23 research outputs found
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Curriculum and Pedagogy to Integrate Occupational and Academic Instruction in the Community College: Implications for Faculty Development
This is a case study of curriculum and pedagogy used to integrate academic and occupational education in the community college. The study investigated classroom practices, views of integrated instruction on the part of staff and students, and professional development approaches. Thirty-three integrated classrooms in seven community colleges in four states were studied. Instruction was integrated either through linking courses, or infusing academic or occupational instruction in single courses. Two-thirds of the instructors applied a strong form of integration, and the majority of instructors combined teacher- and student-centered methods, contrary to the expectation that integrated instruction would be primarily student-centered. College faculty and administrators were highly concerned about students' need for improved academic skills, suggesting an overlap with the purposes of remedial education. At the same time, little explicit instruction in literacy or critical thinking skills was observed in occupational classrooms. A strong program of professional development combined with the support of senior administrators promoted sustainability. Several approaches to staff development had the potential to overcome faculty resistance to integrated instruction. Finally, despite much enthusiasm for academic-occupational integration, the study sites had almost no empirical evidence to offer. If integrated instruction is to be evaluated, it will be necessary to disentangle its effects from those of other good practices that tend to accompany it
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Curriculum and Pedagogy to Integrate Occupational and Academic instruction in the Community College: Implications for Faculty Development
This is a case study of curriculum and pedagogy used to integrate academic and occupational education in the community college. The study investigated classroom practices, views of integrated instruction on the part of staff and students, and professional development approaches. Thirty-three integrated classrooms in seven community colleges in four states were studied. Instruction was integrated either through linking courses, or infusing academic or occupational instruction in single courses. Two-thirds of the instructors applied a strong form of integration, and the majority of instructors combined teacher- and student-centered methods, contrary to the expectation that integrated instruction would be primarily student-centered. College faculty and administrators were highly concerned about students' need for improved academic skills, suggesting an overlap with the purposes of remedial education. At the same time, little explicit instruction in literacy or critical thinking skills was observed in occupational classrooms. A strong program of professional development combined with the support of senior administrators promoted sustainability. Several approaches to staff development had the potential to overcome faculty resistance to integrated instruction. Finally, despite much enthusiasm for academic-occupational integration, the study sites had almost no empirical evidence to offer. If integrated instruction is to be evaluated, it will be necessary to disentangle its effects from those of other good practices that tend to accompany it
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The Organization of Developmental Education: In or Out of Academic Departments
This study compares mainstreaming and centralization, two ways in which community colleges organize developmental education. Based on previous literature, the two models are compared in terms of instructional quality, ancillary services, teacher characteristics, student reactions, and reputation of remediation. Pending empirical evidence for the superiority of one model to another, recommendations are offered to college administrators and state policy makers for maximizing the effectiveness of each one
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Developmental Reading and English Assessment in a Researcher-Practitioner Partnership
This paper reports findings from a researcher-practitioner partnership that assessed the readiness for postsecondary reading and writing demands of 211 students in developmental reading and English courses in two community colleges. An assessment battery was designed for the study, comprising two standardized tests and five project-developed tasks. The project-developed measures were two text-based writing tasks similar to those typically assigned in college classrooms (a summarization task and a persuasive essay), a self-efficacy scale, a teacher judgment questionnaire, and a qualitative student retrospective report. The text-based writing measures were keyed to high-enrollment, introductory-level general education courses that had significant literacy demands.
The results pointed to areas where students needed improvement in order to be ready for literacy tasks at the introductory postsecondary level. There was a discrepancy between the relatively low reading and writing skills as assessed through performance tasks and relatively high student self-efficacy ratings and teacher judgments. This finding suggests the possibility of an unrealistic amount of confidence in students’ ability to perform college-level reading and writing tasks. Correlations between assessment measures tended to be moderate, suggesting that the measures were tapping different skills. A series of hierarchical regressions modeling the text-based writing skills suggested that improvement in text-based summarization may require particular attention to reading comprehension skills, while improvement in text-based persuasive essay writing may depend more on developing general writing skills. Students’ retrospective reports indicated that although participants had some difficulty stating the requirements of the summarization task, they described appropriate strategies to complete it. Overall, the study’s findings point to the need to examine approaches to instruction, curriculum, course structure, and placement policy that may improve students’ college readiness
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Trends in Community College Assessment and Placement Approaches: Implications for Educational Policy
A qualitative, instrumental case study was conducted to examine students’ academic
preparedness, and assessment and placement policy in fifteen community colleges across the country. Selected findings reported in this paper are: large proportions of incoming students are poorly prepared for postsecondary reading, writing and math; similar academic needs are found among developmental education students and those with limited English language proficiency; there are discrepancies between state and institutional policy for skills testing and developmental education placement; and in some cases institutions are bypassing their own stated assessment and placement policy
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A Contextualized Intervention for Community College Developmental Reading and Writing Students
This paper provides evidence on the potential efficacy of an approach to helping students develop an important academic skill, written summarization. In two experiments, a contextualized intervention was administered to developmental reading and writing students in two community colleges. The intervention was a 10-week curricular supplement that emphasized written summarization, as well as vocabulary knowledge, question generation, reading comprehension, and persuasive writing. The findings of this study suggest that the intervention had utility for academically underprepared postsecondary students
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Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization (Assessment of Evidence Series)
This paper is a literature review that explores the nature and effectiveness of contextualization as a way to improve outcomes for academically underprepared college students. Two forms of contextualization have been studied: "contextualized" and "integrated" instruction. There is more descriptive work on the contextualization of basic skills than studies with student outcome data. In addition, many studies with quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of contextualization have methodological flaws that limit conclusions. Further, only a small number of studies are with college students. However, despite these problems, contextualization seems to be a promising direction for accelerating the progress of academically underprepared college students. The method of contextualization is grounded in a conceptual framework relating to the transfer of skill and student motivation; practitioners who use it observe positive results, and the available quantitative evidence indicates that it has the potential to increase achievement