Supplemental Instruction, Learning Communities, and Students Studying Together

Community College Review, Fall, 1998 by William E. Maxwell

This study was designed to investigate the extent to which peer relations increased among students who participated in a modified program of supplemental instruction at a community college. Peer relations have been examined as a subset of social integration variables in studies of four-year colleges under a variety of labels--contact, interaction, involvement, integration, personal bonds--and with a variety of methods (Astin, 1993; Feldman & Newcomb, 1969; Kraemer, 1997; Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 1991; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Tinto, 1993). The theoretical inspiration for many of these studies, Tinto's original paper (1975), defines social integration as interactions between the student and other campus individuals or groups including friendship, mutual academic assistance, and semiformal extracurricular activities.

There is a wide range of estimates of peer relations' impact on academic outcomes. Many four-year college studies have found moderately strong correlations between social integration variables (including peer relations measures) and several academic outcomes (including institutional commitment, retention, and career success), with standardized regression coefficients as large as 0.4 (Cabrera, Nora, & Castaneda, 1993, p. 131; Carroll, 1988; Pascarella, 1985; Pascarella & Chapman, 1983; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Tinto (1993, p. 56) concluded that social integration is among the most influential of campus factors.

When four-year college social integration theories have been applied to community college students, the research has produced contradictory findings. About half of the studies found a positive correlation between social integration and institutional commitment, retention, persistence, transfer, or graduation. The other half of the studies found no correlation or even a negative relationship (Bers & Smith, 1991; Braxton, Sullivan, & Johnson, 1997; Braxton, Vesper, & Hossler, 1995; Chapman & Pascarella, 1983; Friedlander & MacDougall, 1992; Halpin, 1990; Kraemer, 1997; Moss & Young, 1995; Nora, 1987, 1993; Nora, Attinasi & Matonak, 1990; Nora & Rendon, 1990; Pascarella & Chapman, 1983; Pascarella, Smart, & Ethington, 1986; Solis, 1995; Voorhees, 1987; Webb, 1989).

With respect to college programs that might intervene to increase the social integration and achievements of low income students, Dougherty (1992) observes that community college social relations are so invariantly low that they are unlikely to have any effect on the limited academic success of large numbers of students (Grubb, 1991; McGrath & Spear, 1991; Mow & Nettles, 1990). Some studies have documented remedial programs with an impact on various student outcomes (Adelman, 1996; Haeuser, 1993; Weissman, Silk, & Bulakowski, 1997), whereas a review by Clowes (1992) and a careful meta-analysis by Kulick, Kulick, and Schwalb (1983) found no impact for many of the remedial programs in community colleges.

When reflecting on these conflicting findings, one surmises that the confusion may stem in part from using questionnaire measures developed originally for the social relations of students in universities with dormitories, sororities, athletic teams, and a multitude of campus clubs and events. When applied to community college students who may be commuting, older, employed, married, and parents, these measures of traditional social relations may have led to conflicting research results (Nora, 1993; Kraemer, 1997). Moreover, researchers have often aggregated several peer relations measures into an index, which was then treated as a single intervening variable in a complex multivariate analysis. Thus, it has not been clear which specific kinds of peer relations were related to various student outcomes (such as, for example, retention).

To resolve the confusion, research should proceed in a new direction that is sensitive to the distinctive character of community colleges. Two first steps in this direction are to untangle the aggregated integration measures and to separate the questions of feasibility and of academic outcomes. Community college leaders want to know both what kinds of social relations can be developed by two-year campus programs, and which, if any, of these programs enhance academic outcomes such as retention (Eklund-Leen & Young, 1997; Friedlander & MacDougall, 1992). Combining both kinds of questions together in previous research has led to conflicting research findings. Without adequate conceptualization and measures for the intervening processes within programs, this research has not been able to consistently anticipate or explain the correlations between programs and student academic outcomes (Rumberger, 1995).

Astin (1993), Kuh et al. (1991), Pace (1989), and Tinto (1975) have suggested that an important set of intervening variables are peer relations. Thus, the study described in this report was based on the assumption that future research on retention and other outcomes of peer relations can benefit from investigations that identify the distinctive nature of community college integration. This study focused only on the question of specific kinds of peer relations (as dependent variables) that can be feasibly developed by a community college program. After several studies have clarified the various kinds of feasible community college integration and other intervening processes, researchers might then encounter fewer conflicting findings as they examine programs and integration in relation to academic outcomes.