IMPROVING STUDENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING THROUGH INNOVATIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESSES

Public two - year colleges in the United States were founded historically from the bottom up or from the top down. The former were two - year extensions of high schools maintained in public school districts or in separate districts consisting of multiple contiguous public school districts. In 1928, Ohio Attorney General Edward C. Turner, apparently unaware that over 200 public junior colleges had already been established in a number of Midwest states and California, responded to a request about the legality of a junior college as part of a public school district in Ohio. He said in part, ''The term 'junior college' has no special significance so far as our statutory law is concerned; nor is it in current use as a designation of any particular class of schools'' (Turner, 1928, p. 1014). This opinion ended the possibility of local bottom - up development of two - year colleges supported by common school districts. Bills allowing for the establishment of public two - year colleges failed to pass the Ohio General Assembly in 1929, 1931, 1949, 1951, and 1953. Conversely, by 1954, 26 states had already passed legislation enabling establishment of public junior colleges. Ohio's history of failed legislation during the first six decades of the 1900s gave the state a relatively late start in establishing public two - year colleges. This article identifies some of the key events that influenced the development of community colleges in Ohio. By including distinct time periods, synopsizing the historical and contemporary issues facing community colleges in the state, and identifying key individuals involved in the establishment of community colleges the reader should better understand the community college landscape in Ohio.     

THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGES: MISSISSIPPI'S SYSTEM OF COMMUNITY AND JUNIOR COLLEGES

Mississippi's system of public community and junior colleges developed as a response to changing educational needs in the state. The need to provide secondary education to rural areas of the state led to the agricultural high school movement in 1908. Time diminished the need for these schools, so the state's educational leadership proposed using the facilities to offer college‐level coursework. In 1928, Mississippi counties were authorized to join together in forming junior college districts. The colleges began as agencies of local government and continue so to the present. A state‐level office with coordinating responsibilities was established at the State Department of Education. The state's system of 2‐year colleges began just 1 year before the national economic depression. Easy access and low costs made the junior colleges attractive to Mississippians then and now. The junior college mission was to offer university transfer programs to students. After World War II, the junior colleges expanded their missions to include vocational and technical training. This was in response to the demands of business and industry as well as the needs of veterans returning to the workforce. Postwar industrial development in the state gave the junior colleges a greater role in workforce training. Mississippi's two‐year colleges have experienced demographic and technology changes that reflect national trends. In contrast to most other states, Mississippi's community and junior college leadership continues to identify university parallel programs as their primary mission.     

Community Colleges,the Media,and the Rhetoric of Inevitability

Community college practitioners frequently bemoan negative or stereotypical representations of community college students and community college life in general in the popular media. Saturday Night Live skits and satirical news reports in The Onion enjoy poking fun at community colleges, while mainstream news outlets often fail to challenge stereotypes of community colleges as lacking academic rigor. Those frustrated by these portrayals should know that the press overwhelmingly lauded 2 year colleges during the early decades of the “junior college” movement. Such reporting celebrated the new institutions' missions, and praised their speedy growth as components of public education. In fact, the press often implied that these new campuses reflected an inevitable step in the evolution of American higher education. This paper analyzes media reports about public 2 year colleges (at the time called junior colleges) published during the 1920s and 1930s. The term junior college is used in this historical review since the term was common during the era in question.     

Economic Impact Studies: A Traditional Method and an Expanded Approach

Abstract

Two studies of the economic impact of the college on the community were conducted at two very different colleges in Alabama. The method employed at a private, predominantly black, four-year accredited liberal arts college also included an investigation of the human development impact of the college on the community, which was not investigated at the other college, a public, predominantly white, two-year accredited junior college. The findings from both studies suggest that the most meaningful impact studies should try to measure and consider human as well as economic factors.     

Using Student Diaries to Develop an Evaluative Instrument for Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

This study compared the attitudes of high school juniors toward three types of institutions: 4-year colleges, 2-year colleges, and the “ideal college.” Students rated each institution on forty attitude dimensions. Attitudes toward 4-year colleges were more favorable than attitudes toward 2-year colleges on twenty-seven of the forty dimensions; fifteen of these differences were statistically significant. In contrast, 2-year colleges received more favorable ratings on twelve dimensions, with only five of the differences being significant. The correlation between ratings of the 4-year college and the ideal college was + .601, which was significantly higher than the correlation of + .437 between ratings of the 2-year college and the ideal college. When student attitudes were factor analyzed, three dimensions were identified: Social Activities, Supportive Interpersonal Environment, and Intellectual Climate. The data indicate that high school students have more favorable attitudes toward 4-year than 2-year colleges, and that they do not share the perceptions of community college proponents concerning certain advantages of attendance at 2-year colleges. These findings may have implications for college attendance plans made by students, and for their performance in college.     

