THE JOURNAL of COOPERATIVE EDUCATION WINTER 1997 THEMATIC ISSUE Research And Cooperative Education Volume XXXII Number 2 COOPERATIVE ^EDUCATION k ASSOCIATION ^INC. The JOURNAL of COOPERATIVE EDUCATION Volume XXXII, Number 2 EDITOR James W. Wilson Peterborough, New Hampshire EDITORIAL BOARD Kathleen Finn Northeastern University H. Sanford Gum San Mateo College Ann E. Keeling University of Cincinnati E. Daniel McKenna Concordia College Ellen Weaver Paquette Rhode Island College Christopher G. Pratt Seton Hall University Frances Ricks University of Victoria Patricia M. Rowe University of Waterloo William Stull Utah State University James W. Varty Macomb Community College Leonard J. Watts Antioch University William Weston North Carolina State University CONSULTING EDITOR Sheri Dressier University of Central Florida Copyright® 1997 Cooperative Education Association, Inc. All rights reserved 1996-97 Officers of the Cooperative Education Association, Inc. President - Jean Egan, Northeastern University Executive V.P., President Elect - Sheri Dressier, University of Central Florida Immediate Past President - David Cessna, University of Northern Colorado Vice President, Finance - William Weston, North Carolina State University Vice President, Employer Affairs - Dawn Brogan, Walt Disney World Co. Vice President, Government Relations - Brenda Kueger-Wilson, University of Cincinnati Vice President, Marketing & Public Relations - Douglas Q. Davis, Northern Illinois University Vice President, Programs/Professional Development - Richard Pullin, University of Waterloo (retired) Vice President, Research & Information - Ellen Weaver-Paquette, Rhode Island College Regional Vice Presidents Region 1, Jeanette Grill, Long Island University Region 2, Albert Foderaro, County College of Morris Region 3, Luther Epting, Mississippi State University Region 4, Karen Eagles, Southwest Missouri State University Region 5, Patti Gunnels, EDS Corporation Region 6, Carl Bossieux, Bureau of Reclamation Region 7, A1 Barela, IBM Region 8, Mark Kilian, AT&T Corporate Headquarters Executive Director Dawn E. Pettit Legal Counsel Jennifer Sugiyama, University of California at Berkeley Journal of Cooperative Education James W. Wilson, Editor SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS Manuscripts must be double-spaced and subnutted in triplicate, the original included, to the Editor, Journal of Cooperative Education, 1 Sand Hill Road #12, Peterborough, NH 03458. The guidelines for authors, which appear elsewhere in the Jounial, should be carefully followed. The Journal of Cooperative Education is published three times a year by the Cooperative Education Association, Inc. The Journal is available through membership in CEA, Inc., or at a subscription rate of $30.00 per year ($45.00 outside U.S. and Canada). Information about CEA, Inc., orders for the Journal, and address changes should be directed to the Cooperative Education Association, Inc., 8640 Guilford Road, Suite 215, Columbia, MD 21046. The Journal of Cooperative Education CONTENTS Volume XXXII, Number 2, Winter 1997 GUEST EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 4 William A. Stull and Kenneth R. Bartkus Some Thoughts about Research in Cooperative Education 7 Kenneth R. Bartkus William A. Stull On the Questions Asked about Cooperative Education 17 James W. Wilson An Investigation to Identify Needed Research 30 in Cooperative Education William A. Stull Donna Crow Lori A. Braunstein The Spaces Between: 36 Toward a New Paradigm for Cooperative Education Kathleen L. Finn I'm Not a Researcher but... 46 Frances Ricks Joan Mark What We Know about Co-op Employers' Perceptions of 55 Cooperative Education: A Synthesis of Research in the United States and Canada Judy Hurd Martin Hendy Crystallization and Congruence: Implications of 63 Cooperative Education Experiences upon the Career Development Process Ellen Weaver-Paquette Investigating the Educational Benefits of Cooperative Education: 70 A Longitudinal Study Geraldine Van Gyn James Cutt Mark Loken Frances Ricks It's 2010: Do You Know Who and Where Your Students Are? 86 Philip D. Gardner HOW TO OBTAIN REPRINTS AND BACK ISSUES 104 GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS 105 GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWERS OF LITERATURE 108 INTRODUCTION In Spring, 1996, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cooperative Educa¬ tion met at the Annual Conference in Toronto to decide, among other things, the topic for the next thematic issue of the Journal. It was suggested by members of the Editorial Board that it would be timely to dedicate the next thematic issue to the topic of research in cooperative education. The goal of this issue would be to summarize where we are with research in cooperative education and to make recommendations about where we need to go. Since research is considered the cornerstone of any discipline or professional practice-activity, it was hoped that this issue would estab¬ lish a base for identifying what we know about the practice of cooperative education, as well as what we need to know to move the field ahead. Although research in higher education cooperative education has been somewhat limited since its inception in the early 1900's, it has been grow¬ ing in importance over the last 30 years. Cooperative education is now at a pivotal point in its development and meaningful research is critical to the further development of the field. The nine articles included in this thematic issue are authored by indi¬ viduals whose names will undoubtedly be recognized as frequent con¬ tributors to the Journal. Most of these individuals have been involved in research in cooperative education over the years. Another goal of this the¬ matic issue is to promote the idea for a broader involvement of more people, especially practitioners, in research in cooperative education. We need to expand