UCLA community college review: why practitioners and researchers ignore each other [even when they are the same person] (1).

Differences between researchers and practitioners can be found in four areas: the distance from the object of study; the ideological perspective; the purposes of the research; and the political agenda behind the research. Each of these principles dominates the perceptions of the people involved and thus contributes to the phenomenon of mutual indifference. This divide between research and practice can be bridged through providing community college leadership for research on instruction, fostering cooperation between university-based researchers and community college practitioners, and merging university and community college research methods (such as qualitative research and action research). Researchers and practitioners can speak to one another, but only if they employ a common language.

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Research on community colleges has been conducted for many decades, and for just as many years it has been ignored by community college practitioners. Similarly, practitioners' work is rarely considered by researchers when they are designing studies. This phenomenon of mutual indifference holds even when the practitioner and the researcher are the same person, as when community college faculty and administrators enroll in graduate programs, organize studies following graduate school mores, and then ignore the findings of their own studies when they return to their work positions.

For purposes of this essay, researchers include university professors, graduate students, and state and federal agency staff. The practitioners are community college staff, faculty, and administrators. Both practitioners and researchers work within guidelines of their own institutions and, upon joining those institutions, they quickly become socialized to the expectations and procedures of the environment in which they labor--dictates that are quite pronounced and difficult to overcome. Members of a community of researchers or practitioners rarely step outside those guidelines.

Four principles illustrate the differences between researchers and practitioners: the distance from the object of study, an ideological perspective, the purposes of research, and the political agenda. Each of these principles dominates the perceptions of the people involved and thus contributes to the phenomenon of mutual indifference.

Distance From the Object of Study

The influence of distance from the object of study, as it relates to community college research and practice, can be illustrated graphically by reference to a map. The view of a coastline taken from a satellite 100 miles up shows a gently modulating separation between land and sea. The 1000-mile California coastline, for example, appears as a shallow arc tending from north-northwest toward south-southeast. But bring that view down to a few hundred feet above the earth, and the scene is one of rocky or sandy beaches, tide pools, headlands, and a coastal configuration that traces various directions having no relationship to the general slope. If one's job is to build a pier, boat dock, access road, or beach house, the shape of the coastline as seen from the satellite is totally irrelevant.

Moving into the realm of education, the national data about public high school graduates provide a reference. Between 2005 and 2013, the U.S. Department of Education projects an increase of 11% in the number of high school graduates in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). However, this increase will total more than 25% in five states (72% in Nevada!) and will show more than a 20% decrease in four states and the District of Columbia. College planners in states showing a considerably greater increase or decrease than the national average can reasonably be expected to pay little attention to it. And in single colleges where the changes may be even more pronounced, planners understandably ignore the broader data. Some practitioners are more concerned with, for example, the sizable number of students entering their college who are recent immigrants with limited English proficiency, many of whom may not have attended high school at all. Another college may be in a district where only a small percentage of eighth graders graduate from high school. And a third may enjoy a situation in which 80% or more of the local population graduates. For practitioners in these colleges, the satellite view of the coastline is understandably neglected.

To take another example, in 1978, forty-five percent of community college instructors across the nation were full-time faculty and 55% worked part-time. In 1998, the full-time ratio had dropped to 38% and the part-time ratio had climbed to 62% (Cohen & Brawer, 2003). However, in any individual college there is a continual struggle between the advocates of full-time faculty who want to maintain those positions and the budget balancers who see part-time faculty as a way of saving funds. In rural areas, few qualified people may be available to fill part-time faculty positions, while in urban areas there may be an abundance of graduate degree holders eager to teach. The ratios vary and, appropriately, the national or statewide data regarding the incidence of full-time or part-time faculty have little relevance to local-level planners.

