The Structure of Professional Education in Departments of Political Science
In: PS: political science & politics, Band 4, Heft 4, S. 516-527
Abstract
The organization of graduate programs has received increasing attention lately within political science. Teaching techniques, course requirements, class size, student representation in departmental decision-making processes have all been Investigated. This paper examines another aspect of graduate education, the effect of departmental structure on the learning process. We do not deal with the substance of a political science education, but rather with various dimensions of political science departments as organizations. Our findings are based on a survey of fourteen political science departments that was conducted in the winter of 1970. Questionnaires were sent to faculty and to graduate students In the selected departments, and both sets of respondents were asked questions about their attitudes, preferences, perceptions of others, and their interaction patterns in the department.Our Interest is in departments and the Individual responses are used to define departmental variables. In this paper we examine different characteristics of political science departments, not characteristics of individual students or faculty. Although we get some clues as to what we might expect from organizational theory, our approach is frankly exploratory. First we draw on McQultty's elementary linkage analysis to identify basic distinctions among the departments in our study, and second we use rank order correlation techniques to explore how these and other dimensions go together.
Problem melden