Gateway science courses are an ongoing obstacle to recruitment into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Students come into courses that have a high cognitive load, which makes success in the course challenging. Instructional design can be used to reduce cognitive load. The findings demonstrate that leveraging pre- and…

Research indicates that there has been a decline in college reading over the past decades, yet few studies have been conducted at community colleges. The aim of this exploratory study was to gain a broad view of what reading across the curriculum looks like at one urban community college from the perspectives of students and faculty. A survey was…

Many students enter college with inadequate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills to successfully navigate discipline-specific college-level coursework (Duff, 2010; Hyland, 2006; Lea & Street, 1998; Tsui, 2002). As such, college faculty, and specifically community college faculty, are challenged to meet the multiple literacy needs of…

Many community college students are entering college-level courses underprepared for the critical literacy and critical thinking skills required to be successful in discipline courses (Tsui, 2002). Discipline faculty are considered experts in their content area and are often not trained in pedagogy and literacy instruction, yet they are faced with…

Understandings of nature of science (NOS) are a core component of scientific literacy, and a scientifically literate populace is expected to be able to critically evaluate science in the media. While evidence has remained inconclusive on whether better NOS understandings will lead to critical evaluation of science in the media, this study aimed at…

"Leading for Literacy" provides tools and real-life examples to expand the benefits of a literacy approach that sparks students' engaged reading and thinking across disciplines, from middle school through community college. A companion to the landmark "Reading for Understanding," this book guides teachers, leaders, and…

This article outlines the features and application of a set of model curriculum materials that utilize eco-democratic principles and humanities-based content to cultivate critical analysis of the cultural foundations of socio-environmental problems. We first describe the goals and components of the materials, then discuss results of their use in…

In 2005 the Lumina Foundation awarded the Alamo Community College District (ACCD), including Palo Alto College, a grant to explore institutional effectiveness with a primary focus on serving student groups that traditionally have faced significant barriers to success. As a result of the award, ACCD staffed an umbrella initiative called "Achieving…

Skills in reading, writing, and mathematics are key to academic learning but are conventionally taught separately from the discipline areas to which they must be applied. For example, students may be taught writing skills in the morning in an English course and then be expected to apply them to writing an essay in a history class in the afternoon.…

When a student is not successful in mathematics, teachers frequently assume the difficulty lies within the student's mathematical ability or negative disposition towards mathematics, but the difficulty may lie with the student's reading comprehension (Draper, Smith, Hall, & Siebert, 2005; Kane, Byrne, & Hater, 1974). Many…

This paper is a literature review that explores the nature and effectiveness of contextualization as a way to improve outcomes for academically underprepared college students. Two forms of contextualization have been studied: "contextualized" and "integrated" instruction. There is more descriptive work on the contextualization of basic skills than…

This annual newsletter contains updates on the latest Community College Research Center (CCRC) research, new publications and details of upcoming presentations at major conferences. The feature article in this issue, "The Growing Prominence of Community Colleges," by Thomas Bailey, discusses how today's community colleges are increasingly…

Published in partnership with WestEd, this significantly updated second edition of the bestselling book contains strategies for helping students in middle school through community college gain the reading independence to master subject area textbooks and other material. Features of this book include: (1) Based on the Reading Apprenticeship…

This annual newsletter contains updates on the latest CCRC research, new publications and details of upcoming presentations at major conferences. The feature article in this issue, "Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students," by Thomas Bailey, summarizes the discussion found in the paper "Challenge and Opportunity: Rethinking…

This study examines second-term and second-year persistence of 19,489 freshmen at American River College (ARC), a large, urban, public community college near Sacramento, California. Academic and non-academic characteristics are compared between first year dropouts and those students that enroll one year after the first fall term at ARC for two…