Community college transfer rates provide a third example. Nationally, 25% of students who enter the community college and complete at least four courses within 4 years transfer to a four-year college or university (Cohen & Brawer, 2003). But within single states those transfer rates may vary from 4% to 40%, depending on the proximity to and availability of a neighboring university, existing partnership agreements, collegiate traditions, the extent to which high school counselors and prospective students and their families perceive the college as a desirable place to begin study toward the baccalaureate, and the proportion of university and college faculty who continually work together to articulate their lower-division courses. Actually, transfer rates vary more between colleges within a state than they do between states. And the characteristics of individual institutions are more salient than student demographics; the rate of transfer for ethnic minority students in a high transfer rate college is higher than that of all students on a statewide average.

As a last example, the national data on student gender and ethnicity provide a distant view of college demographics, while in any locality, state, or region they are typically quite different. Broad-scale studies typically show the progress of students in higher education, broken out by the number of students in each group that enters an open-access or selective college, attains an associate degree, and moves on through the higher education system. The data also show the number of each group majoring in science, social science, math, humanities, fine and performing arts, and vocational fields. Nationally, 67.6% of college students are white, 11.6% are African American, 9.8% are Hispanic, 6.4% are Asian, 1% are Native American, and 3.5% are non-American resident aliens (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004). However, the picture in a single state--much less in a single college rarely reflects those proportions. For example, 94% of the students at Laredo Community College in Texas are Hispanic; 100% of the students at Lawson State Community College in Alabama are African American.

Furthermore, what can the college do about the proportions of women or minorities on their campus? As Adelman (2005) summarized, "An enormous amount of research seeking to describe or explain retention and attrition, attainment, transfer, and postcollege earnings is thrust at [italics added] community college administrators, faculty, and trustees. The studies often highlight variables over which the community college has but modest control--gender, race/ethnicity, first-generation college status, SES, second language background, marital and parental status" (p. 118). Adelman concludes that, while these variables may be statistically significant in multivariate analyses, community colleges can do little to change them and must work instead with the students they have.

Ideology

Much of the research about the progress of certain racial or ethnic groups, as well as that on the progress of men and women in higher education, reflects the ideology that powerfully influences the nature of these studies. Statistically, there will always be shortfalls or gaps between groups in terms of the types of colleges they enter, the curricula in which they major, and their graduation and transfer rates. Which ethnic or gender groups must be represented in relation to what population? The idea that every identified group and every subset within it be enrolled in every college program in proportion to that group's numbers in the population of the locality or of the state or of the nation is preposterous on its face. Whether well meaning or ideologically bent, researchers who portray these data are understandably ignored by practitioners who must work with the unique student body at their institution regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity.

Much of the research on gender and ethnic group progress is done by people who start with the belief that some group is not equally reaping the benefits of higher education, and they pick that set and trace it through the system. Using euphemisms such as marginalized, nontraditional, underserved, and other similar terms, they find it easy to demonstrate that their favorite group is falling behind. For example, in the 1960s the paucity of women in higher education was rightfully deplored, and the system was expanded to provide equal access to females. Since 1978, more women than men have been enrolled in higher education; for more than 20 years they have received the majority of bachelor's degrees, and they currently receive more master's degrees. But because women are overrepresented in fields such as education, English, and psychology, and underrepresented in engineering and physical and computer sciences (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004), the unrepentant ideologues still claim discrimination. Their targets shift continually; one can always find an educational niche where the composition of the student body does not exactly mirror the general population. Furthermore, subgroups keep clouding the data: black males have fallen behind in comparison with black females, Filipino Americans in comparison with Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans when compared to Cuban immigrants.

And, typically, the college is to blame. Pascarella and Terenzini's (1991) review of the literature in How College Affects Students concludes that many "institutional policies and programs ... create or tolerate activities or conditions that are academically and socially uncongenial, if not downright hostile, to nonwhite students" (pp. 644-645). They further summarize that "research ... has consistently found ... that students entering a four-year institution are substantially more likely than two-year college entrants to persist in their education" (p. 641). The contentions regarding proportional representation and college culpability are considerably more subdued in the community colleges themselves, where questions of who gains access are essentially irrelevant. "Here are our students," practitioners say. "All we can (and should) focus on is what can we do to teach them what they need to know in order to move through the system." Practitioners understandably take a dim view of their being accused of discrimination, staff biases, and unresponsive pedagogy.

