In The Two-Year College - NCTE

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1Research and Scholarshipin theTwo-Year CollegeTwo-Year College English AssociationAt two-year colleges, good teaching matters most, and scholarship is a prerequisiteand co-requisite for good teaching—because teachers’ scholarship legitimizesexpertise, informs classroom practices, and provides students with models forintellectual inquiry.

2Prepared by an ad hoc committee of the Two-Year College English Association of theNational Council of Teachers of EnglishFrank Madden, Westchester Community College, New York, ChairJohn Lovas, De Anza College, California*Susan Miller, Mesa Community College, ArizonaMark Reynolds, Jefferson Davis Community College, AlabamaPeter Sotiriou, Los Angeles City College, CaliforniaHoward Tinberg, Bristol Community College, MassachusettsMarilyn Valentino, Lorain County Community College, Ohio*DeceasedApproved by the Two-Year College English Association Executive Committee, November 20, 2004.Revised by The Committee on Research and Scholarship in the Two-Year CollegeFrank Madden, Westchester Community College, Valhalla, New York, Co-ChairHoward Tinberg, Bristol Community College, Fall River, Massachusetts, Co-ChairJeff Andelora, Mesa Community College, ArizonaSharon Gerald, Jones County Junior College, Ellisville, MississippiMatthew Kim, Illinois State University, NormalJean-Paul Nadeau, Bristol Community College, Fall River, MassachusettsMark Reynolds, Jefferson Davis Community College, Brewton, Alabama (retired)Jeff Sommers, West Chester University, PennsylvaniaFinal Draft Submitted to the Two-Year College English Association Executive Committee, November 20, 2010

3Research and Scholarship in the Two-Year CollegeAs a professor at a community college, you will be evaluated primarily in terms ofyour effectiveness as a teacher, your commitment to student learning, and your service to the institution and the community. While research and publication are generally encouraged and supported, they do not serve as the main institutional goals and thereforemay be given limited recognition and reward in terms of rank, promotion, and salary. Mostinstitutional honors and awards are based on exemplary teaching. (“Considering CommunityColleges: Advice to Graduate Students and Job Seekers” 167). . . faculty members at community colleges are expected to be proficient in the use of instructional technologies, including presentation software like PowerPoint, teaching in classroomsequipped with the latest technology (“smart” classrooms), developing supplemental Websites for their classes, teaching online or through other distance learning media like cable TV,developing independent learning sections of foreign language courses, and so on. While newtechnologies are transforming how higher education delivers courses, their uses are particularly important at community colleges given their mission of making education accessibleand accommodating students’ different learning styles. (“A Community College TeachingCareer”)Rationale, Definition, and ChallengesThe statements above, excerpted from reports writtenby the MLA Committee on Community Colleges,present an accurate description of the work of community college faculty: teaching, (face-to-face andonline), and a commitment to student learning formthe basis of the community college mission. Facultyare recognized primarily for their dedication to thetwin pillars of teaching and student learning (withcollege and community service as secondary expectations). Faculty efforts that focus on research andpublication, on the other hand, are likely to fall underthe radar and receive little formal recognition, evenas the demand on faculty to upgrade teaching skills,most notably, in regards to instructional technology,increases. The challenge of upgrading pedagogicalpractices without the incentive or opportunity to engage in scholarly exchanges about teaching remainssteep.The fact is that community college faculty need tobe both exemplary teachers and knowledgeable scholars. Yet, unless expectations for quality communitycollege work are rendered explicit and achievementsin both teaching and scholarship accorded appropriate recognition, we will not achieve the hoped-forbalance which this document advocates. Pressures onfaculty to improve their “productivity” and to becomeever more accountable in meeting standardizedbenchmarks for student learning outcomes will likelyreduce incentives to achieve excellence in scholarship and research (and the concomitant activity ofpublication). Some faculty will no doubt continueto do research and to publish their work, whether aspart of their jobs or as candidates in doctoral programs. Nonetheless, others, perhaps most, will not. Itis the purpose of this document to set down explicitexpectations for the teacher-scholar of English at thetwo-year college and the appropriate rewards for sucha role, as well as to provide models and resources.Why Scholarship at Two-Year Colleges?At two-year colleges, good teaching matters most,but this committee views scholarship as a prerequisite and a corequisite for good teaching—because

