UCLA

The purpose of this study was to explore how faculty working in a First Year Experience (FYE) program at a California community college perceived their role as an educator, as well as how participation in FYE affected pedagogical approaches and the creation and sustainment of communities of teaching and communities of practice. This study used Mezirow’s (1991) theory of transformative learning as its overarching theoretical framework, supplemented by Habermas’ (1981) theory of communicative action and learner-centered approaches (Baxter & Gray, 2002; Warmer, 2001), to guide its examination of faculty approaches to instructional strategies, serving as channels for them to become institutional change agents and contribute to pedagogical change at the departmental, institutional, and disciplinary levels. This qualitative single-site case study consisted of interviews and classroom observations with 15 faculty housed within the FYE program at Bay College, in addition to document analysis of their course syllabi and an observation of the FYE faculty meeting that semester. The study’s findings highlighted how participants built communities of practice in FYE, namely through exchanging syllabi and sharing common themes and assignments, which led to interdisciplinary collaborations anchored by strong leadership. Participants were also able to find and foster these communities through formal and informal professional development and mentorship opportunities. However, many participants found college leadership treatment of faculty during contract negotiations to be dismissive and disrespectful, which contrasted complimentary surface-level messaging on campus. Participants cited inequitable allocations of work, such as through increased classroom caps and enforced unnecessary days on campus, that signaled distrust towards faculty and a fundamental misunderstanding of their work. Thus, I propose a model based on the study’s findings that showcases the mutuality of faculty-student learning as facilitated through a structured support program incentivizing collaboration within an institutional context, such as FYE. The study’s findings reveal the need for administration to be more receptive to qualitative indicators of success, such as individual student stories, in measuring outcomes away from purely numbers-driven criteria, in addition to offloading excess faculty work and providing legislative guidance that can help facilitate parallel trajectories of educator and student growth.