The Research Imperative and Institutional Agendas

A third reason why practitioners and researchers ignore each other is that research in the universities and research and practice in the community colleges stem from different demands and expectations. Many universities began as teacher-training institutions or liberal arts colleges and evolved into graduate and research centers, organizing departments of education along with their professional schools. In these departments, research that appears to emulate the scientific method is necessary to legitimate education as a profession; without it faculty could not be promoted to tenure, and the education department itself would be in danger of closure.

Accordingly, university researchers formulate research questions, erect hypotheses, conduct literature reviews, describe their methods, analyze data, display findings, and conclude their reports with theoretical discussions and suggestions for further research. Their survey data are typically equivocal, drawn from questions that respondents may interpret in any number of ways: "What is the highest degree you ever hope to obtain?" "Are your state's fiscal policies salutary for your college?" "What is the dominant cognitive style of your students?" "How important is knowledge of community college mission to professionals like yourself?" The researchers invariably subdivide the data according to the respondents' age, gender, and ethnicity (whether or not those characteristics are relevant) and apply their favorite form of statistical test in hopes that the alchemy of tables with numbers drawn to the third decimal place will transmute their soft data into hard information. Each report and the journal in which it is published is designed to imitate science. Perhaps if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, their peers in other departments will think it is actually a duck.

Community college administrators and their state and national associations have a different agenda. They begin with the urgency of program maintenance, knowing that their publications must cast the college in a good light lest their support base be eroded. Follow-up studies provide a good example: the Wisconsin Technical College System (2005) reports that 92% of its graduates are employed within 6 months at a median salary of $27,038. These employment data are prime examples: success in any area is a positive mark for the college. Therefore, community college publications often reflect this credo: "We're doing a great job in every area. And if we're not, it's because we don't have enough money."

In sum, an environmental press is apparent. Community college practitioners often respond to mean-spirited research reports by saying, "Your data are misleading; our college, programs, and students are not like that." And they are right. On the other hand, however, practitioners entering graduate programs find themselves in a different environment and typically say, "I'll do whatever it takes to get my degree." While they may do serious work while enrolled, there is little follow through because the demands of their jobs back at the college typically preclude that form of activity. It is a rare dissertation in education written by a community college staff member that reflects or presages a line of continuing inquiry.

Research in and About the Colleges

Research that occurs in and about community colleges is different from university-based research. Community college practitioners are almost unanimously focused on practice, on the job they have to do. Even so, community college-based research tends to be ignored by the majority of staff. For example, numerous studies have been done showing the effects of various pedagogical and organizational practices, but few have had any effect on how the staff conduct their work.

Some of the studies conducted in past years reveal this tendency. During the 1960s and 1970s, several studies demonstrated the power of defining and communicating specific and measurable instructional objectives (Cohen & Brawer, 2003). Yet learning outcomes specified in behavioral terms have never become a staple of community college instruction. Similarly, the effects of supplemental instruction, a process whereby students in high-risk classes receive additional learning support from peers and professionals, has made little inroads even though numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness (e.g., Maxwell, 1998). Similarly, Riley (1984) and Cohen, Schuetz, Chang, and Plecha (2002) reported that students taking courses in the liberal arts consistently scored higher on subject-area tests, yet general academic assessments are rarely employed in the community college. As a last example, most colleges use students' writing samples to verity placing students in certain levels of English composition, but few colleges assesses student learning in those classes through multi-faculty, multi-section, multiple-blind scoring techniques.

The list could be extended with studies of administrative or organizational practices such as those that have been made correlating English and mathematics placement test-scores and academic achievement; these often reveal how students' grades in basic math and English classes are less a function of the students' prior academic achievement or scores made on one or another type of placement test than they are of the section in which the students are enrolled (Armstrong, 2000). In other words, the variation in grading practices among instructors teaching different sections of the same course is the dominant force in predicting student grades. This casts a bright light on the question of whether or not to enforce mandatory placement policies. Most significantly, along with the other studies cited above, it points to the weak relationship between research and practice.

