THE TEACHING THEORIES OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACULTY

The objectives of this study were to determine the percentage of students who felt they were weak in an academic skill and who took a college assistance program designed to correct that deficiency and to identify the reasons given by students weak in an academic skill for not using a college support service from which they could benefit. Analyses of survey data obtained from 268 instructors and 6,428 of their students enrolled in a cross section of courses in a large multicampus urban community college district showed the following: (1) of those students who did not feel confident in a skill, less than 30% took advantage of a support program designed to assist them in that skill; (2) more than 40% of the faculty felt that the primary reason students did not take advantage of a needed support service was that they were not willing to devote the extra time or effort required to avail themselves of the service; and (3) the main reasons most academically underprepared students gave for not using a support service were that they did not feel a need for the service or had no time for the service. Implications of these findings for educational policy are discussed.     

Centering the Margins: White preservice teachers' responses to Roll of Thunder

Over the course of several years, the award-winning adolescent novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , was used as the centerpiece for a study of white, female preservice teachers' perceptions of race as an issue in classroom discourse. Invented dialogues created by these preservice teachers were examined to learn more about the issues that troubled them as they considered teaching this novel in the future. They identified language, "reverse racism" and creating distress among children as particularly salient concerns. Examples from these teacher candidates are explicated and theorized.