Theoretical Perspectives for Developmental Education · been the formulation of a theoretical...

CRDEUL

Theoretical Perspectivesfor Developmental EducationThe first annually published independent monograph sponsored byThe Center for Research in Developmental Education andUrban Literacy, General College, University of Minnesota.

Dana Britt LundellJeanne L. HigbeeEditors

Devjani Banerjee-StevensJennifer A. KremlAssistant Editors

Karen A. BenckeCover Design & Layout

Copyright © 2001 by the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, General College,University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without priorwritten permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America.

3Contents

ContentsForeword .......................................................................................................................................................................... 5David V. Taylor

Preface ............................................................................................................................................................................. 7Jeanne L. Higbee

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 11Dana Britt Lundell

New and Revisited Theories for Developmental Education

Approaching Theory in Developmental Education .................................................................................................. 19Carl J. Chung

The Student Personnel Point of View ......................................................................................................................... 27Jeanne L. Higbee

Democratic Theory and Developmental Education ................................................................................................. 37Patrick Bruch

Toward a Theory of Developmental Education: The Centrality of “Discourse” .................................................. 49Dana Britt Lundell and Terence Collins

Culture and Constructivism

Is Developmental Education a Racial Project? Considering Race Relations inDevelopmental Education Spaces ............................................................................................................................... 65Heidi Lasley Barajas

The Place of “Culture” in Developmental Education’s Social Sciences ................................................................. 75Mark H. Pedelty and Walter R. Jacobs

Cooperative Learning in the Multicultural Classroom ............................................................................................. 91Rashné R. Jehangir

Constructivist Perspective and Classroom Simulations in Developmental Education .........................................101David L. Ghere

Literacy and Composition

Getting Basic: Exposing a Teacher’s Deficiencies ...................................................................................................111Amy M. Lee

4 Theoretical Perspectives

Bakhtin’s Notion of Dialogic Communication and a Discourse Theory ofDevelopmental Education ..........................................................................................................................................121Thomas Reynolds

Writing Instruction: The Intersection of Basic Writing, ESL Writing, andTraditional College Composition ...............................................................................................................................127Ditlev S. Larsen

Theories for Math and Science

New Directions in Science Education for Developmental Education ..................................................................143Randy Moore

Theoretical Views and Practices Supporting In-Context Developmental Strategies inthe Physical Sciences ..................................................................................................................................................153Allen B. Johnson

A Selectionist Approach to Developmental Education ...........................................................................................163Thomas Brothen and Cathrine A. Wambach

Applying Theory to Practice: Mediated Learning and the American MathematicalAssociation of Two-Year College Standards ............................................................................................................171D. Patrick Kinney

Appendices

Publication Announcements ......................................................................................................................................183

Call for Submissions, Third CRDEUL Monograph ...................................................................................................185

Guidelines for Authors ...............................................................................................................................................189

5Foreword

The mission of the General College(GC) is to provide access to the University of Minnesotafor highly motivated students from the broadest rangeof socioeconomic, educational, and culturalbackgrounds who evidence an ability to succeed inthe University’s rigorous baccalaureate programs. Themission is accomplished through a developmentalgeneral education program offered in amultidisciplinary and multicultural learningcommunity by nationally recognized faculty and staffwho are grounded in the theory and practice ofdevelopmental education. Through its teaching,advising, research, and outreach, the General Collegeseeks to be the nation’s preeminent developmentaleducation institution.

In 1988, the mission of the General College at theUniversity of Minnesota was changed. Although GCretained its primary role of providing access to theUniversity for students who had not met the traditionalpreparation standards, the College voluntarilyrelinquished its degree programs. Its new mission, asa freshman admitting college, was to successfullytransfer underprepared students into other degreegranting academic units where they would completetheir baccalaureate studies. The development ofacademic support programs and effective counselingand advising programs was crucial to the success ofpreparing students for transfer.

The faculty and staff embraced the theoreticalconstruct of developmental education as descriptiveof their work. Although the services that were providedto students in the General College went well beyondmost developmental education programs, the existingtheories and practices in the emerging field provideda core around which the meaningful research couldbe conducted. The energy that once sustained thevitality of the degree program was now liberated andredirected into research that explores the

interrelationships between effective pedagogies,practices, and student outcomes. Our raison d’etre isto retain students and to assist them through thetransfer process so as to enhance the likelihood of theireventual graduation and, secondarily, to disseminateto all interested parties what we have learned in theprocess.

