Community is a concept with tremendous power in higher education and writing studies. For higher education institutions, community influences the purpose and method of education. Based on John Dewey's work on the social nature of education and other histories of community-based education, higher education practitioners and theorists like Ernest Boyer and Vincent Tinto call for the university to embrace its identity as a community to better educate students. As a result of the "university as community" model, institutions have created curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular programs like community-based education, living-learning communities, and community outreach to foster students' sense of belonging to the institution. Furthermore, several studies have linked students' sense of institutional community to increased student retention and graduation rates. Community is also a foundational concept in writing studies' disciplinary scholarship and pedagogical practices. Based on social theories of writing, writing scholars and instructors implement collaborative pedagogical practices like peer review and class curriculum like writing across communities that simulate the community contexts of writing practices. Scholars also engage in community-based research into discursive communities, community engagement, and community literacies, among other forms. However, writing studies scholarship also complicates the idea of community, scholars like Joseph Harris argue that the focus on community obscures conflict or the power dynamics that are always present within groups. In spite of the critique presented by Harris, community is still present in the scholarship and pedagogical practice of writing studies ranging from conference themes, presentation titles and abstracts, research articles, teaching philosophies, and course syllabi. In spite of community's omnipresence in higher education and writing studies, few studies critically examine the ideology of community and how this ideology manifests in institutional policies and pedagogical practices. Furthermore, the interactions among individual educators, disciplinary, and institutional ideologies of community also remains unexamined. For example, no studies examine how the disciplinary understanding of community in writing studies or institutional definitions and practices of community influence disciplinary scholarship or pedagogy. Three major assumptions inform community in higher education contexts: (1) institutional community is the result of administrative, curricular, and pedagogical actions, (2) students experience the institutional community as intended, and (3) community benefits student learning. I refer to these assumptions as the "community as teaching" framework. In practice, a "community as teaching" framework emphasizes the cultural and pedagogical practices that create community for instructors. Focusing on the teacher experience of community risks neglecting alternative community structures and community-building strategies that can enhance students' learning. In this dissertation, I examine several sites in higher education and writing studies to reveal the "community as teaching" framework. Ultimately, I argue for higher education and writing studies practitioners to adopt a new framework of "community as learning." A "community as learning" framework places student learning at the center of conversations about community in higher education settings. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]