Jann M. Contento, Estrella Mountain Community College

Community colleges are now busying themselves in the practice of K-12 teacher education. The current national teacher shortage has ostensibly bestowed upon community colleges a potentially large new task— teacher preparation and certification. In a recently published Education Commission of the States report, “The Community colleges and teacher preparation: Roles, Issues and Opportunities,” Coulter and Vandal (2007) described the prominent ways community colleges provide teacher training:

1. 2 + 2 arrangements with teacher education programs at traditional baccalaureate granting colleges and universities

2. Alternative certification programs for post-baccalaureate students

3. Baccalaureate programs offered by the community college

4. Customized professional development programs created in collaboration with local school districts. (p. 6)

The first and last items on the above list appear to us more appropriate in terms of the community college mission. We believe community colleges can provide a quality “junior college” transfer experience (as in a 2 + 2 program) that has the potential to adequately prepare students for junior and senior level coursework. We agree with Coulter and Vandal that community colleges are very good at quickly responding to the needs of the local community. Professional development, continuing education, and life long learning should be (and are) vital components of the community college mandate.

However, alternative certification programs and baccalaureate degree offerings through the community college impress us as inappropriate. The reasons are not that complex.

Community College History, Mission, and Culture

Let us not forget that the original “junior college” visionaries– William Harper Rainey and J. Stanley Brown –believed their pilot program (Joliet Junior College) had nothing to do with professional education. It was perceived more as a grades 13 -14 prep school.

The historical foundations of many four-year colleges and state universities now offering teacher training were originally chartered as “normal schools” (teacher colleges, teaching norms– i.e., Arizona State University, UCLA). Community colleges were never envisioned as professional preparation schools at the four-year degree level, and for good reason.

In a more “nuts and bolts” sense, there are additional problems with community colleges teaching 300 and 400 level courses for teacher certification and/or baccalaureate degrees. These include accreditation requirements, articulation matters, adjunct faculty availability, possible tiered tuition formulas, sources of public funding, student support services , administrative staff needs, altered educational mission, operational facilities, external outreach programs, marketing, certified teaching supervision, and professional development. These are just a few of the many issues currently confronting community colleges’ offering teacher certification/education baccalaureate options.

Plus, the learning culture of community colleges does not seem to favor the baccalaureate experience. The original notion of “normal schools” in the American higher education experience was to have normed outcomes and expectations for teachers in training. Teaching was elevated to professional status by being situated in the four-year college.

The diverse, expansive, chameleon-like, and sometimes whimsical notions of “learning” and learning outcomes at community colleges do not parallel the rigor or scholarly culture of inquiry at four-year colleges and traditional schools of education. If anything, community college faculty and administrators often foster a type of gentle anti-intellectualism that celebrates effort more than achievement. What the community colleges call strategic planning is often more tactical (reactionary) than based on scholarly traditions or learned communities.

Community College Faculty Preparation

We do not believe that most community college faculty are appropriately trained (or scholastically acclimated) to teach upper division classes—especially masters level (or “lesser” degree holding) faculty. Certainly, community college instructors with Education Leadership credentials do not possess the appropriate academic qualifications to teach, effectively, methods or the academic discipline-centered coursework necessary for the baccalaureate degree.

(However, we would venture many of those community college faculty members who hold Doctoral or first-professional degrees in academic disciplines—including education disciplines—should have sufficient academic backgrounds to teach such courses.)

Our assumptions about the academic preparation of community college faculty have empirical support.

A study done with full-time community college “professors” by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California (2005) in 2004-2005, describes the academic qualifications of the survey’s 2,678 respondents. Nearly 72% of the study’s participants had earned a Master’s degree or lower.

The U.S. Department of Education National Center for Educational Statistics reports similar findings. The 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty report provides the percentage of full-time instructional faculty, by highest educational credential attained, by institution type. Results show over 80% (81.2%) of public associate institution’s faculty hold a Master’s degree or lower. (Cataldi, Bradburn, & Fahimi, 2005). Should faculty with such academic credentials be teaching third and fourth year classes that supposedly parallel the university experience? We do not believe so.

Professional or Vocational?

Academic communities and the public at large have often criticized K-12 education as a profession. Education degree programs, with their focus on methods courses and internships and teaching apprenticeships, have not always emphasized rigorous academic adherence. We believe that, very often, a common problem with teachers in American public schools is that they are seldom subject matter “cozy.” Rather, they are frequently curriculum facilitators and disciplinarians (as in student behavior, not subject matter) who function in a teaching/learning environment carefully orchestrated by external agencies. Their sense of professionalism, as with many educators (and especially their community college brethren), has a corporate, rather than academic, bias.

We sense that K-12 teacher preparation, even at the university level, is a more vocational than an academic process. We perceive that teaching in K-12 (and in the community colleges) is a more blue-collar than white collar-experience. Therefore, using this strange syllogism, we suggest that the K-12 teaching preparation pathway would be further marginalized (as a profession) if culminated in a poorly conceived community college platform for providing a baccalaureate level professional education program.

The last word

Our view is simple. We do not believe that community colleges have the appropriate faculty, the academic rigor, or the historical and intellectual heritage, to provide quality baccalaureate level teacher training.

And we community college faculty shouldn’t be remorseful. Let’s do what we know and do best. Let’s keep focused on our purpose, our primary mission, and continue working with students in the first two years of their higher education experience—whether their goals are vocational or academic.

We value the immeasurably important work done by K-12 teachers and community college instructors.

But we also sense that professional development for both groups must be enhanced by appropriate academic programs at the university level. We believe that the community of scholars—university professors—are best suited for developing professional K-12 educators. Community colleges, we believe, should concentrate on supporting or validating their current missions—not assume more tasks for the sake of marketing or “tactical “innovation.

As Judith Eaton (2005) said, “The baccalaureate community college would undermine one of the finest educational achievements in the history of our country: the open-admission, two-year community college. Access to the baccalaureate does not require the baccalaureate community college. We do not have to go there.”

References

Cataldi, E.F., Bradburn, E.M. & Fahimi, M. (2005). 2004 National

Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04): Background Characteristics, Work Activities, and Compensation of Instructional Faculty and Staff: Fall 2003 (NCES 2006-176). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics. Retrieved May 24, 2007 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.

Coulter, T & Vandal, B. (2007). The community colleges and teacher

preparation: Roles, issues and opportunities. Education Commission of the States Report. May 2007.

Eaton, J. (2005 Oct 28). Why community colleges shouldn’t offer baccalaureates. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Section: Community Colleges
Volume 52, Issue 10, Page B25.

Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California (2005

Oct 28).Views and characteristics of community-college professors 2004-2005. Chronicle of Higher Education. Section: Community Colleges
Volume 52, Issue 10, Page B10.