While developmental education in community colleges has the potential to prepare students for college-level work, its effectiveness and need is often questioned. Further, while Latinx students are overrepresented in developmental courses, there is a dearth of literature on their experiences in such courses and how to effectively serve their needs in developmental contexts. This article provides an overview of the literature related to Latinx students in developmental writing to point out areas that have been understudied and then introduces an Empowerment Framework for Latinx students, a model which combines a deeper understanding of language, power, and preparing Latinx students for college-level writing.
During the past decade, much reform has taken place within reading and writing developmental education at community colleges. One area of reform has focused on reducing the number of developmental education credits taken while accelerating the students’ literacy growth. This article describes a pilot project where, instead of taking a developmental education reading and writing course, the students co-enrolled in a zero-credit social sciences skills lab and at least one college-level gateway course. The lab focuses on reading and writing in the disciplines. Using classroom examples, the article also outlines the pedagogical approaches used in the lab. This 2018–19 pilot was characterized as promising, using prescribed institutional success metrics; as a result, version 2.0 will be implemented for 2021–22.
This article takes up the central question of how college-level prison education programs should be justified and defended. Author Patrick Filipe Conway argues that the focus on recidivism rates as justification for major initiatives like the Second Chance Pell Program and New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s Right Priorities initiative is misguided and puts the long-term viability of prison education programs at risk. He builds his argument on an analysis of the funding sources for Cuomo’s initiative as well as on an exploration of the potential negative pedagogical impacts of justification through recidivism rates and taxpayer savings. The article contends that a better defense of college-level prison education is one that locates it as a type of firm counterbalance to the inherent inequities within our communities and the US judicial system, thus better capturing the full ethical responsibility behind the commitment to higher education in prison.
Despite recent efforts to improve college-level students’ academic writing, the ways this skill develops continues to be vastly unexplored. Students do not meet the current literacy demands posed by higher education. These demands become more strenuous when students have to write in English, a language they do not master. The current study reports on the implementation of a systematized assistance model for writing in English as a Foreign Language in a Colombian public university’s bilingual teacher education program. Weekly tutoring sessions were provided to 16 students from an academic writing course in one semester. Common error patterns in their writing samples were identified and categorized with an analytical rubric and students’ reactions to the systematized assistance model were collected through a questionnaire. Results revealed that students benefited significantly from tutor support and professor’s feedback especially in terms of metalinguistic awareness, knowledge of the Process Approach to writing and accuracy in language convention use.
Many developmental writing courses in colleges focus on teaching students isolated skills, with little emphasis on how such skills are applicable to the actual process of writing. This article focuses on capturing the perspectives of students enrolled in a developmental writing course designed around an explicit process-oriented pedagogy. The instructor assigned metacognitive tasks and aimed to be transparent with students about the purpose of all course activities and assignments. The findings point to the various ways students can learn to value and use a process approach when writing. The paper concludes with recommendations for helping both instructors and institutions foster a process-oriented writing culture in college classrooms. It also points to future research possibilities.
A consistent challenge of implementing blended learning is the support that students should receive when using online courseware outside of class time. For blended learning to be successful in terms of student learning, the online courseware would need to be able to support the learning of students outside of class time. An interactive, digital courseware was used for a developmental writing course at California State University - Bakersfield. The main goal of this study was to gather evidence to determine if the use of this online courseware was associated with higher student achievement within a blended learning environment. After controlling for confounding factors, a multi-level regression was used to determine the contribution of courseware usage to student achievement, which was measured by a final writing exam. The number of writing topics completed by students in the courseware was found to be positively related to their exam scores. This provides preliminary evidence that the online courseware with certain interactive features can be supportive of learning outside of class.
This retrospective article presents the results of a pilot study on student perceptions of a corequisite model for devel- opmental writing. Qualitative survey data was collected at the beginning, middle, and end of Fall 2013 at a large public university in central Texas. A total of 21 students participated in this study. Eleven students who were near the cut-off for the placement exam were enrolled in a first-semester composition course with other students who placed directly into first-semester composition. These 11 students also agreed to meet outside of the composition classroom at a set time for the corequisite course. Another ten students who were near the cut-off for the placement exam were placed in a tra- ditional 16-week developmental writing course that served as a control. Responses were analyzed using coding practices outlined by Saldaña (2009), including initial coding, categorizing, and theming. Themes that emerged in the responses of students enrolled in the traditional 16-week developmental writing course included the following: (a) this course is pointless/a waste, (b) mismatch between placement and self-perception, and (c) transferability. Themes that emerged in the responses of students enrolled in the corequisite model included the following: (a) a lot is riding on success in the corequisite composition course, (b) unsure/nervous about expectations, and (c) improved self-efficacy at the end of the course. The major implication of this study is the importance of including student voices in the implementation of models for developmental education.
SECOND- CHANCE PEDAGOGY: Integrating College- Level Skills and Strategies into a Developmental Writing Course