LIS Learning Culture: Identifying Disaffected Students

Academic disciplines all have different teaching and learning cultures that reflect their histories, values and established methods. Through semi-structured interviews analyzed using grounded-theory methods, this study investigated the learning experience of students in Schools of Library and Information Science as it compared to their previous academic experience. The results showed that students with only a bachelor's degree experienced little difference beyond the size of the work load. Students with graduate education in a skill-based discipline or one with occupational implications experienced little difficulty with the culture. Students with previous graduate education in the humanities, however, found the LIS culture very different from their previous graduate work and that it differed greatly from their expectations of graduate education. Keywords: graduate education, culture of learning, LIS education, grounded theory, semi-structured survey "Library school was for me a tedious parade of busy work and ignorant, worthless professors," reported a former LIS student who holds an MA in English literature from a prestigious private university. Framework for the Study Why do some students enter LIS programs and thrive in the culture, while others hate and complain about their experience virtually every minute, and/or drop out of their LIS program? Can LIS educators identify, in advance, those students at risk of being disaffected about their LIS educational experience and initiate measures to diminish or prevent their estrangement? No single cause will explain every student's dissatisfaction, but, importantly, all LIS students come from academic cultures outside LIS. This grounded theory study seeks to ascertain whether the differences in academic cultures play a large enough role in creating at-risk students to make them a topic of further study. Cultural Differences among Disciplines Research from the final quarter of the twentieth century established that all academic disciplines have identifiable cultures (KoIb, 1981). Bailey (as cited in Becher, 1994, p. 152) defined "culture" as: "a set of mental constructs that may serve to guide or justify conduct between people, and to tell them how to use things ... it may also tell them how to get from what is to what should be; that is, in one of its aspects culture is a plan for coping with the world." Becher (1994, p. 154) went so far as to argue that "disciplinary groups can usefully be regarded as academic tribes, each with their own set of intellectual values and their own patch of cognitive territory." He supported this assertion by pointing out that "disciplinary cultures, in virtually all fields, transcend the institutional boundaries within any given system. In many, if not all, instances, they also span national boundaries . . . and often international . . ." (Becher, 1 994, p. 1 55). Thus we find the possibility and popularity of national and international meetings and research. KoIb (1981, p. 232-255) also asserted that different disciplines have strong boundaries which define membership, different perspectives and norms on the nature of truth and how to find it, different patterns on the use of power - all of which make sense in their disciplinary contexts. In addition, each discipline relies on its own style of learning which influences the "primary tasks, technologies and products, criteria for academic excellence and productivity, teaching methods research methods, and methods for recording and portraying knowledge." (KoIb, 1981, p. 237) Students learn to adapt to and adopt the norms of their disciplines' cultures. Individual personalities also play a role in how students take in information and process it. KoIb (1981, p. 245-246) observed that different disciplines both attract and then mold different cognitive styles; a student's disposition will draw him/her to a discipline and that discipline reinforces the disposition, i. …