Contemplating my graduate student experience overseas, I constantly viewed myself as an isolate, one who did not belong in the new community of practice. I encountered numerous lingua-cultural, academic and social challenges which led to my lack of community and belonging. This paper is a reflection of my experiences as an international graduate…

As one of the allied health professions, occupational therapy has adopted a primarily clinical focus on human occupation (or the process of daily life) and this is reflected in education, which has until recently tended to overlook contextual social factors such as poverty, marginalisation, exclusion, unemployment, incarceration and immigration.…

In the winter of 2010, as the professor of an introductory Gender Studies course in a Canadian university, author Ilya Parkins was involved in a community service learning project centered on the memorialization of women murdered in her university's local community. In this article, Parkins considers what limited this project, which was so…

In collaborative ventures in higher education are to be seen both potentials and risks. But how, then, is collaboration to be understood? Is it simply a matter of a point of view, with individuals focusing more on the potentials or more on the risks, depending on their dispositions? The risks and potentials of collaboration, it might be suggested,…

The community college stands as a beacon of democratic, inclusive ideals. Unlike the four year college--where research and advanced degrees are sought--the community college celebrates learning on a personal, heuristic level. And while such unconventional and even seditious practices have been questioned by those who seek to maintain "standards,"…

It was critical that the U.S. Supreme Court have the best empirical evidence available to help inform its decisions in "Fisher." The "amicus" brief filed by 444 researchers from 172 institutions in 42 states was the result of a collaborative effort among members of the social science, educational, and legal communities. In her role as counsel of…

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…

Many things have not changed since Esther Hugo's 2006 article on community colleges. For the most part, "open-door" means just that: "apply and you're in." The lenses community colleges use to see students are still complex; the purposes of community colleges are still many. Students of all ages come for transfer, career and vocational training,…

In the spring of 2014, John Bragelman accepted an administrative position at a community college in Chicago. He struggled with the decision because it meant leaving the mathematics classroom, a space he calls home. As a critical educator, he had the opportunity to watch his students become critical participators in their communities, readers and…

In this paper, the author talks about community building and the power of active listening. Active listening is a particular kind of listening that requires conscious effort; it is a type of listening that some rarely practice and sometimes is virtually absent from classroom interactions. Thus active listening itself may be deceptively simple…

Over the past several years, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) has conducted several research studies on developmental education and has produced reviews synthesizing the results of the authors' own work together with that of colleagues from other research organizations. In a recent issue of the "Journal of Developmental…

Across the U.S., an estimated 60% of incoming community college students require developmental courses to be ready for college-level work, according to estimates by experts. As these courses act as a gateway to further studies, those who fail are most often lost to higher education: Less than a quarter will earn a degree or certificate within…

This commentary draws on the articles in this issue to underscore the importance of community engagement and districtwide capacity building as central to efforts to use data to inform accountability and choice, along with school and instructional improvement. The author cautions against treating data as an all-purpose tool absent adequate…

Traditional college campuses need to capitalize more effectively on the facts that they are a physical presence within a natural environment; that their presence plays host to many people working and living together in myriad formal and informal communities; that those communities are driven by educational, philosophical, economic, and…

The familiar advertising slogan, "Up here it's different," used to attract visitors to the rugged beauty of County Donegal, was correct in highlighting that things are different in Donegal, although not for the reasons one might connect with tourism. For many, Donegal evokes nostalgic images of old, rural Ireland such as close community…