. Research focusing on the educational contributions of residence halls, student government, career services, student activities, and related student affairs programs were widely researched and published. Most of this research reported on how students benefited from their involvement with these programs and activities. Dependent measures included variables such as grade point average, retention, satisfaction, and self-reported gains on various instruments.

By the mid-to-late-1970s, articles focusing on the psychosocial and cognitive development of college students began to Replica Omega emerge. This scholarship strengthened throughout the 1980s and 1990s as student development became a dominant theme of student affairs work. Unified psychosocial theories were augmented by identity development theories that addressed the sequence of developmental issues encountered by various members of underrepresented student groups. In addition, student development research helped to launch research on the important developmental issues of first-year students.

The student learning imperative used student development language to support and broadened the role of student affairs and its connection to other areas of higher education. In 1996 (Blimling), the journal devoted a special issue to the student learning imperative and helped to introduce a research agenda focused on learning outcomes attributable to experiential learning provided by student affairs professionals independently and in collaboration with others, such as the instructional faculty. Integrative research has been the fifth dominant theme in student affairs scholarship published in the journal. These articles have included meta-analyses, narrative reviews of research, and articles that summarize large national studies with multiple outcomes.