the depth and breadth of research in our field and in order to do this we need to increase the critical mass of researchers in the field. In the first article appearing in this thematic issue. Guest Editors Bill Stull and Ken Bartkus raise two critical questions. First, can cooperative education become more research oriented? If so, what can the profession do to make this happen? This article reviews the status of reseaich in coop¬ erative education and identifies three major issues that impact on research in the field. The issues identified include: the "dissemination issue," the "graduate program issue," and the "co-op practitioner issue." Addition¬ ally, the authors of this article provide many suggestions, which, if imple¬ mented by professionals in cooperative education, will enrich and enhance the research practices of cooperative education. In the second article, "On the Question Asked About Cooperative Education?", James W. Wilson returns to the question posed by Charles F. Kettering in 1957: "If we are going to proselytize cooperative education as a means for colleges and universities to be more effective, should we not first find out if it has educational merit?" Based on a review of articles written for the Journal of Cooperative Education during the previous ten years (1986-1996), Wilson found positive, but mixed results, that coopera¬ tive education has educative value. Wilson contends that we should now 4 Feature INTRODUCTION change the nature of our research question from "Does co-op have merit?" to "How can we increase the likelihood of co-op having merit?" Finally, Wilson discusses an idea repeated in several articles in this issue: the need for practitioners and researchers to team up to share scarce resources, time, research skills, and motivation. Stull, Crow, and Braunstein, in the third article entitled "An Investi¬ gation to Identify Needed Research in Cooperative Education," report on a small national study completed in 1996 at Utah State University designed to identify and evaluate possible research topics or areas of needed research in higher education cooperative education programs. This study identified 22 research topics and the priority of these topics from a sample of 59 coop administrators and members of the 1995-96 CEA Research Committee. In the fourth article, Kathleen Finn suggests a new paradigm for cooperative education. In "The Spaces Between," Finn describes at length different ways of knowing. All the different ways of knowing have one common thread that runs through them; the need for the cooperative edu¬ cation practitioner to transfer what is known personally into collective knowledge available for the entire co-op community. Finn then proposes that the 21st Century would be a good time to move cooperative educa¬ tion from an educational strategy to an education discipline. How many times have you heard a co-op practitioner say, "Tm Not a Researcher, but.. ." Francis Ricks and Joan Mark, in the fifth article, pro¬ pose that many co-op practitioners are already researchers. Ricks and Mark further propose that we need to stop asking the question, "Can/should we do research?" and begin asking the question, "What is/should be the nature of cooperative education research and are we asking the right questions?" This article is a must read for all co-op prac¬ titioners who are still questioning their research abilities. In the sixth article, Judy Hurd and Martin Hendy provide a synthesis of U.S. and Canadian cooperative education research in "What We Know About Co-op Employers' Perceptions of Cooperative Education." This review of the literature found that research on employers is least well rep¬ resented and appears to be dated with most of the research on employer's perceptions conducted more than ten years ago. The authors report on more recent Canadian studies making a case for replicating these studies in the more diverse U.S., and end their article by posing several excellent areas for research. In the seventh article, "Crystallization and Congruence: A Selected Study of the Implications of Cooperative Education Experiences Upon the 5 JOURNAL OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION Volume XXXIl Number 2 Career Development Process," Ellen Weaver Paquette, points out that recent research into the contributions of cooperative education experi¬ ences to the career development of college students are mixed, at best. Most of these studies have been conducted with the traditional aged col¬ lege student, and, as Paquette correctly points out, non traditional aged students now comprise a large percentage of the student population. Paquette contends that career development is no longer a stable, pre¬ dictable process, and that research, like career development, must prepare for the changes in the workplace. The eighth article in this issue, "Investigating the Educational Bene¬ fits of Cooperative Education: A Longitudinal Study" by Geraldine Van Gyn, et al., is a report on a study designed to find out whether participa¬ tion in a co-op program made any difference to the academic progress of the students. Significant but small differences, were found between coop¬ erative and non cooperative students, yet much more qualitative and quantitative research is needed to determine with a high degree of confi¬ dence that cooperative education is a more effective educational model than the regular program. This article provides an excellent review of the literature dealing with cooperative education and learning theory. In the last article, Phil Gardner pulled out his crystal ball to give us a look into the future. In "It's 2010: Do You Know Who and Where Your Stu¬ dents Are?," readers are asked to follow three first graders through their educational process. While many of Gardner's predictions will catch the readers' eye, one may really challenge you: "If higher education falters in