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Why a journal of
promising practices and what, by the way, does the term “promising practices”
mean? |
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The term
“promising practices” has been used by various institutions since the early
90s, often replacing the phrase “best practices,” which may be more familiar
to you, but which suggests that there is a
best way to achieve a goal when it is more likely that there are many good ways. Parsing the term “promising practices”
suggests it simply refers to methods, habits, or strategies that are likely
to yield good outcomes; often, however, it means something more specific. |
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We, of course,
are using the term because it is the one used by the Achieving the Dream
initiative. Yet, we may need to define
it differently than they do. “In
Achieving the Dream,” Margaret Rivera, Vice President of the American
Association of Community Colleges explains: “We are fairly specific about
what we mean by the term. Promising
practices are those strategies that colleges have implemented to help
students be more successful, and
that the college has data that shows that, for at least one term, students
who went through that program/strategy were more successful than others who
did not.” That is, for Achieving the
Dream, in order for any practice to be considered a “’promising practice,’
there has to be before and after data—and the after data indicates some rate
of improvement.” |
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The articles in
this edition describe activities shaped in the spirit of those practices,
such as active, student-centered, collaborative learning, that are considered
promising in current educational literature.
This may not be strictly in line with how “Achieving the Dream”
defines the term in that we may not have data specific to our college that
indicates a quantifiable net gain.
Therefore, the need to define, clearly, what we mean by “promising practices” when we call this a promising
practices journal arises. We hope—as
we work on this journal, modifying it to best serve our needs as educators
and the specific needs of our students—to engage the campus community in
on-going conversations about what constitutes a promising practice here at
CCP and how its impact is measured. |
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For
now at least, we will borrow the habits of the semanticist and begin defining
the phrase as it is currently being used in this e-volume. We can also take a cue from the way the
Center for Youth Development and Policy Research uses the term in their
Promising Practices in Afterschool Systems (PPAS). For them, as for Achieving the Dream,
“Promising practices … have indicators or evidence of positive results.” Yet what constitutes those indicators at
PPAS is seemingly quite subjective: “Key people—such as parents, children and
youth, program staff, educators, community members, and funders—have
determined that these practices are contributing to the quality of
programming and the well-being of children, youth, families, and
communities.” In this case, the data
valued is the impression of those involved.
So too for us; we will rely to an extent on our impression of how well
our strategies work for our students as well as the impression of our
students and others who are clearly “key players.” It is important, however, that we pick up
the current trend in higher education and shift from a “culture of anecdote”
to a “culture of evidence” (Bailey
and Alfonso). This journal is a
step in that direction. |
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The
desire to measure and monitor student success may strike some of us more
romantic types as being counter to the deeper aims of education—how can one
measure enlightenment? How can one
really know the nature of the soul, after all? Moreover, there are known limitations to
“data-driven” policies because quantifying effectiveness is bedeviled by
issues of causality and the difficulty of comparing like-cohort with
like-cohort. In “Paths to Persistence:
An Analysis of Research on Program Effectiveness in Community Colleges”
conducted by the Community College Research Center, Thomas R. Bailey and Mariana Alfonso acknowledge these
difficulties: “It is hard to identify a causal relationship between remedial
education and subsequent educational attainment.” In short what determines “promising”
depends on defining innumerable abstractions—the more fundamental, the
stickier: education, success, results…. It may be that
these words, “promising” and “practices,” can‘t be fixed into a formula with x always related to y with a ratio of z. But we should at least try to pin down what we mean and how
this should be measured for the conversation borne of that attempt will keep
us honest. |
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Therefore, in some ways, this
e-journal is more about the conversation that arises when we conduct
classroom research than about the research itself. That is, what we talk about when we talk
about teaching (a nod here, of course, to Ned Bachus’s
recent refashioning of Raymond Carver’s story title, “What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love”)—what happens when we share what we believe works well in
the classroom—may be where the benefit lies. Thus, while the Achieving the
Dream initiative is based in the idea of using evidence to direct policy,
programs, and practices, we must accept a certain kind of uncertainty.
Acknowledging this, Bailey and
Alfonso conclude: “The interaction between research and practice
should not be seen as a search by experts for the final and definitive answer
to the question ‘What works?’ Rather, it is a constant and continuous
process—a conversation within and among the colleges and with outside
researchers and policy-makers, using the best possible data and the most
appropriate methodologies, as practitioners try to improve their practice in
a constantly changing environment” (29). |
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This
conversation about teaching and learning, however, will not matter unless we
have the chance to listen and respond.
In their recent literature review of the state of research at
community colleges, Bailey and Alfonso found “the dissemination and
discussion of research” on community colleges currently inadequate. The authors mandate the following amends,
which we have kept foremost in mind in building this web-site: |
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Gains
in any field of study are made when research is conducted, disseminated,
compiled, critiqued and tested in the crucible of the real world. This e-journal is designed to facilitate
conversation about teaching and learning in such a way that we can make gains
in our persistence and retention rates and do more each educational cycle
than “re-invent the wheel.” It’s
title, Praktikos, which is the
Greek antecedent to our practical,
points to this e-journal’s focus on well-advised and useful classroom
practices. We hope this e-journal
becomes a place where we can build on our collective wisdom and improve
institutional memory by keeping the conversations had during Professional
Development Week dynamic and by making them easily retrievable. |
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We
invite all of you in the CCP community to make use of this resource and
contribute to future renditions. |
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References |
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Bailey,
Thomas R. and Mariana Alfonso (2005, January). Paths
to persistence: An analysis of research on program effectiveness in community
colleges. |
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“What’s
a promising practice?” Promising
Practices in Afterschool Systems. |
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Rivera,
Margaret. “Re: AACC Web Site Comment: promising practices.” Email to the author. 30 Aug 2007. |