4teachers’ scholarship legitimizes their expertise,informs their classroom practice, and provides theirstudents with models for intellectual inquiry. Weconcur with the “ADE Statement of Good Practice:Teaching, Evaluation, and Scholarship” that “teaching and scholarly activity are mutually reinforcing,[and] departments and institutions should createconditions that encourage all faculty members toengage in intellectual inquiry” (45). While recognizing the range and distinctive mission of the two-yearcollege, we agree that all “faculty members need toengage in scholarly projects that sustain and renewtheir intellectual lives. [In] two-year colleges, whereteaching has long dominated the mission and thereward system, faculty members need support thataffirms the ways in which scholarship vitalizes teaching [. . .]. Scholarship, broadly defined, is essential toeffective teaching and to a satisfying professional lifein the humanities” (43). The committee understandsscholarly renewal as a continuing dialogue. Thescholarship-teaching connection we envision benefitsnot only the scholar, but also that scholar’s students,institution, and professional associations.The Changing Two-Year CollegeProfessoriateTwo-thirds of all faculty at community colleges arepart-time (National Center for Educational Statistics8). So often shuttling from one campus to another,adjunct faculty may struggle to find the time, theopportunity, and the means to engage in the kind ofdeliberative scholarship that we recommend in thisdocument. Nevertheless, given the increasingly important role that part-time faculty have been given atcommunity colleges, we see it as absolutely essentialthat part-time faculty be provided the opportunity toreflect on their teaching practice and to become members of the teacher-scholar community.Reflective PracticeTo create meaningful discourse between scholarshipand the classroom, the committee believes reflectivepractice is crucial to good teaching. A reflective practitioner “turns thought back on action and on theknowing which is implicit in action” (Schön 50).While trying to make sense of an action, a reflectivepractitioner “reflects on the understandings whichhave been explicit in his action, understandings whichhe surfaces, criticizes, restructures, and embodies infurther action” (50). If the practice of good teachingis most important at two-year colleges, then reflectionabout the practice of teaching is crucial, not only asrepresented by the formal research of the scholarshipof teaching but in every faculty member’s classroom.What Is a Teacher-Scholar?The call for community college faculty to becomeboth exemplary teachers and scholars is hardly new.In 1988, the Commission on the Future of the Community College made that same point when it foregrounded faculty development as a key priority forcommunity colleges. Few disagreed with that finding,and it should be noted that many community colleges currently boast of programs that recognize theprofessional growth of faculty, including achievementpoints for presentations and publications. However,defining the kind of scholarship and research appropriate for community college faculty has been especially challenging. The conventional view of researchand scholarship holds that the former involves thediscovery of new knowledge while the latter amountsto a familiarity with, and understanding of, what isalready known. Research institutions have historicallyassumed that faculty would engage in both activities: making new knowledge and keeping up-to-datewith advances in their particular areas of expertise.But is it realistic to assume that faculty at communitycolleges will have the time and skills to engage inconventional academic research?Some have suggested that community collegefaculty be concerned with becoming good scholarsrather than expert researchers, given their lack oftime, opportunity, and specialized skills to do conventional research (Parilla, Vaughan). Those same voiceshave called for an expanded view of scholarship toinclude not only a familiarity with advances in one’sfield but also an active integration of scholarship andsound classroom practice. Interestingly, such callswere soon followed by similar reconsiderations ofscholarly activity throughout higher education, mostconspicuously by Ernest Boyer in his influential work

5Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Boyer segregates the various activities ofthe professoriate into several categories of scholarship, from the scholarship of discovery (conventionalresearch) to the scholarship of integration and thescholarship of application.All these efforts to broaden conventional notionsof scholarship have produced little change if theintent was to privilege a wider range of scholarshipthan the discovery of knowledge in a conventionalresearch setting (laboratory, field research). Whileefforts to integrate various disciplines have shownpromise and received some recognition, similar attempts to foreground the application of scholarshipin the classroom have received far less recognition inresearch institutions when promotion is considered.Meanwhile, liberal arts colleges that have attemptedto move away from the conventional view that academic research is all that matters come promotiontime have encountered resistance from faculty andadministration alike (Marek).Finally, community colleges have had little success in recognizing the work of faculty outside theclassroom, for reasons that have already been stated.Indeed, the redefinition of what we mean by scholarship and research seems only to have marginalizedcommunity college faculty further (the more rigorousand thereby privileged “scholarship of discovery” isreserved for faculty in elite institutions).Nevertheless, the distinctions made by Boyer’sstudy continue to resonate with many faculty andadministrators, seeing that Boyer’s scheme, ideally, attempts to honor the wide variety of scholarlyactivities that faculty engage in. With that in mind,we choose to define the teacher-scholar as that facultymember for whom teaching is informed both byreflective practice and by the application of the bestavailable theoretical approaches. Moreover, we invitesuch faculty to employ the skills and knowledge basethat will allow them to become capable researcherswhose pursuit of knowledge enriches the intellectuallives of their students. Finally, we encourage facultyto share their work through publication and presentation, receiving feedback from interested colleaguesthrough a process of “critical inquiry and criticalexchange” (Slevin 69).

6Research and Scholarship: Areas of InquiryAcknowledging the need for two-year college faculty to become reflective practitioners engaged in serious research and scholarship, what areas of critical inquiry—traditional and nontraditional—ought they to pursue? What areas are new to theprofession? What areas are still open for investigation? This section will describe the widescope of such inquiry under the following seven genres: writing research, literary/biographical research, historical research, pedagogical research, assessment, creative writing, and newareas of inquiry. These categories are meant to be representative, not exclusive, and mayoverlap or intersect. While some may parallel studies in four-year institutions, others may beunique to the two-year college.Because two year faculty often enter the profession with the same academic preparationand interests as our colleagues in other institutions, we have performed similar scholarlyinvestigations: research in literary history and theory, rhetorical history and theory, andcultural studies. What distinguishes two-year college faculty is that we are generalists,even though we may simultaneously maintain expertise in distinct fields. While literary andrhetorical research is often valued more than teaching at four-year and graduate institutions,teaching and service are predominant concerns of two-year teacher-scholars. Pedagogyinfuses everything we do.Teaching, then, in all its complexities, is a valuable area of scholarship and research.While much of the research we do is still traditional, we believe that the scholarship ofteaching should be valued equally because it offers a fresh perspective and more flexible research methods and, most important, is directly related to our mission. The study of teachinghas come to be valued as a scholarly subject, not only in the two-year college, but in manyfour-year institutions as well. This brand of inquiry does not reflect a difference in rigor orimportance, but one in kind or emphasis. The inquiry may be more interpretive and reflectivethan traditional research and, though it is theory-based, its emphases may be more practicalthan traditional research, and its audience may be different (e.g., students and teachers). Bywidening the view of research and scholarship, we believe that we can have an importantimpact on our field.

