Constructions of community college teaching in selected scholarly literature

Four interrelated and prominent scholarly books on community college teaching were analyzed for the purpose of understanding their constructions of teaching. Thematic, narrative, and discourse analysis were used to identify each book's pedagogy and explain how that pedagogy was developed in context. Composite sequence analysis was also used to identify commonalities across the books and arrive at a meta construction of teaching. The pedagogies in the individual books resembled the single and combined use of three recognized pedagogies of teaching, learning, and student support. The meta construction was that changes in mission change faculty and student roles and cause forms of separation and conflict until teaching in some way informed by the recognized pedagogies and economics leads to integration and resolution in context. Ten primary and three secondary conclusions were drawn, including primary conclusions about mission trends, types of role changes, the centrality of faculty, and the increasing importance of administrators and secondary conclusions about study of constructions of teaching and negative tone. The results of the study have implications for community colleges, community college administrators, community college teaching, and scholars of community college teaching, including implications for further research.