Search

Undocumented college students in the United States encounter a number of structural barriers to postsecondary education success, including disparate in-state resident tuition (ISRT) policies across the country. Texas, the first state to establish ISRT benefits for undocumented college students, has been a site of tension respective to this issue over the last 20 years. In fact, there have been eight legislative attempts to repeal the state's affirmative ISRT policy. In order to investigate this ongoing ISRT debate in Texas, we used critical discourse analysis methods to analyze the implicit and explicit messages communicated in the policy and surrounding policy discourse. Our conceptual framework, grounded in three constructs of critical whiteness studies including ontological expansiveness, color evasiveness, and individualization, allowed us to uncover whiteness as a pernicious undergirding force within this policy discourse.

This study reports on a qualitative narrative, counterstory of six faculty and one administrator of color (Merriam in Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2009; Yosso in Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline. Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2006) teaching at a Predominately White Institution teacher education in a rural U. S. state. The study examined the experiences of how the racial hierarchy, the macro-level and the organizational-individual relations impacted diverse (i.e., Othered) faculty. Specifically, participants explained how unequal racial relations had significant professional and personal consequences. In reflecting on the findings, we theorize how future research on diversity-racial relations in teacher education programs may be enhanced by foregrounding insights from the literature on Whiteness Studies, Critical Race Theory, and examination of White organizational structures toward strengthening multiracial coalitions.

Objective: This article reports on a study of archival legal and administrative texts generated during desegregation litigation instituted during the 1970s to enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The specific focus of the research was on North Carolina and actions taken by the University of North Carolina and the state's Department of Community Colleges. Method: The research method guiding data collection and analysis was hermeneutics and narrative policy analysis. Results: This inquiry revealed the limited but significant role played by the state's community colleges. Contributions: These findings illuminate the hierarchy that organizes some state's public higher education systems and the power centers within them.

In this paper, we offer a philosophical argument explaining why and how community college leaders may support the adoption and implementation of campus climate action plans. Our argument is based on the community college philosophical commitment to service (to the community, the state, and the nation) and the challenges posed by climate change and global warming. We close with recommendations for research.

This qualitative research study investigated the development of heuristic knowledge and its role in the academic and social journeys of five Vietnamese American students enrolled at a community college located in the American Midwest. The participants were interviewed in depth to understand their "lived experiences" while attending the community college. Data were collected, analyzed, and interpreted using a narrative inquiry approach. The interpretation led to a composite image of the students' experiences expressed in the form of a virtual photo album. Research findings provided guidance for future research and advice for community college practitioners. (Contains 6 tables.)

In this article, we present a new critique of the Completion Agenda as inscribed in "Reclaiming the American dream," a policy document published in April 2012 by the American Association of Community Colleges. Our critique is grounded on the premise that community colleges should improve completion rates, but this should be motivated by a desire to empower students and prepare them for a richer life in an evolving democracy and not simply satisfy the national economic objectives commonly offered to justify the Completion Agenda. Accordingly, following our critique, we outline an alternative vision based on a text in the literature of democracy as problem solving, a body of work that remains largely unacknowledged in higher education research and scholarship. We specifically focus on Briggs (2008) who found that six different global communities were successful in addressing serious social and economic problems through an organic process grounded in a nontraditional view of democracy. Using Briggs' work as a model, we propose that community colleges adopt a new vision that prioritizes the empowerment of students and their communities.

This chapter explores the leadership qualities participants identified as pivotal to the development of civic engagement at a large, suburban community college.

Objective: The purpose of this article is to explain how central points developed in Dewey's 1916 "Democracy and Education" provide the rationale needed to adopt institutional and policy recommendations made by Grubb and Lazerson in their 2004 book, "The Education Gospel: The Economic Power of Schooling". Method: The central points of Grubb and Lazerson's work, and the policy agenda offered to guide reforms, are reviewed. Results: The authors describe how a Deweyan view of education and democracy may provide the motivation and guidance needed to move forward on the Grubb and Lazerson agenda to benefit community college vocational education. Contributions: The argument advanced in this article reveals that a meaningful reconstruction of community college vocational education will require implementation of institutional reforms and public policy reforms. This reconstruction will also require, however, a normative vision to motivate policy makers, educators, and citizens.

