Teaching & Learning

Image
What happens in the classroom is central to a student’s college experience. CCRC investigates how community colleges can support instructors’ professional development and create more enriching learning environments for students.

Fast Facts

01
Effective instruction is central to a range of ongoing reform efforts in community colleges, including addressing persistent student equity gaps. But professional development is often limited.
02
In community colleges, more than two thirds of instructional faculty are employed part-time, and more than half of course sections are taught by part-time faculty.
03
Just under 60% of public two-year college students take online courses, compared with 36% before the COVID-19 pandemic.
04
National data sources do not offer estimates of the number of English learners attending two-year colleges, but enrollment trends suggest the number is growing.

Why We Study Teaching and Learning

Community colleges are teaching institutions. Across CCRC projects, researchers are seeking to better understand what effective teaching looks like and to give instructors the tools to strengthen their teaching. CCRC is investigating how better teaching can be a critical component of broader reforms to developmental education, workforce programs, online courses, and whole college reforms such as guided pathways.

One strand of the research examines the programs teaching English as a second language (ESL) in community colleges and the broad diversity of their students. With long course sequences and complicated performance requirements, ESL programs are a potential next frontier for reform. CCRC’s research also looks at ways to diversify STEM programs and improve student outcomes in these in-demand fields and investigates ways to strengthen STEM, humanities, and other academic programs so they lead to transfer to bachelor’s programs and improved economic outcomes for students. In collaboration with SRI Education, CCRC is looking at how teachers can help students develop skills such as planning, reflection, and metacognition that are essential to effective learning.

“Teaching is so complex. It’s an art and it involves human relationships, but there are scientific elements to it as well. I’m really in awe of community college educators and their commitment to students.”

Susan Bickerstaff
CCRC Senior Research Associate

Findings From CCRC Projects on Teaching and Learning

Faculty Support: Adjunct Instructors

Adjunct instructors often work part-time on term-by-term contracts, but they are a majority of the teaching workforce at community colleges. While the teaching quality of adjunct faculty has often been called into question, CCRC research suggests they do not provide lower quality instruction than their full-time peers. However, inadequate institutional support for adjunct faculty members may negatively affect student persistence.

Image
Image

Professional Development: Lesson Study

Lesson Study is a structured, collaborative professional development intervention in which instructors work together to closely examine their teaching and develop lessons through cycles of planning, teaching, and revision. CCRC researchers found that Lesson Study is a promising professional development approach that has helped faculty adopt new teaching practices. However, launching and sustaining the initiative is time intensive and may require cultural shifts in professional learning norms.

Developmental Teaching: CUNY Start

CUNY Start is a prematriculation program designed to help City University of New York students with substantial basic skill needs succeed in college. It provides intensive instruction in reading, writing, and math, as well as wraparound supports by advisors and tutors, and a weekly seminar that addresses college success skills. CUNY Start’s professional development model, which supports postsecondary instructors in enacting a student-centered, conceptually oriented instructional approach, contains broader lessons for improving teaching in higher education.

Image
Image

Student Support: Caring Campus

Caring Campus is an initiative designed to increase students’ sense of belonging in college by cultivating specific student-centered actions among faculty and staff. Faculty implement behaviors that include using students’ names and meeting with students one-on-one early in each term. A CCRC study found that Caring Campus has the potential to provide meaningful support to students who may need help and encouragement to persist in college.

Findings From CCRC Projects on Teaching and Learning

Faculty Support: Adjunct Instructors

Adjunct instructors often work part-time on term-by-term contracts, but they are a majority of the teaching workforce at community colleges. While the teaching quality of adjunct faculty has often been called into question, CCRC research suggests they do not provide lower quality instruction than their full-time peers. However, inadequate institutional support for adjunct faculty members may negatively affect student persistence.

Image

Professional Development: Lesson Study

Lesson Study is a structured, collaborative professional development intervention in which instructors work together to closely examine their teaching and develop lessons through cycles of planning, teaching, and revision. CCRC researchers found that Lesson Study is a promising professional development approach that has helped faculty adopt new teaching practices. However, launching and sustaining the initiative is time intensive and may require cultural shifts in professional learning norms.

Image

Developmental Teaching: CUNY Start

CUNY Start is a prematriculation program designed to help City University of New York students with substantial basic skill needs succeed in college. It provides intensive instruction in reading, writing, and math, as well as wraparound supports by advisors and tutors, and a weekly seminar that addresses college success skills. CUNY Start’s professional development model, which supports postsecondary instructors in enacting a student-centered, conceptually oriented instructional approach, contains broader lessons for improving teaching in higher education.

Image

Student Support: Caring Campus

Caring Campus is an initiative designed to increase students’ sense of belonging in college by cultivating specific student-centered actions among faculty and staff. Faculty implement behaviors that include using students’ names and meeting with students one-on-one early in each term. A CCRC study found that Caring Campus has the potential to provide meaningful support to students who may need help and encouragement to persist in college.

Image

Teaching in Workforce Programs

Community college workforce training programs need to keep up with new technologies students will encounter on the job and develop skills that will enable students to grow throughout their careers. Employers are looking for workers with foundational skills in math and English, technical and professional skills, and digital literacy. In response, a CCRC study on preparing students for middle-skill jobs found that colleges should:

reassess how they meet the math needs of workforce students

do more to help workforce students develop digital literacy skills

provide more work-based learning opportunities

Our Teaching and Learning Experts

Image

Nikki Edgecombe

Senior Research Scholar

Image

Susan Bickerstaff

Senior Research Associate

Image

Maria Cormier

Senior Research Associate

Read More

View all of our publications on teaching and learning.