7Writing ResearchAt the heart of our teaching is the teaching of writing in all its forms. Approximately half of studentsentering postsecondary institutions do so throughcommunity colleges (Grubb 3), and the majority ofclasses taught are first-year composition in its manyforms—from honors classes to technical writing todevelopmental classes to ESL. Further, the significantpercentage of students (from 25 to nearly 80 percentaccording to Grubb 171) who enroll in pre–firstyear or developmental courses encourages teacherscholars at two-year colleges to examine this studentpopulation in detail. Through publications like Teaching English in the Two-Year College, College English,and College Composition and Communication, andTYCA’s Outstanding Program Awards, two-year college teachers are translating theory into practice andpresenting findings on composition studies, developmental writers, writing centers, technical communication, and digitally mediated learning.Examples of some notable work in writingresearch include Smokey Wilson’s award-winningethnographic study of her developmental students’reading and writing and her findings about the natureof literacy and, from Bristol Community College,Howard Tinberg’s and Jean-Paul Nadeau’s study offirst-semester community college writers (Wilson,“What Happened?” What about Rose, Interactive).The collaborative work of Gill Creel, Michael Kuhne,Maddy Riggle and their students at MinneapolisCommunity and Technical College shows how thetheory of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed can bemined for classroom activities. Kip Strasma andothers at Illinois Central College have been involvedin computer-mediated writing research. Howard Tinberg of Bristol Community College, Ellen Mohr ofJohnson County Community College, Jill Penningtonof Lansing Community College, Heather Ostman ofWestchester Community College and Clint Gardnerof Salt Lake Community College have investigatedlearning environments in writing centers (Tinberg,Border Talk) .Literary/Biographical ResearchTwo-year faculty are also pursuing traditional research fields of literary analysis, biography, languagestudies, and the humanities. At Westchester Community College in New York, two-year college scholarsJames Werner, (American Flaneur: The CosmicPhysiognomy of Edgar Allan Poe); Elise Martucci,(The Environmental Unconscious in the Fiction ofDon DeLillo), and Richard Courage, (The Muse inBronzeville: African-American Creative Expressionin Chicago, 1932-1950) have published books of traditional literary criticism. Devoted teachers, including the many adjuncts who eke out time and space todesign and implement their studies, continue theoretical, literary, and primary research begun in graduateschool or inspired by local writers. Others win NEHstudy grants, Fulbright awards for studies abroad, andstate awards to look deeper into the subjects of theircourses. This research, unfortunately, is not alwayspublished or given the press or prestige offeredfaculty in four-year institutions. However, this goodwork does exist and is often shared in the communityas part of our commitment to service.One avenue offered only to two-year teachersis the Midwest Institute for International/Intercultural Education working with Fulbright ScholarGlobal Programs. Keith Hulsey from St. Louis hasresearched the literature and cultures of Vietnamfor his ESL class. Another research site is the PaulPeck Humanities Institute at Montgomery Collegein Maryland. Partnered with the Smithsonian Institution, it provides seminars that encourage researchin the humanities. To expand the literary canon fortheir students, Katherine M. Thomas from Kentuckyand Linda Karsten Spoelman of Michigan have collaborated to research Caribbean women’s literature.And primary biographical and historical research hascaptured information that could have been lost aboutsignificant writers. Colleagues at Lorain CountyCommunity College have searched through archivesand conducted personal interviews to produce anaward-winning video on Toni Morrison’s early life inLorain, Ohio (Valentino and Bakst). Randy Cross inAlabama single-handedly rescued from oblivion thenovels of Pulitzer Prize–winner T. S. Stribling. Thesescholars continue to speak extensively on the writers’works.Historical ResearchResearch has not only been done about great writers of fiction, but also about significant contributorsto our field. Jane Maher in New York undertook aproject that led to the publication of the only full-

8length biography of Mina Shaughnessy, consideredthe founder of basic writing pedagogy. Future opportunities exist for biographers of other pioneers in ourdiscipline. In addition, histories of the discipline focusing on the two-year college appear to be fruitful, asevident in Jeff Andelora’s research on the emergenceof the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA).About the ProfessionWithin the profession, we note the need to get backto long standing discussions such as the literature/composition divide. How does this debate play outin the context of a two-year college where generalists must manage heavy course loads? We note alsosubjects that we’ve only begun to explore, such asthe graduate preparation of two-year college instructors. Are the colleges and universities providing thiseducation working with two-year colleges to designcurriculum? Model programs and courses might behighlighted. While adjunct faculty are far from newto the two-year college scene, we need to furtherexplore how matters of research and scholarship apply to these individuals who do most of our teaching.If the increasing expectation of productivity makes itdifficult for full-time faculty to produce research andscholarship, how can adjunct faculty, who have evenmore unrealistic demands upon their time and energy,ensure their large numbers are heard?Teaching with Digital MediaAnother area we might explore further in our

Frank Madden, Westchester Community College, New York, Chair John Lovas, De Anza College, California* Susan Miller, Mesa Community College, Arizona Mark Reynolds, Jefferson Davis Community College, Alabama Peter Sotiriou, Los Angeles City College, California Howard Tinberg, Bristol Community College, Massachusetts

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