Developmental courses in community colleges often leave students unprepared, demeaned, and uninspired. These gatekeeper courses need reform, especially in terms of curriculum and instruction. One framework -- Dr. Gholdy Muhammed's Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) -- could be useful for developmental courses and students. HRL is a teaching…

Little research exists about embedded remediation (ER) in college journalism and mass communication (JMC) programs. ER could support students who are underprepared for college-level writing. Because ER would affect faculty's professional practice, this study explored its feasibility by investigating JMC faculty perceptions of ER and its…

Despite the push for all institutions of higher learning to embrace a corequisite model for writing instruction, there is limited evidence that suggests this model is desirable for all students. This study seeks to expand our understanding of the characteristics of students enrolled in Basic Writing at a 4-year comprehensive university, and the…

Research shows many new college students may be remedial in English language arts or mathematics (Jaggers & Bickerstaff, 2018). For faculty in journalism and mass communication (JMC) fields, teaching struggling student writers can be especially challenging as these students may not have the fundamental knowledge to build applied writing skills…

Every year, underprepared students begin college with remediation courses that do not count toward their degree. Although enrolled in an institution of higher education, students may be taking few, if any, college-level courses. The underprepared student presents a significant challenge in the effort to raise educational attainment. Thus, the…

Despite increasing enrollments of foreign-born students in US community colleges, extant research on serving the needs of linguistic minority (LM) learners in higher education is decidedly scarce. When LM learners enter post-secondary settings, they simultaneously inherit the burden of securing the academic resources needed to navigate college…

Fostering a sense of belonging for community college students is a shared responsibility among all institutional areas, including academics, student services, and student life. This article presents a collaborative tutorial initiated and sustained by academics and support services that addressed the needs of students cycling through writing…

A recent state-wide curricular shift in developmental course offerings mandated that the exit levels of developmental reading and writing coursework in every public institution of higher education in Texas be merged into one accelerated and integrated developmental reading and writing course. This project examined the effects of that curricular…

As researchers come to recognize the origins of dysgraphia, we can better suggest optimal approaches to remediation. In defining dysgraphia, we review the writing process, research on the development of writing, and various factors related to either spelling difficulties, visual-motor difficulties, or both, that might interfere in the process of…

The traditional remedial, stand-alone reading and writing courses at one community college were redesigned to create a single integrated reading and writing developmental course (IRW). Unlike a truly accelerated course, this IRW course combined two courses at the same level and therefore highlights the impact of integrating reading and writing.…

In the last few years, college and university systems nationwide have implemented sweeping reforms to placement and course sequences to rectify systemic inequities affecting incoming students. Many of these reforms acknowledge that standardized placement tests create false distinctions between "prepared" and "underprepared"…

Despite collaborative teacher intentions, students often fall silent or acquiesce to the teacher's agenda during writing conferences. In annotation-driven conferences, students prepare for and lead with annotations on their own writing. Their self-annotations provide a blueprint for teachers to recognize and respond to rhetorical choices.…

Objective/Research Question: Students with disabilities, including deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students, are enrolling in college at rates higher than in the past with most of them pursuing an associate's degree. For DHH students, their reading ability is a predictor of their academic achievement in college. However, more than half of DHH…

It has been twenty-seven years since a small group of faculty at the Community College of Baltimore County, faced with the discovery that two-thirds of students placed in our upper-level basic writing course never passed first year composition, began the development of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP), one of the earliest corequisite…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a curriculum based on self-regulated strategy instruction in college developmental writing courses. Prior research that had found large effects on the writing quality for essays without sources was extended to include strategies for critical reading and note-taking, writing summary response…