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News and Updates

News and Updates

Connecting Learning About the Earth to Societal Issues: Downstream Effects on Faculty Teaching

This past Spring we had CCRI’s very own Lia Wetzstein’s work published! Read about the paper below, then download the article directly or access via Wiley Online Library.

About this article

This study provides an empirical look at the impact on instructors interacting with sustainability curriculum in different ways across multiple institutions and disciplines via InTeGrate. While international studies underscore an emergent relationship between sustainability curricula, active learning pedagogies, and student learning outcomes, a gap exists in the literature in understanding benefits perceived by faculty who create such curricula.

Moreover, even less is understood about the downstream influence on the teaching practices of faculty. In this chapter, downstream, is used to describe faculty who did not create sustainability curriculum but adopted the curriculum created by others.

Research Questions

What did instructors find beneficial while creating, modifying, and utilizing InTeGrate sustainability materials and overtime? How did the creation and utilization of the sustainability curriculum influence instructors’ use of active learning techniques? How did structuring the curriculum around guiding principles focused on sustainability education influence instructors’ teaching?

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Access via Wiley

CCRI Statement on Racial Equity and Call to Action

We condemn the racism, discrimination, and fear that permeates communities across our nation. We stand in solidarity with protesters and activists who condemn the racial injustice that pervades America, and we commit ourselves to do our part in seeking immediate change toward racial justice. We understand that the racial inequity documented in decades of educational research has failed to democratize schools and colleges. We must do more.

While Coleman’s (1966) seminal report, “Equality of Educational Opportunity” exposed systematic disparities between white students and students of color over a half-century ago, deep-seated disparities continue to this day. Police violence against people of color must end. Injustices in healthcare, basic living and sustenance, and working conditions spotlighted by COVID-19 are unacceptable and must be addressed. We, therefore, call for educational researchers to join us in using an explicit racial equity lens in studying higher education in the United States, including community colleges and their students.

In his recent statement on police killings of Black people, American Educational Research Association (AERA) President Shaun Harper implored educational researchers to recognize that first and foremost, we are citizen-scholars who are obligated to conduct research that fuels transformative change. Our Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group at the University of Washington is inspired by Dr. Harper and Dr. Estela Bensimon at the University of Southern California who model how researchers should center equity-mindedness in their work. We embrace using an explicit racial lens to generate actionable knowledge that advances equity in community colleges, and all of education. This commitment reflects our core values and points us toward generating new knowledge necessary to dismantle structural racism and create a new future for education. Our commitment includes generating evidence to reform policy and practice into more socially just higher education in our state and across America.

Please join us in our journey to transform education to achieve racial equity. Policy and practice informed by actionable racial equity-conscious research is pivotal to achieving a more socially just education system.

CCRI Transfer Brief and Twitter Chat!

Join us Friday, May 15, 2020, 10-11:30 am, Pacific time, for a Twitter chat, #CCRIchat, addressing the importance of transfer working for students navigating higher education during COVID 19. Follow us on Twitter to see updates and questions for the chat. 

In advance, we invite you to read our latest transfer brief that synthesizes themes from a larger body of research on transfer partnerships that focus on improving transfer student outcomes that are relevant to students during and in the aftermath of this pandemic.

Looking forward to our TweetChat! Please reach out prior to with questions on how to participate, ccri@uw.edu.

Read Transfer Brief

New America

Hear from our Director about how community colleges can help their communities recover from COVID-19. As well as why the US government should assist them to do so based on lessons learned from the TAACCCT grant!

Read Article

Growth in Enrollment and Completion of STEM Community College Baccalaureate Degrees in Washington State

Washington State is experiencing substantial growth in the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) Community College Baccalaureate (CCB)1 programs. Student enrollments in STEM CCB programs are also growing, providing an opportune time to study these students and their enrollment in and completion of STEM CCB programs. This research on STEM CCB programs shows women complete degrees at nearly the same rate as men but female enrollments lag behind state and national statistics for STEM education. More closely reflecting national trends, the research shows disparities in enrollment by and completion of students of color compared to white and Asian students, though STEM CCB enrollees are more diverse than STEM enrollees in universities. Understanding these student demographics is important to informing state and institutional policy on STEM education where demand for STEM workers continues to grow in the state.

Read Data Note 6

Our Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group at the University of Washington has partnered with New America’s Center on Education and Skills (CESNA) to refresh and expand understanding of AB and CCB degrees nationally, looking again at state adoption and implementation of these degrees in the two- and four-year institutional contexts. With generous support from the Joyce Foundation and Lumina Foundation, our two-year project documents policies and processes; develops a set of consensus design principles and frameworks featuring evidence-based and equity-focused promising policies and practices on state adoption and institutional implementation; and disseminates lessons from past successes and failures.

