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A Further Investigation of Major Field and Person-Environment Fit: Sociological Versus Psychological Interpretations of Holland's Theory There are different facts that influence the growth of achievement of college students during the period of their study. To evaluate the impact of various facts, Hollands theory is often used. In this work the congruence between the students' personalities and their major field environments is examined. It is known that personality dynamics and social-environmental forces are main forces on which students' change and stability during college depend. According to Holland's theory all college students can be referred to one of six personality types. These personal types take into account the difference in abilities, attitudes, and interests of the students.
Further the work gives several situations in which college students can be put. These situations can influence their development during their collegiate experience. There are three general propositions. Students can look for particular academic environments, taking into account their abilities, interests, and personality profiles. There is another variant: when students can occur in incongruence academic environments.
But in future these students are socialized by the environments; and their abilities, interests, and values of distinctive patterns can be reinforced and rewarded. But there is one more situation when student achievement depends directly from the congruence or fit between their dominant personality type and the academic environment. Holland's theory helps to choose "proper academic majors" and to understand better change and stability in students' abilities during their studying. The theory is based on psychological ground and helps to determine the greatest likelihood of success; that can be very important for those who teach students.
Different researches have been made to determine differential patterns of change and stability in students. The work shows the difference between the socialization and congruence propositions and provides different methods in studying the process. Most of all it analyzes the results received. It should be pointed that socialization and congruence propositions are quite different and cannot be regarded as alternative.
Thats why it is necessary to pay more attention to them as the main factors that define future student success. The socialization proposition states that the academic environment (it means departments students enter) determines students promoting of competencies and talents. It is evident that the socialization proposition is sociological oriented because it focuses on the collective effect. In the work there are evidences that show the effect of collective effort son socializing students. The role of faculty members is of greater importance than the personality types and initial abilities, and even irrelevant in the socialization proposition. The congruence propositions cover the situation from quite different side.
The work shows how congruence helps individual students to gain a greater likelihood of long-term stability, satisfaction, and success. According to this proposition, the student's own personality type and the congruence or fit between it are of primary importance. The student's own personality type determines an academic environment that will be chosen. It goes without saying that the both types of propositions are very important in the selection of educational settings. They help to choose the best variant that opens the greatest potential of students and help them to be satisfied, and successful. The individual and the environment approach towards the understanding of individual behavior in academic settings are essential basis for examining the best choice for each student.
The work helps to predict "personality dynamics" if a student is placed in different environment and evaluates different after-effects using various methods and results. Most of all it gives an insight of some discussions about the question: what kind of approach is of greater importance in predicting students potential. One of the branches of psychology is personality psychology. It studies personality and individual differences. John L. Holland is one of scientists who tried to construct a coherent picture of a person and his or her major psychological processes.
He examined personalities as objects that differ from each other and studied individual differences. But among other things, he took into consideration human nature and how all people are similar to one other. These different viewpoints are taken into account while studying personality. Scientists define personality as a person who possesses a dynamic and organized set of characteristics. These characteristics determine his or her cognition's, motivations, and behaviors, depending on various situations. In the work Academic Disciplines: Holland's Theory and the Study of College Students and Faculty written by Smart, Feldman, and Ethington, the authors support and develop Holland's person environment theory in higher education research.
The theory is mainly regarded as a theory of careers, but it is known that early Holland's researches were at the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and the American College Testing Program. Holland identified factors that would predict student success and retention. In the work Smart pointed that Holland's theory is "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). It is evident that counselors, advisors, and administrators should be aware of the way in which students, faculty, and the departments function. Holland's theory is the best way to make such findings.
Holland has operational ized his theory through inventories and other tools. These devices can improve the quality of matches between students and academic disciplines. But the authors emphasized that the findings are not equally strong for each of the four student or academic environments studied. Most of all, the results depended on 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). John L. Holland's model is commonly referred to as the Holland Codes.
He determines are six personality traits that help people to choose right career paths. His model is widely used. As it was pointed it is broke down into job environments: It is a circumflex model in a form of a hexagon. The six types in it are closely related. As usual the classification of persons and of environments is done with the help of the parallel typologies developed by Holland. The types are: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.
Realistic type of personality likes to work with hands, tools, machines, and things. It is a practical, mechanically inclined type. Investigative type of personality prefers to work with theory and information It has analytical, intellectual, and scientific abilities. Artistic type is creative and non-conforming. Personalities of this type like to be independent, and the way of their thoughts and actions are usually chaotic. Social type of personality is characterized as cooperative and supporting one.
Students of the type try to help others and can heal difficult situations. The type cooperates with the environment. Enterprising type likes to be dominating and leading. It is usually compete with the environments. The type has great abilities to persuade others. Conventional type of personality pays great attention to details.
It has ability to organize everything. But Holland agrees that each person may have 2 - 3 dominated types. Most of all, 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.
Various methods were used to determine how different types behave and progress in different environments. In 1986 and 1990 the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles provided the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). The surveys gathered information about the experiences students got during the period of their studying. The surveys showed how students had changed during the four years.
