College teaching behaviors of community college faculty

Teaching behaviors of faculty are important for community college students who rely on the faculty-student interaction for academic integration to the institution, which itself is crucial to student persistence (Napoli & Wartman, 1998). Braxton and Bayer (1998) documented a set of teaching performance norms among community college faculty. However, their sample did not represent the nearly two-thirds of faculty teaching in community colleges as part-time faculty (Cataldi, Fahimi, Badburn, and Zimbler, 2005), faculty teaching career and technical education (CTE) courses in the community college, or the growing number of secondary teachers serving as dual credit faculty. In fact, the various studies of teaching norms across higher education have only focused on faculty in full-time, tenure-line roles (or graduate assistants aspiring to such positions) and have not accounted for the well-documented restructuring of the faculty profession. This study addressed these shortcomings through a cross-sectional administration of the Collegiate Teaching Behaviors Inventory instrument to full-time, part-time, and dual credit faculty in three Illinois community colleges with membership in the National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. A factor analysis was used to ascertain normative patterns of college teaching behaviors espoused by faculty, analysis of variance was employed to study differences in norm espousal across faculty type and academic discipline, and a multiple regression analysis was used to study the effect of pertinent individual faculty characteristics. The findings of the study demonstrate higher espousal levels and partial overlap in the types of norms held by the full range of community college faculty as compared to previous studies on college teaching norms. Within the different faculty groups of the community college, individuals from high school teaching backgrounds and CTE faculty tended to sanction norms at higher levels than other groups. However, variables such as the context in which one primarily teaches (dual credit or non-dual credit), level of highest degree earned, and years of teaching experience in different contexts were related to levels of faculty espousal of teaching performance norms. Collectively, the findings of the study (a) offer evidence which sometimes support and sometimes conflict with norm espousal theories developed by Braxton and Bayer (1999), (b) point to new areas for future research on community college faculty teaching behaviors, and (c) highlight areas of difference and similarity across the range of community college faculty for use in developing intra- and inter-institutional collaboration and development efforts