Community College Baccalaureate Degree Completion in Washington

Complimenting an earlier data note on enrollment by Meza (2019), results of this data note examine the completion rates of students in Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) programs in Washington state by program area and student demographics. We find CCB degree completion rates are rising and now approach the baccalaureate completion rates for students transferring from a community college to a public four-year university in Washington state. This is notable as the CCB student population includes students who are older and more likely to be underserved by higher education than the transfer student group. Our results also show CCB degree completion rates vary by program area and student demographics, with completion rates for Latinx students of 66 percent and rivaling the completion rates of White and Asian students in the Business program area. However, equity gaps exist in degree completion in other CCB program areas that need to be addressed.

Read Data Note 4

Our Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group at the University of Washington has partnered with New America’s Center on Education and Skills (CESNA) to refresh and expand understanding of AB and CCB degrees nationally, looking again at state adoption and implementation of these degrees in the two- and four-year institutional contexts. With generous support from the Joyce Foundation and Lumina Foundation, our two-year project documents policies and processes; develops a set of consensus design principles and frameworks featuring evidence-based and equity-focused promising policies and practices on state adoption and institutional implementation; and disseminates lessons from past successes and failures.

How Do Students Earning CCB Degrees Compare to Their Peers at Public Universities in Washington State?

This data note explores the extent to which the student population earning baccalaureate degrees at community and technical colleges mirrors the demographic characteristics of the student population earning baccalaureate degrees in comparable programs of study offered by four public universities in Washington State. Demographic analysis reveals important differences between these two student populations, both broadly and in the specific program areas of business administration and nursing. Among business administration degree earners, for instance, compared to men a substantially higher proportion of women earn CCB degrees (56.6%) relative to women earning baccalaureate degrees in business at public universities (45.8%). In terms of racial diversity, the entire population of CCB degree earners is more diverse than university baccalaureate earners, especially among African American and Latinx students. These results provide important preliminary evidence of the extent to which CCB policy serves as a policy lever to increase gender and racial diversity in baccalaureate attainment in Washington State.

Read Data Note 5

Our Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group at the University of Washington has partnered with New America’s Center on Education and Skills (CESNA) to refresh and expand understanding of AB and CCB degrees nationally, looking again at state adoption and implementation of these degrees in the two- and four-year institutional contexts. With generous support from the Joyce Foundation and Lumina Foundation, our two-year project documents policies and processes; develops a set of consensus design principles and frameworks featuring evidence-based and equity-focused promising policies and practices on state adoption and institutional implementation; and disseminates lessons from past successes and failures.

New Journal Article on Science Education

We’re thrilled to announce a new STEM publication in Cognition and Instruction that CCRI’s Lia Wetzstein co-authored with former colleagues, Susan Bobbitt Nolan and Alexandra Goodell, from their research together at the LIFE Center, University of Washington.

Keywords: Science education, project-based learning, motivation and engagement, material tools, design-based research, cultural-historical activity theory

Designing Material Tools to Mediate Disciplinary Engagement in Environmental Science

Published online February 4, 2020

ABSTRACT
Disciplinary activity in science is tool-mediated, and instructional designers often build in opportunities for students to use the conceptual and material tools of the discipline as they engage in activity. When this activity takes place in schools, students and teachers may modify or reject disciplinary tools to fit the goals of schooling. We report collaborative, design-based research to develop and optimize material tools to mediate student and teacher activity in a project-based high school environmental science course along dimensions thought to promote productive disciplinary engagement. We use Engestrom’s Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to understand both the collaborative design process (university-based researchers and classroom teachers) and the implementation in classrooms. In addition to quantitative analyses of student engagement, two cases of design-test-redesign-retest cycles are presented to illustrate our methods and provide evidence for the use of material tools to support productive disciplinary engagement. Based on our research, we suggest design principles for developing material tools to support disciplinary engagement which take into account the necessary hybridity of project-based learning in schools. Implications for design and implementation of project-based science are discussed.

Here is the suggested citation and access the full article:

Susan Bobbitt Nolen, Lia Wetzstein & Alexandra Goodell (2020) Designing Material Tools to Mediate Disciplinary Engagement in Environmental Science, Cognition and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/07370008.2020.1718677

CCRI at NISTS 2020

We’re looking forward to having some of our teammates attend the NISTS 2020 conference this February in Atlanta, Georgia. Check out the catalog for the conference below!

Lia Wetzstein, CCRI Associate Research Director (pages 22 & 45)

NISTS 2020 Catalog