The surveys were based on two types of analysis: the earlier analysis and the present analysis. The main task of CIRP program was to make classification of academic majors and classification of personality types. In the earlier analysis pretest and posttest repeated measures were used. It helped to define "higher levels of achievement." The main task of these analyses was to follow change and stability in the interests and abilities of students; and find out the congruence between their personality type and their actual academic environment. Most of all, the analysis would show if the changes are similar for men and women and for primary and secondary freshmen. In the present analysis the situation was complicated because students with different personal types were placed in different environment: congruent and incongruent.
Having explored the patterns of change and stability of students' abilities and interests, it was determined the effects of a particular environment: if congruent and incongruent environments are comparable or not for different groups of students. The difference between two analyses is evident. In the earlier analysis students traits were associated with an environment (their personality types were congruent with it); in the later analysis students personality types were incongruent with an environment. Most of all, in our earlier study change or stability of students abilities and interests were determined by their dominant personality. In the present study change or stability in promotion of abilities and interests was examined. The same students were classified by the academic environments in which they were placed.
The surveys helped to make classification of academic majors and classification of personality types. With the purpose to classify academic majors, students were asked to determine the field they probably want to study. Later they were asked to point current or last field of study from academic majors. Academic majors were classified taking into account Hollands six academic environments. According to this classification, the Realistic and Conventional categories were excluded from the study.
The biggest group of academic majors was of students with Social type of personality; then Investigative, Enterprising and Artistic. With the purpose to determine each student's primary personality type, Hollands Code was used again. Students personality type was determined with the help of his or her responses to ability and interest scales. According to the studies, the largest group was of Investigative personality type; then Enterprising, Social, and Artistic. Having examined all the data, some results were reached. A personality dynamic is possible in a variant if a student whose personality type is congruent with an environment has bigger progress than students placed in an incongruent environment.
On the other hand, "socialization dynamic" occurs if students of a "wrong personality type" in an incongruent environment show changes similar to students of a "right personality type. " It should be emphasized that the surveys showed a socialization dynamic and a psychological dynamic at work. And the results were interesting. They showed that environment play the main role in a studying process and even can lead to opposite effect. The interests and abilities of students who were not placed in a "fitting" environment were at the same level or even decreased.
At the same time students who entered a "non fitting" environment showed increasing in the interests and abilities. It also should be pointed, that students in incongruent environment had a lower mean score in the beginning; and at the end they made parallel success in promoting their interests and abilities during their college years. The studies were discussed by many scientists from different points of view. First of all, there was some contradiction between the earlier study and the present study.
The discussions raised some questions. They were about the potential impacts of academic environments. First of all, it should be pointed how to determine the extant ion of academic environments success. Trying to socialize a disparate collection of students with different abilities and interests, to what measure the environment is effective. The next disputable question is about the effectiveness of the environment for students with different levels of abilities and interests. Is it the same to the students with lower levels of abilities and interests as those with higher levels?
The other discussions were about predictions that would follow the relative merits of a personality perspective and a socialization perspective. Holland's theory does not say anything about them because the theory can be implemented in general and does not follow individual effects. At the same time it is difficult to measure collective effects because individual students change and stability within the different environments is a part of the congruence assumption. Thats why it was unable to make even formal predictions about the possibility a personality perspective and a socialization perspective. The discussions were made about the limitations of the present study. It is evident that if some secondary analyses are made they will limit the scope of future research and analyses.
The present study was limited because primarily full-time students have been analyzing during four continuous years at the same college. The study did not include students who attend more than one college or part-time students, or those who studied for more than four years. At the same time the data taken from CIRP limited the way of measuring personality types, because abilities and interest scales should be constructed first, and after that it was possible to determine a student's dominant personality type. In spite of all disputable questions, the studies revealed the fact that that academic environments are of greater importance than it was considered. Academic environment does not only give subject-matter knowledge and content but can be regarded as "knowledge factories." The conclusion was based on Holland's theory and additional findings. According to Hollands theory, environments influence personal abilities, interests, attitudes, and values.
It is stated that different environments help to develop different competencies and achievements. With the help of different environment, people try their forces in different kinds of activities. People are rewarded revealing new alternative values and attitudes. It goes without saying that studding differences in the patterns of student change and stability during the period of their college experience is impossible without paying attention on academic disciplines and environments.
Smart and his colleagues make the point that higher education has never been able to obtain an effective way of categorizing the academic environments within an institution. Part of the reason for this book was to further the idea that Holland's theory of careers is applicable to the categorization of college environments. If carried to an extreme, an institution of higher education could elect to categorize its environments (colleges, departments, majors) by Holland codes, utilize the instruments developed by Holland with its faculty and students to better direct their adjustment within the institution, and train its counselors and advisors to use Holland's theory in counseling and advising. With this comprehensive program in place, an institution might have an effective and efficient way of organizing information about academic environments and advising students about major and occupational choices.
The program might also assure greater happiness of faculty and increase the likelihood of greater success of students after college. Bibliography: Feldman, K. A. , Smart, J. C. , & Ethington, C. A. (1999).
Major field and person-environment fit: Using Holland's theory to study change and stability of college students. Journal of Higher Education, 70, 642 -- 669.
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