The primary purpose of this paper is to emphasize and reiterate the centrality of the faculty role in tutoring and learning centers, where peer-to-peer, discipline-specific collaborative learning is the primary objective. This paper provides a breadth of content for practitioners in the field and also assists those seeking to understand the unique…

Limitations come in many forms for educators of color: access, opportunities, networks, but perhaps most crucially, through forms of invalidation. Toward healing, some educators of color have written about the isolation and trauma they have experienced on college campuses. Other have written in the spirit of resistance, boasting about the skills,…

A focus on faculty professional learning, given the challenges that California community colleges and students face, must remain a high priority and continue to evolve. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has long been an advocate for the development of robust professional development policies as part of senate purview…

The theme of both "Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement" volume 12 issues 1 and 2 collectively, is "Faculty Motivation for Engagement in Public Scholarship." Herein Dwight Giles, Jr. touches upon each article in issue 2, specifically, noting the variability of the central terminology that is used across authors…

In this commentary, author Dwight Giles, Jr. reflects on his 2008 article, "Understanding an Emerging Field of Scholarship: Toward a Research Agenda for Engaged, Public Scholarship," reprinted in this 20th anniversary issue of "Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement." In his original article, Giles argued that…

In this webinar, Dr. Stephanie Hirsh, Executive Director of Learning Forward, presented the research on effective PLCs and shared her experiences in creating, assessing, and leading PLCs. This Q&A addressed questions participants had for Dr. Hirsh following the webinar. The webinar recording and PowerPoint presentation are also available.

The original article by Kamberelis and Wehunt (2012) discusses an interesting and important research subject in science education as it focus on classroom interactions and the characteristics of the discourse production of interlocutors. The authors start from the premise that discourse heterogeneity is constitutive of social activities, which is…

Richard DuFour, a leading advocate for creating professional learning communities in schools, shares his insights on why teaching has become an "embattled profession" and the steps teachers and school leaders can take to enhance teachers' practice and their working lives. DuFour explains how recent reforms aimed at educators themselves…

This commentary explains and expands upon Wenger's concept of communities of practice. Knowledge construction to improve common practice within a community committed to learning is critical. Vertical and horizontal communication, interactions within and between boundaries of organizations are necessary for creating learning organizations. One…

The REL Mid-Atlantic Webinar discussed the elements in a positive school climate and shared different methods for assessing school data, including the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory. The Q&A presented in this document address the questions participants had for Dr. Cohen following the webinar. The webinar recording and PowerPoint…

Christine McPhail formerly served as president at Cypress College in California and is founder and professor emeritus of the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program at Morgan State University in Maryland. She is the Managing Partner for The McPhail Group LLC and currently serves as a Leadership Coach for more than a dozen community colleges…

How novice lecturers learn to be successful in their role is relatively under-researched, although the assumption may be made that the newcomer has learned the fundamentals how to engage in academic practice--at least in terms of research and scholarship--via the PhD process. However, although many lecturers now enter from a professional or…

The educational component of community development and the role of professionals who assist community groups are discussed. Community development as an educational process helps citizens understand the many facets of their community and learn how to obtain support to maintain or improve it. (Author)

Community educators need to provide grassroots leadership training, as can be seen by an examination of five points. First, a positive relationship exists between the quality of participation and the quality of leadership. Leadership should aim for team-directed action that meets member interests and concerns in the team's environment. Shared…

In this paper I argue that values of democracy and social justice in education would seem to have been displaced in recent decades by managerialist norms that are linked to the presumed needs of business and the economy of the nation. I am concerned that conceptualizations of the nature and purpose of education, and of the roles of teachers, are…