UCLA community college review: why practitioners and researchers ignore each other [even when they are the same person]

Community College Review, Fall, 2005 by Arthur M. Cohen

Differences between researchers and practitioners can be found in four areas: the distance from the object of study; the ideological perspective; the purposes of the research; and the political agenda behind the research. Each of these principles dominates the perceptions of the people involved and thus contributes to the phenomenon of mutual indifference. This divide between research and practice can be bridged through providing community college leadership for research on instruction, fostering cooperation between university-based researchers and community college practitioners, and merging university and community college research methods (such as qualitative research and action research). Researchers and practitioners can speak to one another, but only if they employ a common language.

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Research on community colleges has been conducted for many decades, and for just as many years it has been ignored by community college practitioners. Similarly, practitioners' work is rarely considered by researchers when they are designing studies. This phenomenon of mutual indifference holds even when the practitioner and the researcher are the same person, as when community college faculty and administrators enroll in graduate programs, organize studies following graduate school mores, and then ignore the findings of their own studies when they return to their work positions.

For purposes of this essay, researchers include university professors, graduate students, and state and federal agency staff. The practitioners are community college staff, faculty, and administrators. Both practitioners and researchers work within guidelines of their own institutions and, upon joining those institutions, they quickly become socialized to the expectations and procedures of the environment in which they labor--dictates that are quite pronounced and difficult to overcome. Members of a community of researchers or practitioners rarely step outside those guidelines.

Four principles illustrate the differences between researchers and practitioners: the distance from the object of study, an ideological perspective, the purposes of research, and the political agenda. Each of these principles dominates the perceptions of the people involved and thus contributes to the phenomenon of mutual indifference.

Distance From the Object of Study

The influence of distance from the object of study, as it relates to community college research and practice, can be illustrated graphically by reference to a map. The view of a coastline taken from a satellite 100 miles up shows a gently modulating separation between land and sea. The 1000-mile California coastline, for example, appears as a shallow arc tending from north-northwest toward south-southeast. But bring that view down to a few hundred feet above the earth, and the scene is one of rocky or sandy beaches, tide pools, headlands, and a coastal configuration that traces various directions having no relationship to the general slope. If one's job is to build a pier, boat dock, access road, or beach house, the shape of the coastline as seen from the satellite is totally irrelevant.

Moving into the realm of education, the national data about public high school graduates provide a reference. Between 2005 and 2013, the U.S. Department of Education projects an increase of 11% in the number of high school graduates in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). However, this increase will total more than 25% in five states (72% in Nevada!) and will show more than a 20% decrease in four states and the District of Columbia. College planners in states showing a considerably greater increase or decrease than the national average can reasonably be expected to pay little attention to it. And in single colleges where the changes may be even more pronounced, planners understandably ignore the broader data. Some practitioners are more concerned with, for example, the sizable number of students entering their college who are recent immigrants with limited English proficiency, many of whom may not have attended high school at all. Another college may be in a district where only a small percentage of eighth graders graduate from high school. And a third may enjoy a situation in which 80% or more of the local population graduates. For practitioners in these colleges, the satellite view of the coastline is understandably neglected.

To take another example, in 1978, forty-five percent of community college instructors across the nation were full-time faculty and 55% worked part-time. In 1998, the full-time ratio had dropped to 38% and the part-time ratio had climbed to 62% (Cohen & Brawer, 2003). However, in any individual college there is a continual struggle between the advocates of full-time faculty who want to maintain those positions and the budget balancers who see part-time faculty as a way of saving funds. In rural areas, few qualified people may be available to fill part-time faculty positions, while in urban areas there may be an abundance of graduate degree holders eager to teach. The ratios vary and, appropriately, the national or statewide data regarding the incidence of full-time or part-time faculty have little relevance to local-level planners.