Moberly Junior College,the four-year junior college

In Leonard Koos’s book, The Junior-College Movement, he described the establishment of a junior college in an American public school district as the ‘culmination of the local school system’, alluding to the prestige associated with having a junior college in a community. The best-known example of this arrangement was in Pasadena, California where the combined high school and college operated for 27 years. Less well known is the four-year junior college in central Missouri called Moberly Junior College (MJC). MJC operated as a combined high school and college for 36 years from the autumn of 1931 to the autumn of 1967, the longest running four-year junior college in the United States. This case study of the college examines how the seamless transition between high school and college was accomplished, and what changes in the institution and the educational environment led to the eventual dissolution of the four-year junior college.     

REVERSE TRANSFERS WHO RETURN TO A UNIVERSITY: AN ANALYSIS OF THEIR ACADEMIC PROGRESS

The examination of the transfer function at a sample of private/independent junior colleges yields knowledge helpful for the public community college. Through document analysis and survey research, quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from a representative sampling of 10 private/ independent junior colleges. The historical and contemporary role of the transfer function is examined as an essential component of the educational environment of these colleges. Research yielded evidence of the private/ independent junior colleges’ commitment to a solid general curriculum and strong academic advisement in order to prepare students for transfer. In total, the educational environment of private/independent junior colleges can provide knowledge and experience for its public counterpart in their efforts to revitalize the transfer function.     

THE COMMUNITY‐JUNIOR COLLEGE AND ITS ECONOMIC VALUE: A 3‐YEAR STUDY

As local governments tighten their budgets, community‐junior colleges are often caught in the squeeze. Economic impact studies are often appropriate to help explain the monetary benefits of a local community‐junior college. Temple Junior College evaluated its impact on the local Temple, Texas, economy over a 3‐year period. The results have been used as a meaningful public relations tool that has allowed the administration to explain the value of the college in quantitative terms.     

师范专科教育应尽快适应小教专科化需要

随着科教兴国战略的实施,素质教育的发展和教育改革的深入,对教师的素质提出了更高的要求。“办好教育的关键在教师”,随着高中专任教师本科化和小学教师专科化的推进,师范专科教育有了前所未有的发展空间和机遇,也面临着严峻的挑战,师范专科教育改革必须适应小学教师专科化的要求。因此,研究小学教师的素质结构和知识结构,搞好师范专科教育的课程设置和管理,确定适合时代要求的人才培养模式是师范专科教育改革的关键之所在。     

Stressors for College Bound High School Students Based on Sex of Respondents

College attendance is an impending major life change for many high school students. Attendance at particular colleges or universities is also a crucial issue for marketers of higher education institutions. This study reports the results of a survey of college-bound high school seniors in the midst of the college choice process. Specific stressors are identified and significant sex differences are discussed. Higher education marketers, guidance counselors, and even parents should find these results useful in reducing perceived risk by communicating relevant information about key stressors to deciding students.     

Community College Student Dropouts from Higher Education: Toward a Comprehensive Conceptual Model

ABSTRACT

Historically, higher education research has focused on traditional students (i.e., recent high school graduates at a residential, 4-year institutions), but community college students are quickly becoming the new traditional student (Jenkins, 2012). In the fall of 2011, more than one third (36%) of all students enrolled in postsecondary education and almost half (46.7%) of all students enrolled in a public postsecondary institution were enrolled at a community college (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Ginder, 2012). However, community colleges have struggled to match the persistence rates at other institutional types. The 2011 2-year public community college national 3-year persistence-to-degree rate was 26.9% (American College Testing [ACT], 2011). The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding the most prominent theoretical frameworks for community college student persistence and suggest a new theoretical construct. The resultant framework is termed the Collective Affiliation Model because it views the student’s sense of belonging with the college as only one of many senses of belonging in the student’s life (e.g., family, work). The Collective Affiliation Model does not view student dropout as the student’s inability to integrate into the life of the institution; rather, it views it as the institution’s inability to collectively affiliate with the student. This model’s strength is that it does not work from a student deficit model. Instead, it provides a new framework for researchers and practitioners to better understand and address student drop-out at community colleges.     

