Taking College Teaching Seriously, Pedagogy Matters!

Over 50% of US undergraduates are at community colleges. By many measures, particularly college completion, America's undergraduate education is underperforming. This is nationally important since America's future goes to college in these institutions. This book offers a successful and scalable solution to the current crisis by zeroing in on teaching and its corollary - learning. This book describes the experience of LaGuardia Community College where, each year, some 80% of new students who enroll need at least one course in developmental language or mathematics, and historically half of them have not passed; and presents a successful initiative based on the realization that pedagogy and engagement with students really matters, enabling students in developmental classes to not only to pass but to graduate at the same rate as students who entered needing no remediation. This book offers a detailed view both of the underlying rationale for and of the implementation of LaGuardia's Global Skills for College Completion research/demonstration project, showing how purposeful collaboration, reflection, coaching and sharing of practices, along with the use of video and the development of an online inventory of teaching strategies, has both helped faculty to improve their own teaching and resulted in greater student success. The authors address the unseen and unheard challenges that faculty face; document and name the parts of pedagogy that have long seemed invisible to both teachers and administrators; and most importantly present the voices and work of the faculty themselves to show in very particular detail how they shared and refined ideas and teaching strategies, and developed sets of tools to overcome the complex variables of the barriers to learning that they encountered. After an Introduction discussing the challenges of American higher education, what the research tells us about teaching and learning and what faculty members need in order to improve their effectiveness in the classroom, the book outlines the framework and history of the project and its goals. Chapter 1 underscores the complexity and value of reflection for improving teaching practices, as well as the affordances of technology, and the benefits of online communities to create open spaces for dialogue. Chapter 2 walks the reader through the theory of change that undergirds the model's professional development design. Chapter 3 describes the tools and routines of faculty engagement, with many examples, to show what this work looks like. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss in detail the infrastructure of the online community, with a focus on the interpersonal and technological dimensions. Finally, in Chapter 6, the authors reflect on the work accomplished and issue a call to action, to engage faculty in the multi-faceted process of reflection, adaptation, assessment and improvement. Ultimately, this book reflects on reflecting, uncovering the key insights that college teaching have so often fallen short because there is no common language to discuss obstacles, and that most professional development does not occur within the context of practice. Here is a rigorous model of action that meets those challenges head on to great effect, and will stimulate faculty and faculty developers alike.