Identifying academic subcultures within higher education research: an examination of scholars' careers through author cocitation

Sociologists ask a myriad of questions about their cultural environment, the relationships which are formed within it, and the social products of human interaction. In recent decades, sociologists have begun to ask these questions of the scientific research community. They have been interested in identifying the social and intellectual connections which bring together scholars and their ideas, forming subcultures within academic disciplines. The present study, which follows this line of sociological inquiry, employs author cocitation analysis to identify the distinct subcultures which characterize the field of higher education research. The cocitation patterns among the twenty-one most highly cited researchers in the field are examined through multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and an analysis of the authors’ vitae which reveals the cognitive and social contexts of the authors’ citation careers. A unique temporal factor is introduced, dividing the scholars’ Careers into time periods based on the dates of their cited articles, in order to evaluate the extent to which author's cognitive interests and relationships change over time.

The statistical analyses reveal that three dimensions and five clusters best characterize the author cocitation data. As a result of these quantitative analyses, and the more subjective analysis of the authors’ vitae, five subcultures are identified within the field of higher education research: Organizational Structure and Leadership in Academia, Impact of College Environment on Student Outcomes, Material and Nonmaterial Culture of Academia, Student Perceptions and Effective Teaching, and Hierarchy and Inequality in Education. The temporal analysis reveals that six of the authors move from one subculture to another at some point during their careers; these subcultural shifts are explained through examination of the authors’ changing research foci and career developments. The subcultures are compared on characteristics such as cluster stability, and the length and extent of influence of the subcultures on the larger culture of higher education. The unique contributions and the methodological limitations of this study are discussed, as are suggestions for further analysis of higher education research. Finally, the present methodology is reviewed in relation to its applicability to the exploration of other academic cultures, using several areas within sociology as illustrations.