Some positive notes may be seen in more recent studies of the value of learning communities and in assessing the depth of student involvement in collegiate activities. Learning communities have become popular as a pedagogical field resting on peer association coupled with special types of faculty involvement. The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (2004) demonstrates how students who use the library, discuss assignments with their peers, attend class regularly, meet occasionally with faculty outside class--in short, are more involved with their studies--are less likely to drop out and more likely to attain higher grades and move through the system. Studies of learning communities and student engagement fit well with practitioners' historical attention to process. Demonstrating that students who have taken classes in certain fields know more about those subject areas than students who have not taken such classes and studies showing the power of clearly defined instructional objectives both relate to outcomes, whereas studies looking at the salutary effects of student involvement are more attuned to process. Process studies are inherently more helpful to practitioners because they fit into the institution's dominant motto: to teach.

Most important here is the fact that studies of student involvement turn attention toward institutional and instructional processes and away from student characteristics. At all levels of education it has been a longstanding practice to ascribe student achievement to student characteristics. Practitioners and researchers alike have been fond of examining students' prior academic record, language gaps, group subculture, and even the charmingly titled "level of cultural capital." This has the effect of blaming the participants and makes it easy for the staff to throw up their hands and say, "What can we do? Look at who we have to work with," forgetting that few schools in the public sector can choose their matriculants and that their job is to teach whoever walks through their doors. Numerous researchers outside the colleges are also fond of blaming the participants and figuratively write off the community colleges and their students by making untoward comparisons between a student population that in large measure attends part time while maintaining job and home responsibilities and students attending selective colleges full time and living on campus. Surprisingly (unless one perceives their underlying ideology), these types of studies continue to be conducted and they invariably show that the full-time residential collegiate experience has a greater effect on everything from student learning to student development to students' subsequent ability to attain a high paying job. They rarely acknowledge that the option of attending a full-time residential college is not available to the vast majority of people matriculating in community colleges.

This discussion of the gap between research and practice is not new. As Biesta and Burbules (2003) paraphrase from 20th century education philosopher John Dewey, "The idea of 'improving' educational practice in any direct way through educational research should be abandoned.... Educational problems are always unique and for that reason always require unique responses, tailored as best as possible to the idiosyncrasies of the actual, unique situation" (p. 81). In other words, all findings in educational research are tentative, equivocal, and derivative, and dressing them up with statistics only gives the illusion of precision. McKeachie (1963) put it most succinctly when he concluded that, at bottom, research on teaching can demonstrate only that in college A, on day B, instructor C used method D to teach concept E to F set of students. Change any of those variables and the findings shift.

Bridging the Gap

For community college practitioners to attend to research conducted in the university, the divide between research and practice must be bridged. This can be done only when local community college leadership for research on teaching and learning is available. Much of this type of leadership fell by the wayside in recent decades as the position of dean of instruction was superseded by the vice president for academic affairs. And only in rare cases has leadership for research been picked up in a different administrative position or by departmental or division chairs. A leader of research on instruction knows that certain principles must guide this activity. Faculty must be involved in designing and conducting the studies at every step of the way. Practitioners cannot be expected to evaluate their own program's reliably--program maintenance is at risk--but if they are not consulted throughout, they will ignore the findings. A leader recognizes the weaknesses of a one-shot study and works with staff to design continuous exercises using the same instruments. Most importantly, practitioner-based research attends to student behavior, not to student characteristics. It uses simple statistics only so that the findings are readily apparent and sustains concern for student progress.

The gap between research and practice could also be bridged by cooperation between university-based researchers and community college practitioners, although this is something of a rarity. For example, the community college baccalaureate is a result of practitioners' political agenda to aggrandize their institutions. The baccalaureate has received a considerable amount of attention recently, so much so that only in states with strong central plans and easily accessible four-year colleges (California for example) will it make little headway. But where is the research on the effects of the baccalaureate? There is a high probability that as the community college builds baccalaureate programs, faculty salaries will increase, faculty workload will decrease, per capita student cost will increase, library budgets will be affected--in short, the institution will be transformed and will look much more like its four-year counterpart. This, arguably, is one of the more important issues affecting community colleges today, yet few studies of the effects of the baccalaureate are on the drawing board.