Over the past decade GC has hired innovativefaculty and creative student services personnel whounderstand and resonate to its new mission. They inturn have helped to define and sustain the work of theCenter for Research in Developmental Education andUrban Literacy (CRDEUL). The First Intentional Meetingon Future Directions in Developmental Education heldin Minneapolis in October of 1999, and the launchingof the monograph series reflect their continuinginterest in engaging professionals in the field abouttheories and practices that inform the discipline ofdevelopmental education. It is our hope that themonograph will be widely circulated and discussed.We encourage other scholars and practitioners to sharewith us research which will broaden an understandingof and improve services to college students.

ForewordDavid V. Taylor, DeanGeneral College, University of Minnesota


7Preface

In 1995 the National Association forDevelopmental Education (NADE) published the fol-lowing “Definition and Goals Statement” to guidetheory, research, and practice in the profession:

Developmental Education is a field of prac-tice and research within higher education witha theoretical foundation in developmental psy-chology and learning theory. It promotes cog-nitive and affective growth of all postsecondarylearners, at all levels of the learning continuum.

Developmental Education is sensitive andresponsive to the individual differences and spe-cial needs among learners.

Developmental education programs andservices commonly address preparedness, di-agnostic assessment and placement, affectivebarriers to learning, and development of gen-eral and discipline-specific learning strategies.

Goal: To preserve and make possible edu-cational opportunity for each postsecondarylearner.

Goal: To develop in each learner the skillsand attitudes necessary for the attainment ofacademic, career, and life goals.

Goal: To ensure proper placement by as-sessing each learner’s level of preparedness forcollege course work.

Goal: To maintain academic standards byenabling learners to acquire competenciesneeded for success in mainstream collegecourses.

Goal: To enhance the retention of students.

Goal: To promote the continued develop-ment and application of cognitive and affec-tive learning theory.

During the past year, leaders in the field (e.g.,Malinowski, 2000) have revisited the NADE Defini-tion and Goals Statement in a variety of forums andvenues, including in a “think tank” of the NADE ex-ecutive board, chapter officers, and committee chairs,held prior to the annual NADE conference in Biloxi,MS, and led by outgoing NADE President MarthaCasazza, and at the First Intentional Meeting on Fu-ture Directions in Developmental Education (Lundell& Higbee, 2000), sponsored by the University of Min-nesota General College’s (GC) Center for Research onDevelopmental Education and Urban Literacy(CRDEUL). One of the foci of these discussions hasbeen the formulation of a theoretical foundation fordevelopmental education. Collins and Bruch (2000),reporting on a session at the intentional meeting, pro-pose, “There are literally dozens of theoretical per-spectives spanning multiple traditional disciplines thatcan contribute to the informed practice of develop-mental educators” (p. 19). A preliminary listbrainstormed by session participants includes 23 dis-ciplines and theoretical frameworks, ranging fromadult education and student development theories tocritical democracy theory and social constructivism,which might play a role in guiding our work. Obvi-ously, this is a far broader approach than implied inthe NADE Definition and Goals Statement. Collins andBruch assert,

We think it important to note that it is not fromsuch disciplines or perspectives in isolation thatwe can construct powerful theories to guidepractice in developmental education. Rather,it is from the purposeful interpenetration of thetheories that inform disciplinary practices that

PrefaceJeanne L. Higbee, Faculty ChairCenter for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL)


the richness of an interdisciplinary theoreticalframework for developmental education mightemerge. (p. 20)

Recent developmental education publications alsoreflect a renewed interest in identifying theoreticalframeworks (e.g., Caverly & Peterson, 1996; Darby,1996; Duranczyk & Caniglia, 1998; Friedman, 1997;Maxwell, 1998; Silverman & Casazza, 2000) or cre-ating a central theory of developmental education(e.g., Wambach, Brothen, & Dikel, 2000; Lundell &Collins, 1999, reprinted here). In this monograph au-thors representing a wide spectrum of disciplines andtheoretical perspectives reflect on theories that influ-ence research, teaching, counseling, advising, andadministrative decision making. As Collins and Bruch(2000) propose, “Formation of interdisciplinary theo-ries must have in mind the pragmatic business of in-forming the project at hand, and so such theory build-ing must be flexible and adaptable” (p. 20). The pur-pose of this monograph is to promote further discus-sion regarding the definition of developmental edu-cation and the theory or theories that underlie prac-tice.