Cyberbullying has been identified by school leaders and researchers as one of the most serious adverse consequences of incorporating information technology into the classroom. This article examines the legal status of cyberbullying by conducting an analysis of selected federal appellate court opinions. This analysis identifies a set of legal considerations that school leaders must attend to in confronting cyberbullying in order to protect students, teachers, and the interests of the school district. The article concludes with recommendations to district and school leaders before and during investigations of off-campus cyberbullying.

This article proposes a new paradigm to understand recent government policies that pose new barriers to student participation and divert students out of public higher education. We explain how the classic diversion paradigm, exemplified by Clark (1960) and Brint and Karabel (1989), is unable to account for this new form of student diversion. We also show how Agamben's conceptualization of the "state of exception" and "the camp" offers a foundation for a new "abandonment paradigm" that explains the significance of policies diverting students out of public higher education and onto a threshold where their lives are increasingly uncertain and precarious.

This grounded theory study addressed the issue of how community college presidents foster active, broad-based participation in campus decision-making processes. This study was based on in-depth interviews with nationally recognized community college presidents selected on the basis of their work in implementing participative governance within their respective institutions. The findings of this study are presented according to the emergence of four axial categories, and a core category is described and explained. Participative leadership is highly interactive and dynamic. Perhaps most importantly, participative leadership is a developmental process for building environments for broad participation. The core category, Visioning Participative Environments, reveals the centrality of the visioning process throughout each sequence of the participative leadership process. This model identifies and explains key participative leadership practices that flow from the theoretical cornerstones. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article utilized a bounded qualitative meta-study framework to examine the 214 dissertations listed by title only in Volume 31 of the "Community College Journal of Research and Practice" ("CCJRP"). Complete abstracts for these dissertations from 2004-2005 were obtained via Proquest Digital Database. The following was the overarching research question for this study: What can we learn from the examination of these listed doctoral dissertations that focus on community and junior college issues? This study concludes by providing five major areas of recommendation that bridge the findings to practice and future research. The authors suggest that existing dissertations--as well as future dissertations--continue to be examined utilizing a similar multifocused framework as a way to improve the knowledge base, inform practice, and guide future research agendas for community and junior college key stakeholders. (Contains 2 tables.)

Community colleges have long been recognized as enrolling a disproportionate share of first-generation college students, low-income students, women, and students of color. Additionally, community colleges have significant enrollments of students who identify as immigrants; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); and disabled. Many of these students have been marginalized in previous educational settings because of their status and identity. Community college faculty and staff committed to the eradication of student marginalization may use a variety of contemporary strategies to address this form of oppression. The authors seek to complement these strategies by showing how the work of John Dewey may be used to justify the creation and development of democratic learning communities fundamentally opposed to student marginalization.

This article reports on a qualitative, interpretive case study examining how trustees, administrators, faculty members, and staff members at a rural community college understand their institution's accountability environment. Data analysis and interpretation established that participants conceptualized institutional accountability as dialogic, involving ongoing communication with state authorities, employers, students, high schools, and universities about the formal and informal expectations assigned to the college. In addition, participants' understandings of accountability were shaped by their specific roles and responsibilities within the institution. The study's findings suggest the need for further research on how local institutional contexts influence institutional responses to accountability expectations.

In a narrative inquiry, five educators who taught college in prison share stories about working in this non-traditional learning environment that is often dangerous and frustrating. From the tension between the prison's emphasis on social control and the educators' concern for democratic classrooms, three broad themes emerged: working in borderlands, negotiating power relations, and making personal transformations. Large intact segments from transcripts of participant interviews form a dramatic text that illuminates how a selected group of educators made meaning of their experience teaching college courses to incarcerated students. A comparative analysis presented in a one act play brings together the individual participant voices to tell a collective story, which has meaning in the context of a shared emotional experience. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

This article reports the findings of a phenomenological study that examined the lived experience of community college students enrolled in high-risk online courses (HRCs) at a community college in the American Southeast. HRCs were defined as college courses with withdrawal or failure rates of 30% or more. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 students enrolled in four different HRCs. Isolation, academic challenge, ownership, and acquiescence emerged as structural themes that framed the experience of participants. These structural themes intermingled in discrete ways that led to the survival or surrender of these HRC participants and formed the essence of the phenomenon that is referred to as delicate engagement, which speaks to the vulnerable threads of academic and social involvement that permeated the HRC student experience. (Contains 1 table.)

Institutional accountability programs may present ethical dilemmas for community college leaders. Some of these dilemmas may be resolved by relying on the authority of the traditional mission. However, in some instances, the mission may be inadequate to check this form of state encroachment. We propose that campus leaders review John Dewey's philosophy of education to gain insights into how their institutions might negotiate dilemmas not addressed by the traditional mission.