From a broader perspective, the community college baccalaureate is one more example of a long-standing drive for two-year institutions to be recognized as a part of higher education. But an ability to confer the bachelor's degree likely weakens the institutions' involvement with secondary schools, especially grades 11 and 12, which suffer most of the student dropout. Put another way, the education pipeline loses considerably more students between high school and college than it does between the second and third year of college. Which is more socially desirable, then: the community college baccalaureate or programs such as the middle college high school, which blends grades 11 through 14 in one institution? Where are the researchers who are working toward answers to this essential question?

Another fruitful area for cooperative social policy research is in the relationship between transfer rates and public perceptions of the community college as a legitimate stepping stone toward the baccalaureate. What happens to these perceptions and to transfer rates when an honors college is opened within a traditional community college? How many more high-achieving high-school graduates does the college attract? How many low-achieving students does this new cohort push out?

University and community college research methods also can be merged to bridge research and practice more effectively. Qualitative research can be further developed through the use of story telling, a tradition with a lengthy history (it was the dominant mode of communication and learning for millennia prior to the so-called Scientific Era). Tanaka (2003) has promoted this type of inquiry as a way of substituting the unifying strands of interculturalism for the divisive concern with ethnicity and multiculturalism. LaPaglia (1994) has used it in studies of community college women. Seidman's (1985) In The Words of the Faculty and Weis's 1985 book on black students in an urban community college afford other examples. Tanaka also describes action research, a procedure involving both researchers and practitioners that combines data collection with simultaneous program modification. In these studies, institutional change, or the change process itself, is the object of study and the participants may modify the direction of that change as the project unfolds.

In summation, researchers and practitioners can speak to one another, but only if they employ a common language, understand how distance from the object of study affects the usefulness of information, drop ideological perspectives that place blame on the students or the institution, and focus on studies concerning relationships between educational processes and outcomes.

References

Adelman, C. (2005). Moving into town--And moving on: The community college in the lives of traditional students. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Armstrong, W. B. (2000). The association among student success in courses, placement test scores, student background data, and instructor grading practices. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 24(8), 681-695.

Biesta, G. J. J., & Burbules, N. C. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cohen, A. M., Schuetz, P. G., Chang, J. C., & Plecha, M. D. (2002, November). Assessing community college student knowledge in the liberal arts. Paper presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Sacramento, CA. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED469896)

Cohen, A. M., & Brawer. F. B. (2003). The American community college (4th ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Community College Survey of Student Engagement. (2004). Engagement by design. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Community College Leadership Program. Retrieved May 23, 2005 from http://www.ccsse.org/ publications/CCSSE_reporffina12004.pdf

La Paglia, N. (1994). Storytellers. The image of the two-year college in American fiction and in women's journals. DeKalb, IL: LEPS Press. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED366368)

Maxwell, W. E. (1998). Supplemental instruction, learning communities, and studying together. Community College Review, 26(2), 1-18.

McKeachie, W. J. (1963). Research on teaching at the college and university level. In N. L. Gage (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 1118-1172). Chicago: Rand McNally.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2003). Projections of education statistics to 2013 (NCES Report No. 2004-013). Washington, DC: Author.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2004). Digest of education statistics 2003 (NCES Report No. 2005-025). Washington, DC: Author.

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (1991). How college affects students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Riley, M. (1984). The community college general academic assessment: Combined districts, 1983-84. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Community Colleges. (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED246959)

Seidman, E. (1985). In the words of the faculty: Perspectives on improving teaching and educational quality in community colleges. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tanaka, G. (2003). The intercultural campus: Transcending culture and power in American higher education. New York: Peter Lang.

Weis, L. (1985). Between two worlds: Black students in an urban community college. Boston: Rutledge and Kegan Paul.

Wisconsin Technical College System. (2005). Graduate follow-up report 2004. Madison, WI: Author.

(1) A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, Boston, MA, April 9, 2005.

Arthur M. Cohen is emeritus professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. [e-mail]