Women Students: The Community/Junior College Connection

A Feminist Critique of Articles About Women Published in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice : 1990-2000

“…Fifteen women-centered articles (Bower, 1996;Castellanos & Fujitsubo, 1997;Dycus & Newlon, 1995;Ebbers, Gallisath, Rockel, & Coyan, 2000;Grover, 1992;Johnson, Schwartz, & Bower, 2000;Long & Blanchard, 1991;Miller & Creswell, 1998;Murrell, Riggs, & Lee, 1996;Rotkis & McDaniel, 1993;Rountree & Frusher, 1991;Rountree & Lambert, 1992;Smith & Leaman, 1991;Townsend, 1998;Wood, 1999) and 11 gender-as-variable articles (Bonham & Luckie, 1993;Deming & Gowen, 1990;Gowdy & Robertson, 1994;Grimes & Antworth, 1996;Hawthorne, 1994;Kempner & Taylor, 1993;McCarthy-Tucker, 1999;McKenney & Cejda, 2000;Piland, Hess, & Piland, 2000;Silcox & Herren, 1993;Winter, 1998) were identified from among the 491 articles published in the CCJRP between 1990 and 2000. In these terms, a feminist critique is appropriate and necessary.…”

“…For example, Long and Blanchard (1991) examined the relationship between women's enrollment patterns in the community college and changing attitudes concerning women's roles. Without a critical analysis of this complex thesis, the enrollment data alone are unremarkable and do little to advance our understanding of this proposed relationship.…”

Viewing community college students through the lenses of gender and color

“…Not only are more women students enrolling in community colleges and completing more of the associate degrees, Long and Blanchard (1991) argue that this population now "constitute[s] the new majority in most degree programs from associate degrees to graduate degrees with few exceptions" (p. 47). In light of women's increasing college-going participation and associate degree completion, to what degree has the role of women students been addressed in the community college literature?…”

Diversity in student attitudes and motivations in the community college composition classroom

“…In general, writers who discuss diversity overtly seem to take one of three approaches. The first is the administrative approach (e.g., Kasworm, 1990;Long & Blanchard, 1991), which is concerned primarily with student groups requiring special programs and/or remediation. The second approach, the pedagogical approach (e.g., Galis, 1993;Bizzell, 1986), focuses on classroom management of groups perceived to have special learning needs; the special groups studied in this literature include a wide range of tj^es of student difference, among them gender, race or ethnicity, sexual preference, age, socio-economic status, social background, physical disability, learning disability, personality type , learning style, educational objectives, primary language, and writing ability.…”

“…Although the groups of students vmder consideration are often determined by the political and social atmosphere (the needs of veterans, for example, were much more commonly addressed in the literatiu:e twenty years ago, immediately post-Vietnam, than they are today), and although these writers do not pretend to ignore the social and political questions raised by changes in the student population, their primary concern is with the programmatic needs of these students. That is, discussions of, for example, adult students tend to focus not on classroom management or empowerment, but rather on enrollment patterns, retention, and special needs for support, aid, or remediation (e.g., Kasworm, 1990;Knoell, 1973;Long & Blanchard, 1991)-members of the adult student population are defined less by their learning needs or their social/political concerns than by their part-time and discontinuous enrollment, their relatively low need for career coimselling, their concentration in occupational fields, and their relatively high need for special support programs to help them balance multiple responsibilities (Bulpitt, 1973).…”