In this article we introduce and explain a funding framework for advancing an equity agenda at the community college. The need for the framework is premised on (a) Dowd's observation that the traditional community college commitment to student access no longer suffices as an adequate strategy to achieve greater equity in society and (b) the recognition that community colleges are becoming more entrepreneurial as a result of challenges posed by privatization, state performance accountability systems, and marketization. A new approach to advancing equity is needed in this environment. We propose a funding framework that reflects lessons learned from a review of funding systems used in English further education systems and community college systems in Colorado and California.

This qualitative study explored the Lived University Campus Experiences of Low Income Students Pursuing Baccalaureate Degrees with Private Foundation Scholarship Assistance. The findings emerged as the themes "Experiences of Affirmation, Cautious Engagement, Vulnerability, and Transformation." "Experiences of Affirmation" explained the positive words and acts that established and strengthened participants' confidence in their academic abilities. Supporting themes clarify the connection of affirmation to participants' commitment to pursue four-year degrees. "Cautious Engagement" described the guarded manner in which participants' embraced college and college choices, attitudes, and actions. Supporting themes connect their behavior to accomplishing their college goals. "Vulnerability" demonstrated participants' feelings of susceptibility to criticism and loss of opportunity and depth of feeling about succeeding. "Transformation" described how participants were changed by the lived experience of attending college through financial assistance from a private foundation. Findings were consistent with theories of student success and persistence.

In this article, the authors examine the new voucher program used to subsidize undergraduate education at Colorado community colleges and four-year institutions. The authors explain the voucher program and discuss the fiscal and policy conditions that led to its adoption. This baseline account of the voucher program and the underlying conditions leading to its enactment provides a foundation for further community college research concerning open access, the comprehensive mission, student participation, and organizational culture.

In the spring of 2002 we conducted a structure-focused case study at 4 North Carolina community colleges to understand how selected senior campus leaders assessed a new legislatively-mandated institutional-accountability program. Using confidential interviews and document analysis we collected, analyzed, and interpreted data that revealed clear differences in how leaders regarded the accountability program. These distinct, campus-specific perspectives are characterized as "bureaucratic meddling," "benign intrusion," "an opportunity to demonstrate accountability," and "the divided leaders." Despite these distinct perspectives, however, we also found 2 overarching themes that illuminated common reactions to the accountability program. First, leaders at 3 of the 4 institutions reported that performance ratings under the accountability program were instrumental in prompting changes in instructional programs or staffing. Second, faculty leaders at 3 institutions exhibited an apathy or unawareness of state indicators, even though some state funding was linked to measures regarding student performance.

Proposes a model for managing a community college's accountability environment and shows how it can be applied. Reports that the model is premised on the pluralistic perspective of accountability (Kearns), and uses Christensen's value network for building the community college model. (Contains 37 references.) (AUTH/NB)

Discusses articles on various underrepresented groups (lesbian, Hawaiian, etc.) in order to show that dominant culture privilege characterizes many aspects of the community college culture. Discusses themes such as assimilation, hierarchical comparisons, acculturative stress, and access vs. educational equity. Recommends that all groups in community colleges deserve recognition. (Contains 22 references.) (MZ)

Adjunct Faculty in Community Colleges: An Academic Administrator's Guide to Recruiting, Supporting, and Retaining Great Teachers Desna L. Wallin (Ed.). Anker Publishing: Bolton, MA. 2005, 227 pages. $39.95, Cloth, ISBN [...]

Abstract In June 2003 the United States Supreme Court resolved constitutional issues in Grutter v. Bollinger and ruled that the University of Michigan Law School could use affirmative action to [...]

Community Colleges as Cultural Texts: Qualitative Explorations of Organizational and Student Culture edited by Kathleen M. Shaw, James R. Valadez, and Robert A. Rhoads. State University of New York Press, [...]

The Community College in the Twenty-First Century: A Systems Approach by Michael Scott Cain. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland. 1999, 168 pages, $32.00, Cloth, ISBN 0-7618-1357-8. Reviewed by Clifford [...]

Promise and Dilemma: Perspectives on Racial Diversity and Higher Education by Eugene Y. Lowe. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 1999, 206 pages. $29.95, Cloth, ISBN 0-691-00489-7. In March 1996, the [...]