Reclaiming Opportunities for Effective Teaching

An Institutional Ethnographic Study of Community College Course Outlines

This book examines the increased standardization and management of community college course outlines in Ontario and the associated decline in the ability of college professors to effectively educate their students. Dunn tracks the changes of increased pressure from corporations to privatize public services and make them for-profit friendly. Interviews of program faculty who have recently been forced to use course outlines for the first time, along with critical analyses of a sample course outline and a series of union-related texts illuminate the issue. Dunn attributes the shift of power in community colleges to various factors which include: the ideological work college employees do to support global finance capital, the managerial labor which establishes a course outline, the textual duties that faculty members facilitate to set up their own ruling, and the performance work that faculty members do to execute the textual rules of their prescriptive course outline work. In order to rectify the harmful effects of the new standardized and supervised curriculum, Dunn identifies areas where effective teaching and learning can be reclaimed.