Disciplines in their organisational context - Mapping Australian faculty structures to ASCED and ANZSRC fields of education and research

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mary Man

Investigates how Australian universities’ faculty organisational structures correspond to national academic discipline classifications. The study maps faculty units to the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED) and to research fields in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC). Findings indicate a fair alignment overall, with noticeable variation between sampled universities. Second-level units align slightly more with ASCED than ANZSRC, and non-alignment often reflects differences in how broad disciplinary areas are divided and combined.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Literature review

A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W Disciplines in their organisational context Mapping Australian faculty structures to the ASCED and ANZSRC fields of education and research Philip Hider & Mary Coe Charles Sturt University In this study, we investigated the extent to which the national classifications of disciplines reflect the organisational structures of Australia’s universities. The names of faculty units often universities were mapped onto the fields of education set out in the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED) as well as the fields of research in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC). The results show a fair degree of alignment between the faculty structures and both classification schemes, but also reveal much variation in the degree of alignment amongst the universities sampled. Schools and other second-level units are slightly more aligned to ASCED than to ANZSRC. Several units covering more specific fields are not represented in the current ASCED and ANZSRC classifications, though most non-alignment is due to divergent ways of dividing and compounding broader disciplinary areas. The degree of alignment to the research classification has changed little, overall, since the time of ANZSRC’s predecessor, the Australian Standard Research Classification. Keywords: disciplines, classification, ASCED, ANZSRC, organisational structures Introduction The idea of the academic discipline is multifaceted. As Sugimoto and Weingart (2015) observe, conceptualisationsof discipline encompass both ‘cognitive’ views, in which disciplines are defined as particular bodies of content, with certain associated epistemologies, and ‘social’ or ‘institutional’views, in which disciplines are considered to be the product of particular social structures, most notably the faculty structures of universities, developed over the past one anda half centuries. On the one hand, the similarity of faculty structures amongst universities, even across countries, points to intrinsic factors contributing to the development of disciplines; on the other, many academics would probably agree that university departments are not always established solely to reflect a nascent theoretical position or the growing popularity of a particular methodology and the way university faculty are departmentalised organisationally is bound to influence, to some extent, academic practices and, ultimately, how disciplines are conceptualised. The institutional influence on the way academic disciplines are defined, even outside of particular institutions, is exemplified by the two standards covering academic disciplines developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics: the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED)(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001) and the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Both include a disciplinary classification scheme that is used to report on the teaching (in the case ofASCED) and research (in the case of ANZSRC) carried out in Australian universities, and both schemes have been developed with considerable input from the universities themselves, as well as from individuals and groups employed in these universities. With the various intrinsic and extrinsic factors at play, it can be assumed that disciplines are not static and that disciplinary 10 Disciplines in their organisational context Philip Hider & Mary Coe vol. 62, no. 1, 2020 A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W classifications will continue to change over time. It can also be assumed that there will continue to be a fair amount of alignment, but by no means perfect alignment, between faculty structures and external disciplinary classifications such as ASCED and ANZSRC. What cannot be assumed, however, is that the amount of alignment between faculty structures and external classifications w

FAQs

What does the study examine regarding Australian universities?

The study examines the extent to which national classifications of disciplines reflect the organisational structures of Australia’s universities.

Which classification systems are compared in the mapping?

Faculty units are mapped onto education fields in ASCED and research fields in ANZSRC.

What do the results suggest about alignment?

Results show a fair degree of alignment between faculty structures and both schemes, but significant variation exists among universities, and second-level units align slightly more with ASCED than ANZSRC.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mary Man