Community colleges, as open access institutions, shoulder most of the responsibility in serving marginalized individuals accessing higher education. Therefore, community colleges play a critical role. But what are new and incoming community colleges students' needs, in their own words? In this project, we explored an innovative component of a…

Adopting a qualitative case study methodology, the present study illuminates how two multilingual students enrolled in a U.S. community college ESL class negotiated the sociocultural norms valued in their multiple communities to make investment in learning English in college. Drawing on Gee's theory of Discourse and identity (1996) and Norton's…

English teachers encourage writing that opens college students to transformative learning through soul work as John Dirkx describes and develops the concept of soul work in his theory of transformative learning. This soul work involves the conscious attempt to bring to the surface myths, images, and metaphors from the unconscious through…