meeting the challenges, other groups such as Microsoft with its aggressive partnerships to provide education, Disney with its university, and AT&T, which has the capability to develop multimedia educational offerings, are all poised to step forward to provide a just-in-time, customized, quality product at a cost lower than residential options." Gardner suggests that education will probably remain a mainstay in our society, but that we need to be prepared to change our delivery systems, proactively rather than reactively. Even if you do not agree with all of Gardner's predictions, this article will give you a lot to think about. Guest Editors Dr. William A. Stull, Professor Utah State University Dr. Kenneth R. Bartkus, Associate Professor, Utah State University 6 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT RESEARCH IN COOPERATIVE EDUCATION KENNETH R. BARTKUS WILLIAM A. STULL Utah State University Logan, Utah Recently a group of experienced cooperative education profes¬ sionals, attending a professional conference in Denver, Colorado (October 1996), was asked to describe the status of research in coopera¬ tive education. Words such as "sketchy," "sparse," "limited," "spotty," and "uncertain" were common adjectives used by some members of this group. While such responses are disconcerting, they are not entirely unexpected. For example, Wilson (1988) suggested that research in cooperative education "has fallen short of the ideal of scientific inquiry to illuminate relationships, predict effects, explain findings in light of existing theory, or contribute to theory development." (p. 83) More recently, Ricks et al. (1990) maintained that "very little theory has been developed and no fine-tuning has resulted from cooperative education research." (p. 11) Loken (1996), a co-op research team member at the University of Victoria, has been critical of research done to date in coop¬ erative education describing much of the research as "haphazard." He argues further that, "there is not a consistent, systematic effort in place to raise questions and seek answers in the way we see it for the disci¬ plines or other fields of study." To be fair, it should be noted that such reactions or criticisms of research in co-op education are only valid in comparison to some stated benchmark. For example, one could describe research in cooperative education as "inadequate" if the comparison were made against one of the more traditional academic disciplines such as chemistry or psychology. Alternatively, if a comparison were to be made against similar non academic activities (e.g., career services, financial aid, student advisement, etc.) one could conclude that the quantity and quality of research in cooperative education is quite good. Whichever comparison is made, the critical question is: should coop¬ erative education professionals strive to become more research oriented? The answer from leading authorities within the field is in the affirmative and for similar reasons (e.g., Wilson, 1988; Weaver, 1993; Ryder, 1987; Ricks et al. 1990; Loken, 1996). Ricks, et al. (1990) imply that the development of a scientific approach to research will allow cooperative education to take 7 JOURNAL OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION Volume XXXII Number 2 its place in the mainstream of higher education. Weaver (1993) claims that the "identity of co-op as an academic program must be reinforced" (p. 6) and that the mechanism for reinforcement is research: "To be credible, cooperative education must be able to substantiate claims that cooperative education practice is good educational practice and be able to relate cooperative education practice to the theoretical framework of education." (p. 10). In sum, there appears to be a contingent of cooperative education professionals and scholars who genuinely believe that the field of cooper¬ ative education needs to develop a more systematic approach to research. Given the above, the purpose of this paper is to propose logical answers to the following questions: can cooperative education become more research-oriented and, if so, what activities can be undertaken to achieve this objective? In simple response to the first question, we firmly believe that cooperative education can and must become more research-oriented despite some critical challenges. As such, we will focus the remainder of this paper on identifying strategies to accomplish this objective. We begin by reviewing the status of cooperative education research. This is followed by a series of analytical discussions on issues related to the further evolution of cooperative education research. We conclude by presenting a set of suggestions for enhancing research in cooperative education at both the micro and macro levels. Status of Research Nearly a decade ago, Wilson (1988) wrote an article in the Journal of Cooperative Education entitled "Research in Cooperative Education." In that article, he suggested that there had been much more research completed in the cooperative field than one might imagine. Specifically, he estimated that there had been more than 200 research projects completed in the prior 25 years and that 113 research articles had appeared in the Journal of Cooperative Education during that time. An update of the Wilson information reveals that since 1988, 50 additional research- oriented articles have appeared in the Journal. Heller (1989) completed a content analysis of the Journal from 1964-69 and from 1981-86 where she summarized by category the distribution of articles into eight categories, including research. For the 1964-69 period she identified 15 (28% of all arti¬ cles) research articles and for the 1981-86 she identified 22 (18%) research articles. Although Heller only examined a ten-year period, her analysis shows a decrease in published research when comparing the more recent block with the earlier block. 8