This article examines transdisciplinarity in developmental education and Basic Writing in the context of externally-driven developmental education reforms. We report on a pilot study survey of 143 developmental educators regarding their professional identity, engagement, and resilience. Respondents identified professional roles and interactions…

As the cost of college tuition continues to soar, community colleges and state and local governments offer a wide range of access and opportunity programs to best serve low-income and academically underprepared students. In this article, I present a case study of two instructors, both of whom regularly teach Basic Writing courses at the community…

This narrative essay describes a basic writing instructor's engagement with student confusion in a hybrid Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course. The story examines the ways confusion can mark sites of engagement for students and teachers and how ALP courses, in particular, might mediate effective (and ineffective) forms of confusion.

Structural practices used by community colleges to assess, place, and teach students are undergoing transformation. Many recent changes have been shaped by the idea that barriers to success, combined with traditional policies, work against helping students pass through the developmental writing pathway. This article's purpose was to investigate…

The college open door policy initiated in the 1960s made access to higher education available for more students in the United States. People who were once excluded from enrolling in college now have an opportunity to earn a college degree. Some first-time students, significantly underprepared in writing, have been required to enroll in…

This essay describes the process of reassessing our BW program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in order to cultivate a more deliberate, transparent negotiation among stakeholders toward a "transcultural ethos." Informed by Bruce Horner's argument that leading-edge work on language and language difference can take place in BW, we…

In this essay I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of the language surrounding the California State University (CSU) Chancellor's Office latest plan to curb remediation, the Early Start program. I consider Early Start in the context of what I argue is the evolution of three major frameworks for Basic Writing in the CSU: the CSU Chancellor's…

An adjunct turned writing program administrator reflects on her professional journey and describes efforts to improve the teaching environment amongst composition faculty--primarily part-time--within her department. Based on a local program review, a pilot faculty relations plan was implemented that addressed two major areas: offering more…

This article recuperates the notion of "strategic value," but to new ends: rather than arguing whether or not basic writing should continue, this case study looks to one institution where it does, asking what value the category "basic writer" holds for teachers at this site. On the one hand, they confirm the existing…

In this article, the authors report on an assessment project they recently conducted at their open admissions community college to assess student work at the end of the basic writing sequence. The authors' focus for this project was on the way students used essay structure. They gathered artifacts from students who were deemed "ready" by…

In this article, I describe how policy changes instituted by our State Board of Education prompted the composition faculty at Boise State University to develop a Stretch program. Our goal was to support basic writing students by linking two writing courses (one of which is non-credit-bearing) , thus allowing students to remain with the same…

This paper presents a qualitative study that used classroom observations, faculty interviews, and student interviews to investigate the meaning and importance of seven non-cognitive variables to a cohort of developmental writing students at an urban community college. The variables studied included finances, study management, college surroundings,…

The purpose of this case study was to describe the role of teacher knowledge in the instructional methods of a community college developmental literacy instructor and determine in what ways that knowledge may have impacted the perceptions of the student participants regarding their authority over their academic progress in the class. Therefore,…

In the form of a story, this paper reveals the life and lifework of a committed Latino professor of English who was born in Brooklyn in the Bedford-Stuyvesant projects. First recounting the early years of a bright boy, the paper then proceeds to tell about the young man as a dropout, as a soldier in Vietnam, as a student in college, and then as a…

This study, conducted by the San Diego Community College District in fall 2002, aims to answer the following research questions regarding student preparedness for courses in writing, reading, study skills, and composition: (1) Is there a relationship between instructor perception of preparedness and student performance? (2) Is there a relationship…