Brett Griffiths | Schoolcraft College (original) (raw)

Articles by Brett Griffiths

Radical Teacher, Dec 2, 2022

Community College Journal of Research and Practice

Pedagogy, Mar 28, 2019

Abstract:The authors use three frameworks of resilience to analyze interviews with faculty from t... more Abstract:The authors use three frameworks of resilience to analyze interviews with faculty from two-year colleges: individual, psychosocial, and design resilience. They describe behaviors and structures that shape the resilience of English departments in two-year colleges and suggest a model for sustained departmental and disciplinary resilience.

Administrators of writing centers at two-year colleges keenly feel the call for improved research... more Administrators of writing centers at two-year colleges keenly feel the call for improved research and greater visibility of writing “outcomes.” In the past decade, federal calls to raise rates of education attainment have inspired various initiatives to increase rates of student completion in degree and certificate programs (e.g., Achieving the Dream and the Guided Pathway initiative). At the same time, greater public awareness brings with it additional pressure and scrutiny on educational resources to demonstrate specific and measurable impacts. Chief among these— in the spotlight for education reform for over 100 years—is college writing.1 Placed within the context of college attainment goals and what has been called “accountability funding” in K-12, writing center administrators at two-year colleges find themselves again revisiting assessment and research practices with the goal of demonstrating to administrators and policymakers that writing centers improve “student success.”

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2021

In this chapter, we examine how professional organizations shape teaching and programmatic excell... more In this chapter, we examine how professional organizations shape teaching and programmatic excellence in two-year college writing instruction and how two-year college English faculty are reshaping two-year college writing studies to advance equitable educational access and outcomes. The authors argue that supporting two-year college English faculty professionalization and engagement with disciplinary organizations is essential to narrow equity gaps and expand critical, community-relevant learning experiences for all postsecondary students in the United States.

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2021

Cover, Table of Contents, and About to Author pages for Praxis Vol 15, No 1 (2017): Two-Year Coll... more Cover, Table of Contents, and About to Author pages for Praxis Vol 15, No 1 (2017): Two-Year Colleges.University Writing Cente

Teaching English in the Two-Year College

In fall 2019, the Two-Year College English Association distributed a survey to two-year college E... more In fall 2019, the Two-Year College English Association distributed a survey to two-year college English faculty across the United States through professional listservs, regional distribution lists, and social media platforms. This report summarizes the key data derived from 1,062 responses to close-ended questions about workload related to teaching, service, leadership, and professional development. The report discusses the demographic profile, employment status, and contractual obligations in course assignments of the two-year college English faculty who responded. It also summarizes Information about respondents’ overload teaching, their autonomy within their teaching responsibilities, and the kinds of service and professional development activities in which they engaged.

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Mar 1, 2021

Pedagogy, Apr 1, 2019

Routledge eBooks, May 10, 2022

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Dec 12, 2021

ABSTRACT In this article, we describe initial findings from a survey of English composition facul... more ABSTRACT In this article, we describe initial findings from a survey of English composition faculty at two-year colleges about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their workload. This survey, conducted as a follow-up to ongoing research by the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), examines the working conditions and practices of English faculty at two-year colleges. Respondents described broad increases in English faculty’s workload and identified the institutional supports available to support that work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of institutional support provided for faculty. Echoing previous scholarship, these findings suggest that the pandemic exacerbated existing gaps in institutional support for faculty. Thus, we identify the 2020–2021 academic years as an opportunity to reflect upon the radical changes and fraught collaborations that enable our institutional work. We discuss how institutional partners and faculty colleagues evaluate the intersections of labor, professional development, and disciplinary knowledge as sites where institutions can remove information silos and improve the flow of knowledge to better and more holistically support our students. This focus on opportunities suggests that we use the exigency of the pandemic to learn from this experience and also address longstanding problems and inequities in higher education that have emerged or become more visible from the impact of COVID-19 as observed through the pandemic TYCA Workload Survey.

Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2011

Drawing on data from interviews with mathematics faculty in three different types of undergraduat... more Drawing on data from interviews with mathematics faculty in three different types of undergraduate institutions and using Rabardel's model of instrument use (Vérillon & Rabardel 1995), we describe three ways textbooks mediate college faculty work regarding instruction. The model anticipates epistemic and pragmatic mediations between the instructor and teaching, others, and self, with the textbook playing a significant role. We provide illustrations of each of these mediations as described by the participants. Pragmatic rather than epistemic mediations were more common. In addition, we found that the mediations seem largely dependent on instructors' categorical perceptions of their students, either as "math students" or as "undergraduate students". These alternate perceptions resulted in different descriptions of schemas for using the textbook with each type of student. The analysis generates further questions for research regarding either a developmental component or a curricular component that could explain this categorization of students. Keywords Textbook mediation. College level. Mathematics instructors. Textbook use. Tertiary level Textbooks appear to be a predominant feature in the teaching of tertiary mathematics, but the phenomenon of instructor-textbook use in higher education has not been extensively studied. We wanted to know how textbooks are being used and what faculty's reasons behind those uses are. We had three reasons for pursuing these questions. First, in the USA, there have been calls for changing instruction in undergraduate mathematics to promote greater student engagement with the material and heavier use of technology, especially in the first 2 years (Blair, 2006; Steen, 1998). In order to support such changes, new textbooks

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Apr 30, 2023

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Aug 31, 2017

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 2021

In this article, we describe initial findings from a survey of English composition faculty at two... more In this article, we describe initial findings from a survey of English composition faculty at two-year colleges about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their workload. This survey, conducted as a follow-up to ongoing research by the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), examines the working conditions and practices of English faculty at two-year colleges. Respondents described broad increases in English faculty’s workload and identified the institutional supports available to support that work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of institutional support provided for faculty. Echoing previous scholarship, these findings suggest that the pandemic exacerbated existing gaps in institutional support for faculty. Thus, we identify the 2020–2021 academic years as an opportunity to reflect upon the radical changes and fraught collaborations that enable our …