The mission of the University of Minnesota’s Cen-ter for Research on Developmental Education andUrban Literacy is as follows:

The Center for Research in Developmental Edu-cation and Urban Literacy, in partnership withthe General College at the University of Min-nesota-Twin Cities, promotes and developsmultidisciplinary theory, research, and prac-tice in postsecondary developmental educationand urban literacy. The Center identifies fu-ture directions in the field locally, regionally,and nationally by bringing together a diverserange of faculty, students, and community or-ganizations for research collaborations.

It is our belief that theory should provide the foun-dation for our research, and that research should guidepractice. In launching this monograph series, it seemedappropriate that we begin with a volume devoted totheoretical perspectives. Calls for submissions and edi-torial guidelines for future monographs are providedat the back of this edition.

The authors of the chapters of this monograph rep-resent the wide array of disciplines in which GC fac-

ulty and staff have earned their terminal degrees, andtheir writing reflects their endeavors to demonstratethat any introductory college course can be taught ina developmental education context. As individuals wemay agree or disagree with some of the theories pre-sented in this volume, or with their relevance to thefield of developmental education. Some chapters pro-vide a historical perspective; others challenge us torethink even the most modern theories. Whether acentury old or contemporary, the theories representedin this monograph have and will continue to influencehow educators perceive their work. It is our hope thatpublications like this monograph will encourage de-velopmental educators to further articulate the theo-retical foundations for the profession and refocus onthe link between theory, research and practice.

Dana Lundell and I would like to express our ap-preciation to David Taylor, Dean of the General Col-lege, and Terence Collins, GC’s Director of AcademicAffairs, for their continued support of CRDEUL and itsprograms, including this monograph series. We alsowant to recognize Devjani Banerjee-Stevens and Jen-nifer Kreml, our assistant editors, and Karen Bencke,who formatted this publication and created the coverdesign. Without their valuable assistance, this mono-graph series would not be possible.

References

Caverly, D. C., & Peterson, C. L. (1996). Foundationfor a constructivist, whole language approach todevelopmental college reading. In J.L. Higbee &P.L. Dwinell (Eds.), Defining developmentaleducation: Theory, research, and pedagogy (pp.39-48). Carol Stream, IL: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Collins, T., & Bruch, P. (2000). Theoretical frameworksthat span the disciplines. In D.B. Lundell & J.L.Higbee (Eds.), Proceedings of the First IntentionalMeeting on Future Directions in DevelopmentalEducation (pp. 19-22). Minneapolis, MN: Centerfor Research on Developmental Education andUrban Literacy, General College, University ofMinnesota. [On-line]. Available: http://www.gen.umn.edu/research/crdeul.

9Preface

Darby, D. D. (1996). The new science: Connectionswith developmental education. In J.L. Higbee &P.L. Dwinell (Eds.), Defining developmentaleducation: Theory, research, and pedagogy (pp.5-10). Carol Stream, IL: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Duranczyk, I. M., & Caniglia, J. (1998). Student beliefs,learning theories, and developmental mathematics:New challenges in preparing successful collegestudents. In J.L. Higbee & P.L. Dwinell (Eds.),Developmental education: Preparing successfulcollege students (pp. 123-138). Columbia, SC:National Resource Center for The First-YearExperience and Students in Transition, Universityof South Carolina.

Friedman, A. R. (1997). Fostering student retention indevelopmental reading through understandingadult learning theory. In P.L. Dwinell & J.L. Higbee(Eds.), Developmental education: Enhancingstudent retention (pp. 25-36). Carol Stream, IL:National Association for Developmental Education.

Lundell, D. B., & Collins, T. (1999). Toward a theoryof developmental education: The centrality of“Discourse.” In J.L. Higbee & P.L. Dwinell (Eds.),The expanding role of developmental education(pp. 3-20). Morrow, GA: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Lundell, D. B., & Higbee, J. L. (2000). Proceedings ofthe First Intentional Meeting on Future Directionsin Developmental Education. Minneapolis, MN:Center for Research on Developmental Educationand Urban Literacy, General College, Universityof Minnesota. [On-line]. Available: http://www.gen.umn.edu/research/crdeul

Malinowski, P. (2000). Defining developmentaleducation as a profession: Students, programs, andservices. In D.B. Lundell & J.L. Higbee (Eds.),Proceedings of the First Intentional Meeting onFuture Directions in Developmental Education.Minneapolis. MN: Center for research onDevelopmental Education and Urban Literacy,General College, University of Minnesota. [On-line]. Available: http://www.gen.umn.edu/research/crdeul

Maxwell, M. (1998). A commentary on the currentstate of developmental reading programs. In J.L.Higbee & P.L. Dwinell (Eds.) Developmentaleducation: Preparing successful college students(pp. 153- 167). Columbia, SC: National ResourceCenter for The First-Year Experience and Studentsin Transition, University of South Carolina.