Getting from Here to There: The Role of Geography in Community College Students’ Transfer Decisions

Community colleges have received renewed attention from policymakers seeking to increase college attendance and completion rates because they provide open access to postsecondary education for historically marginalized students. Yet, transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions are low. Inequities in opportunity that are shaped by geography and compounded throughout childhood may restrict higher education opportunities for low-income, first-generation college students. Most studies examining how geography constrains college choice focus on high school students’ initial decisions about higher education, not community college students. We analyze the spatial distribution of community college students’ “choice sets,” the 4-year institutions that they are considering transferring to. Using qualitative interviews and geospatial analysis, we examine how these spatial patterns compare between two community-college systems in Central Texas. We find that students’ choice sets are geographically constrained, but that for many students, these zones are geographically large, suggesting that interventions and targeted outreach from universities could help students identify and select from greater range of options. Our findings have important implications for college access and completion among first-generation college students, and for policies that seek to interrupt patterns of inequity tied to location.     

The School of Public Safety at Valencia College: visioning and implementation of a college-wide distributive and collaborative program model for the central Florida community

The central Florida region, faced with record tourism, a large service population, and significant population growth over the next few decades, must rely on a community-based institution of higher education with lifelong learning offerings, a local community college, to create world class public safety education and training for the region. Furthermore, the literature indicated public safety organizations served by community colleges operate in an open-rational system, while colleges operate in a natural system—and there is no current literature to explain this phenomenon. To establish a new School of Public Safety within these contrasting systems, Valencia College and the central Florida public safety community utilized a collaborative, creative problem solving model with a divergent and convergent thinking strategy to develop the school. It is a school with an on-going intentional public safety service integration training and education philosophy with distributed, isomorphic college-wide public safety programming. The open-rational and natural systems theory explains the strategy and how this theory enhances the School of Public Safety at Valencia College and in central Florida at the social psychological, structural, and ecological levels. The theoretical framework, the comprehensive visioning approach, results of the strategy, values to the student, and public safety organizations and community discussed in this commentary contribute to the body of knowledge on public safety education and training models at community colleges.     

Adult learning in ontario

Ontario, a province located in central Canada, has a population of over 8 million people. Although the total area of the province is over 400,000 square miles (over I million square kilometres), the overwhelming majority of the population lives in southern Ontario, which includes less than one-third of the area of the province.The Ontario school system offers elementary and secondary education to all children and young persons able to profit from instruction. The school programme covers kindergarten, eight years of elementary instruction, and five years of secondary school. Compulsory school attendance has been enforced since 1870. At present the age of compulsory attendance is 6 to 16; kindergarten is voluntary at the age of 5, but nearly all children of this age are enrolled. Since the second half of the 1960s, junior kindergarten is being offered in many schools, and by 1974 the percentage of Ontario's 4-year-olds enrolled in junior kindergarten was 33 per cent. As far as the secondary school is concerned, in 1974/75 the net enrolment rate¹ of persons age 16 was 87 per cent; of age 17, 69 per cent; and of 18, 34 per cent.The post-secondary educational system consists primarily of two major components: community colleges with over ninety compuses serving all the major economic regions of Ontario; and universities.The community colleges were introduced in the 1960s with the main purpose of providing joboriented programmes beyond the secondary level for high-school graduates who require post-secondary training and education other than university. They also offer programmes to meet the educational needs of adults and out-of-school youth, whether or not they are secondary-school graduates.In 1975/76 the post-secondary enrolment of full-time students in community colleges was about 60,000, and in universities about 160,000. However, the number of part-time credit students enrolled in colleges considerably exceeds full-time enrolment, while the number of part-time university students reached 75,000. In addition, many hundreds of thousands of adults participate in non-formal learning opportunities offered by the colleges and universities, as well as by a great variety of other organizations, such as the local school board, social, community and cultural organizations, municipal authorities, private schools, sports and interest clubs, etc. author of numerous educational films, television programmes and publications, among others, Broadcasting for Adult Education: A Guidebook to World-wide Experience (Unesco Press).     

LEARNING DISABILITIES PROGRAMS AT COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND FOUR-YEAR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Students with learning disabilities (LD) from selected Midwest colleges and universities participated in a study to determine the differences between LD programs at community colleges and four-year institutions; the level of satisfaction with college LD programming; and the services most important to students. Focus groups were held at five institutions including two community colleges, two independent institutions, and one public university. Focus group participants included male and female students aged 16 to 56 years and enrolled in freshmen through graduate levels. The literature suggests that the focus of LD programs and the types of services vary between two-year and four-year institutions due to differences in missions and the characteristics of the students served. However, results from the data in the present study reveal that the types of LD services offered among the institutions participating in the research were quite similar, but the quality of services varied. Students at the large public university had difficulty getting note takers, books on tape and tutors, and obtaining adequate assistance from LD staff. Participants from the smaller community colleges and private colleges and universities considered the smallness of their institutions to be a benefit. The LD program was easily accessible and LD staff were always available. Although the participants in the study who had received LD services in high school believed the services at their college or university were comparable or better, existing programs need to be evaluated to identify services in need of improvement.     