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2021

Teaching English in the Two Year College, 2021

Radical Teacher, Dec 2, 2022

Community College Journal of Research and Practice

Pedagogy, Mar 28, 2019

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2021

Teaching English in the Two-Year College

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Mar 1, 2021

Pedagogy, Apr 1, 2019

Routledge eBooks, May 10, 2022

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Dec 12, 2021

Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2011

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Apr 30, 2023

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Aug 31, 2017

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 2021

New Directions for Community Colleges, 2021

Teaching English in the Two Year College, 2021

Utah State University Press eBooks, Dec 14, 2023

Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 2016

This white paper presents current research and makes recommendations on the array of placement pr... more This white paper presents current research and makes recommendations on the array of placement practices for writing courses at two-year colleges. Specifically, this white paper (1) identifies the current state of placement practices and trends, (2) offers an overview of placement alternatives, and (3) provides recommendations on placement reform and processes. TYCA encourages two-year college faculty to use this white paper to guide placement reform on their campuses, to be leaders in the field and professional organizations, and to advocate for best practices with policymakers.

Utah State University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2017

The educational impact of poverty on working-class students often goes unexamined in disciplinary... more The educational impact of poverty on working-class students often goes unexamined in disciplinary conversations about composition pedagogy and theory. As a result, narratives about education and social uplift tend to obscure many of the lived realities of students experiencing poverty. In first-year composition courses, where many students first encounter the linguistic and cultural expectations of a middle class professoriate, examining the relationships between class and literacy becomes essential. As a discipline that has sought to help acclimate students to the linguistic and cultural expectations of a predominantly middle-class professoriate, composition studies has an intellectual and, in our view, a moral imperative to examine the relationships between poverty, socioeconomic class, and literacy learning. Such examination is particularly important in two-year college settings, where students from low-income backgrounds are most likely to enroll and where class effects can create additional barriers to upward mobility. Our chapter presents a dialogic analysis of two case studies examining two-year college composition instructors’ responses to the phenomenon we call “poverty effects”: the combined social, emotional, and material impacts of poverty that can disproportionately influence the behaviors, learning, and academic performances of working-class and working poor students. Our studies took place in two very different geographical, racial, and cultural contexts. The first study examines three colleges in the post-industrialized Midwest United States and the second a tribally-controlled college system on the Navajo Nation.5 Taken together, our findings demonstrate that faculty face what we describe as “routine crises” of poverty effects in their composition classrooms. The language participants used to describe such conditions varied, as did the particulars of their pedagogical responses. However, all dealt with poverty effects through individualized, ad hoc negotiations that they sometimes found logistically and emotionally taxing. While these responses were empathetic and occasionally went well beyond what many might expect from a college professor, they were often insufficient or unsustainable, given the pervasiveness of student poverty; the colleges themselves seemed to have few programmatic strategies for understanding and responding to poverty effects in classrooms. These findings suggest that two-year colleges—and other access-oriented institutions where students experience routine poverty-related crises—should consider developing program-level responses to these conditions. In order to enable such programmatic conversations and decision-making, we argue that Composition Studies must itself develop a better critical vocabulary for discussing poverty effects in the writing classroom among department colleagues.

Sixteen Teachers Teaching, 2021

The author draws on her own experiences as a writer who lost her authorial voice and on similar e... more The author draws on her own experiences as a writer who lost her authorial voice and on similar experiences shared by students to advocate for a more intentionally compassionate and responsive pedagogy.

Class in the Composition Classroom, 2017

The educational impact of poverty on working-class students often goes unexamined in disciplinar... more The educational impact of poverty on working-class students often goes unexamined in disciplinary conversations about composition pedagogy and theory. As a result, narratives about education and social uplift tend to obscure many of the lived realities of students experiencing poverty. In first-year composition courses, where many students first encounter the linguistic and cultural expectations of a middle class professoriate, examining the relationships between class and literacy becomes essential. As a discipline that has sought to help acclimate students to the linguistic and cultural expectations of a predominantly middle-class professoriate, composition studies has an intellectual and, in our view, a moral imperative to examine the relationships between poverty, socioeconomic class, and literacy learning. Such examination is particularly important in two-year college settings, where students from low-income backgrounds are most likely to enroll and where class effects can create additional barriers to upward mobility.
Our chapter presents a dialogic analysis of two case studies examining two-year college composition instructors’ responses to the phenomenon we call “poverty effects”: the combined social, emotional, and material impacts of poverty that can disproportionately influence the behaviors, learning, and academic performances of working-class and working poor students. Our studies took place in two very different geographical, racial, and cultural contexts. The first study examines three colleges in the post-industrialized Midwest United States and the second a tribally-controlled college system on the Navajo Nation.5 Taken together, our findings demonstrate that faculty face what we describe as “routine crises” of poverty effects in their composition classrooms. The language participants used to describe such conditions varied, as did the particulars of their pedagogical responses. However, all dealt with poverty effects through individualized, ad hoc negotiations that they sometimes found logistically and emotionally taxing. While these responses were empathetic and occasionally went well beyond what many might expect from a college professor, they were often insufficient or unsustainable, given the pervasiveness of student poverty; the colleges themselves seemed to have few programmatic strategies for understanding and responding to poverty effects in classrooms. These findings suggest that two-year colleges—and other access-oriented institutions where students experience routine poverty-related crises—should consider developing program-level responses to these conditions. In order to enable such programmatic conversations and decision-making, we argue that Composition Studies must itself develop a better critical vocabulary for discussing poverty effects in the writing classroom among department colleagues.