Silverman, S. L., & Casazza, M. E. (2000). Learningand development: Making connections to enhanceteaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wambach, C., Brothen, T., & Dikel, T. N. (2000).Toward a developmental theory for developmentaleducators. Journal of Developmental Education,24 (1), 2-4, 6, 8, 10, 29.


11Introduction

The theoretical perspectives dis-cussed in this monograph represent both new and es-tablished foundations for developmental education. Ithas long been important to articulate the theories thatshape our teaching, and it is equally pertinent that wecontinue to explore those theories that more broadlydefine the profession (Casazza, 1998; Lundell &Collins, 1999; Silverman & Casazza, 2000). However,this is not an easy task for several reasons. First, devel-opmental education is only recently beginning to re-name and reposition itself within the broader frame-work of higher education. We, as developmental edu-cators, have challenged the use of the term “reme-dial” in our own work (Boylan, 1999; Higbee, 1993;Maxwell, 1997) because it has perpetuated popularmisconceptions about what it is that teachers and stu-dents do in these programs, sometimes unfortunatelyupholding the status quo in shutting students out ofmany of our public institutions. By naming what it iswe do not do (i.e., we do not “remediate” studentsusing a deficit model), we have made a space for dis-covering and articulating what it is we actually aredoing effectively. To do so, many developmental edu-cation leaders have stated this priority clearly: we needto examine and share the theories that shape our bestpractices (Boylan; Casazza, 1998; Higbee, 1996;Lundell & Collins; Silverman & Casazza; Wambach,Brothen, & Dikel, 2000).

Although this is a potentially liberating point inhistory for the field, it presents some noteworthy chal-lenges. When we begin to explore our diverse van-tage points as institutions, administrators, instructors,advisors, and students, we recognize that these stand-points alone defy easy categorization. Because we servea variety of students, for example, we rely on utilizingand implementing our knowledge of best practices indevelopmental education, which includes using a flex-ible range of learning activities such as peer group

work, Supplemental Instruction (SI), freshman semi-nars, and a range of other instructional delivery meth-ods such as incorporating technology and learning com-munities into our curricula and program foundations(Boylan, 1999; STARLINK, 2000). As knowledgeableand responsive as we have become in our teachingmethods, we also need to consider that our theoriesinforming these methods need to be equally respon-sive in addressing a similar diversity in learning styles,prior knowledge and educational preparation, and stu-dent backgrounds (e.g., issues of language acquisi-tion, race, class, gender, disability, and other socialand cultural factors).

Traditionally, theories in developmental education,and related teaching methods, have primarily reflectedindividualistic models for learning (Collins & Bruch,2000; Lundell & Collins, 1999). Because this positivelyserves large numbers of students in these programs, itis clear that research continues to indicate a need toreflect more systematically on why some students arestill not adequately being supported by the same pro-grams. This includes research reports that continue todocument lower retention and achievement rates incollege by greater numbers of students from lowerincome families and students of color in proportion toWhite students (i.e., Center for Postsecondary Researchand Planning, 2000). To address these disparities inparticular, it is crucial that we begin to reflect moredeeply upon our theories and definitions to identifywhat we may be missing, and to strengthen and sharewhat we already have implemented successfully.

As a field, we have started to do this with a defini-tion statement outlining some areas of theory in de-velopmental education (National Association for De-velopmental Education, 1995). Even in naming com-mon ground, however, we still experience the realitythat our programs and practices vary widely

IntroductionDana Britt Lundell, DirectorCenter for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy


(Malinowski, 2000). These varied interpretations anddefinitions may pose some viable tensions to consideras we continue to define the field and develop theo-ries for developmental education. First, it positivelysuggests a kind of breadth and collective strength inour work, the “continuum of services” (Boylan asquoted in Lundell, 2000, p. 51) we provide in pro-grams and across institutions. That is, “developmentaleducation” may not even be coined by this term, de-pending on the form in which it is applied (i.e., learn-ing centers and stand-alone courses in institutions thatdo not recognize a separate developmental educationdivision or mission). Second, as developmental edu-cators find it difficult to describe even rather gener-ally what it is we all commonly do, given this varietyin outreach and purpose, it may be in our best interestto consider the assets inherent in this conundrum.When our programs have been sidelined in the past,it has ultimately stemmed from an overly simplifiedversion of the work of developmental educators andthese students as remedial or marginal in some way. Itis to our advantage to continue developing our frame-works and definitions in a way that includes a widevariety of approaches, definitions, and theories—forthis reflects our real work.