Aztec Middle College: High School Alternatives in Community Colleges

The traditional high school model derived from the factory deficit model of the early 1900s has left many students, mainly minorities and/or low socioeconomic students, disenfranchised. This is evident in the poor school performance and high dropout rates of such students. Whereas the factory deficit model was created to promote only a few high school students to college, the rest of the students were trained for factory jobs. Today's job market requires that high school students go to college subsequent to their graduation. For this reason, middle college alternatives to traditional high schools are being adopted. Although research on middle colleges is limited due to their recent development, the results are encouraging: high school students who would otherwise have failed school or dropped out have high attendance rates and high graduation rates.     

What really influences minority attendance? Sequential analyses of the high school and beyond sophomore cohort

While the factors that influence college minority student attendance have been the subject of recent study, there remain unresolved questions about how different factors influence college attendance decisions of applicants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. In particular, there is ambiguity about whether blacks are more or less likely to attend than whites and what factors might improve their attendance rates. This study uses two sets of logistic regressions to identify the factors that can promote minority attendance: a set that examines attendance by all high school seniors in the high school class of 1982 and a set that examines attendance by college applicants in this class. Consistent with prior research on student access, three factors are identified that can potentially improve college attendance by minority students: (1) improved academic preparation in elementary and high school; (2) increased aspirations for higher levels of educational attainment; (3) increased levels of financial aid. Public interventions that would improve any of these factors for minority high school students are likely to improve minority participation rates.     

“Wait,What Do You Mean by College?” A Critical Race Analysis of Latina/o Students and Their Pathways to Community College

ABSTRACT

As a group, Latina/o students are more likely to experience a substandard K–12 education complete with underresourced schools, high teacher turnover, and fewer college-preparatory courses. It is this same inferior education that denies many Latina/o high school students the opportunity to engage in college-choice—leading to their disproportionate enrollment in community colleges over 4-year colleges or universities. In California alone, approximately 75% of Latina/o students in higher education can be found in the community college sector—making this an important pathway for many Latina/o students. This qualitative study incorporated a Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education framework to focus on the racialized K–12 experiences of four Latina/o graduate students who started their postsecondary career at a community college. This study was undertaken to better understand what led Latina/o students to enroll in community colleges after high school. Exploring the pathways of Latina/o students from high school to community college is imperative to community college practitioners (i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators) when considering best practices for their large Latina/o student body, as is found in California. The initial findings suggest that racism in K–12 in the forms of tracking, limited college information, and low expectations from academic personnel had a direct impact on the postsecondary experiences and opportunities available to Latina/o students. Lastly, the findings challenge prevailing portrayals where Latina/o students passively accept their marginalized position in education by highlighting their voice, resiliency, and agency in the face of systematic racism, as evidenced by their successes in academia.     

A RE‐EXAMINATION OF THE PAST: SOME ORIGINS OF THE “SECOND BEST” NOTION

A premise of the current criticism that community colleges are institutions that promote social tracking and inhibit social mobility was reviewed and analyzed. The relationship between the roles of the two‐year college and the research university as proposed by Harper and Lange was examined. The thesis that junior colleges emerged when universities supported their growth as feeder institutions was tested by the case history of the development of community colleges in Wyoming. Findings of this study were that: (a) the University's opposition did not halt the development of community colleges, (b) community colleges were comprehensive and community‐based from the outset in Wyoming, and (c) establishment of the transfer function was not predominant in the rationale for the community college movement. It was concluded that the stereotypic explanation of two‐year college development from transfer‐oriented “junior” colleges to comprehensive institutions may be incorrect, and that many two‐year colleges may have been comprehensive from inception.     

初中起点五年制大专生自主阅读素养的现状研究

近年来,随着社会的不断发展,我国的教育模式也呈现多元化趋势,初中起点五年制大专的设立为想要继续学习的学生提供了良好的环境,圆了他们的大学梦。相比较其他院校而言,五年制大专生的起点比较低,他们的学习方法以及学习态度都有待于提高。根据我国对初中起点五年制大专生的相关人才培养模式的要求,在教学活动中,学校领导和老师应该注重培养他们运用语言的能力,改进传统的教学方法。