Non-traditionally aged adult students continue to be the majority on California’s community college campuses. Therefore, faculty should employ teaching styles consistent with their needs. The literature suggests many factors determine how higher education faculty initially learn to teach and how they develop teaching styles in general, such as professional development activities and educational philosophy. Previous studies have linked certain demographic characteristics with the adoption of learner-centered teaching styles. Therefore, this study sought to identify the developmental activities, educational philosophies, and demographic characteristics of learner-centered faculty at Santa Ana College. Santa Ana College is a large community college located in Southern California. Identifying commonalities in teaching style development of learner-centered faculty may help improve or enhance faculty development programs and resources, which may in turn help improve student learning or student retention.

The Principles of Adult Learning Scale (Conti, 1978) was used to determine the degree to which faculty adopted the learner-centered teaching style. Questions were added to identify the demographic, experiential, and philosophical characteristics of the study participants. The results show Santa Ana College faculty employ an eclectic approach that combines aspects of both the teacher-centered and learner-centered styles. Compared to recent studies, they were as learner-centered as their national peer group. Study results indicate the following were not statistically significant: age, years of teaching experience (K-12 or higher education), full or part-time status, publishing activity, teaching assistant experience, technology workshops, and accessing the local campus center for learning and instruction. However, many variables were statistically significant (p < .05) and increased the degree to which the learner-centered style was adopted: gender; educational division; philosophy of adult education; college-level coursework in adult learning and in general teaching and learning theory; teaching and learning workshops, educational conference attendance; mentorship; and, accessing external sites for teaching and learning resources (e.g., ERIC, the Internet). Recommendations included maximizing faculty development activities that were positively associated with learner-centered teaching. Further, Santa Ana College should determine if their students possess a higher degree of adult learner or underprepared adult learner characteristics. This may help determine if a mix of teacher-centered and learner-centered teaching styles might be appropriate.