Making Change for Equity: An Inquiry-Based Professional Learning Initiative

ABSTRACT

To close equity gaps in California Community Colleges, we need institutional and curricular transformations. This article discusses research on pedagogical and institutional approaches to equity and change that guided Basic Skills faculty, administrators, student service staff, and students in the Academic Committee for Equity and Success (ACES) at a California community college. It describes how ACES members formed communities of practice (CoP), groups sharing a passion about addressing specific goals, and employed an inquiry-based model for professional learning entailing a cycle of examining disaggregated data, questioning, designing and testing initiatives, feedback, and revision. The authors analyze the resulting inquiry projects and participant reflections, feedback, and reports from the lens of equity research and a Value Creation framework for identifying cycles of learning enabled through CoP. The initial participant responses suggest the inquiry model afforded rich learning and is a promising option for supporting innovation and institutional change toward equity. Further research is needed to identify effective inquiry structures for professional learning and measure equity outcomes within the community college setting.

KEYWORDS:

• equity
• inquiry
• professional learning
• communities of practice
• Value Creation

Notes

¹ Logic Models are tools for mapping group resources, activities, and goals. They help to clarify thinking and in the overall planning and assessment process (MacKinnon & Arnott, 2006).

² Only seven sections of the two highest levels of ESL are in this count. Ten lower level sections of ESL also got proactive registration support, but that practice started prior to 2015.