Sharing Theories forDevelopmental Education

“Few programs have articulated and presentedtheir own models to a broader audience, specificallyas they relate to relevant educational theories inform-ing their conception and relationship to current defi-nitions of developmental education” (Lundell & Collins,1999, p. 7). There has been recent discussion aboutfinding a theory, or theories, of developmental educa-tion (Collins & Bruch, 2000; Wambach, Brothen, &Dikel, 2000), but without first having the widespreadarticulation of key theories guiding individual teach-ers and program administrators themselves, a broadertheory of sorts cannot yet practically be proposed.There is perhaps too much variety and range in per-spectives to adopt a universal theoretical model at thispoint in time. We may need more theories for devel-opmental education before we arrive at a theory ofthe field, if that is even a goal. In fact, it might be trueand beneficial that the “one-size” model does not fitall in developmental education. This may be to ouradvantage as this appears to be one primary reason

developmental education exists in the first place—toserve students for whom this type of one-size modelhas never fit, nor should ever entirely be made to fit.Perhaps our own theory or theories as a field mightaddress this?

To explore the role of theory in developmentaleducation and to articulate theories from one program,and specifically to demonstrate the range of both over-lap and difference even within a program, we offer aset of theoretical perspectives from the General Col-lege (GC) at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cit-ies—one of the nation’s oldest developmental educa-tion programs. The university is the largest public, land-grant institution in the Midwest, offering four-yearundergraduate and graduate degrees. It is also the onlyBig Ten public research institution situated in its state’smajor urban site. General College offers a pre-trans-fer, credit-bearing undergraduate curriculum for stu-dents entering other degree-granting colleges in theuniversity. Each fall the college admits approximately850 new first-year students, and overall the collegetypically serves between 1400 and 1800 students eachsemester in its programs. GC accepts about half of itsstudents from those whose composite admission scores(i.e., a combination of the American College Testing[ACT] score, high school rank, and high school gradepoint average) fall below university program entryrequirements. Another large percentage of studentsare admitted to GC based on individual and commit-tee reviews of their cases, and an additional percent-age of students qualify and enter the college throughthe support of the federally-funded TRIO program.GC’s mission includes an emphasis on preparation to-ward students’ educational and career goals througha multidisciplinary curriculum with the goal of trans-ferring into the larger university. GC also maintains astrong position that students are being served within amulticultural program that addresses issues of diver-sity in teaching, learning, and research. Overall, GC’sstrong record of student transfer rates to degree-grant-ing colleges of the university—rates of 79% comparedto 84% for retention rates in the rest of the univer-sity—indicate that GC’s programs are successful formost students who enter the program.

The college also offers a range of academic sup-port services and courses to prepare students for a suc-cessful transition. GC hosts numerous unique programssuch as the Student Parent Help Center, TRIO pro-

13Introduction

grams such as Upward Bound, an Academic ResourceCenter, and the Commanding English Program. Thecollege also supports externally funded grant programslinking the college with the local urban community,such as the Commanding English program’s English asa Second Language (ESL) bridge courses taught in thelocal high schools. GC also supports the Center for Re-search on Developmental Education and Urban Lit-eracy (CRDEUL), which promotes and developsmultidisciplinary theory, research, and practice inpostsecondary developmental education and urban lit-eracy.

GC’s curricular model includes a multidisciplinaryrange of Base Curriculum (BC) courses integrating bothskills and academic content. This multidisciplinary pro-grammatic model, which does not focus on traditional“skills-based” models for developmental education—at least not apart from integrating that with academiccontent—provides students with a range of perspec-tives and academic training for continuing work di-rectly in their majors. Students can take writing, math,art, biology, sociology, anthropology, literature, fresh-man seminars, multicultural communication, and lawand society. In doing so successfully, they fulfill someof their university graduation requirements while re-ceiving full academic credit for transfer to degree-granting colleges of the university, which typicallytakes place some time during their second year. Fac-ulty, administrators, and staff in this program incor-porate a wide range of theories and methods in devel-oping their curricula. In addition, they fulfill GC’s mis-sion of conducting and disseminating research in bothdevelopmental education and their disciplinary con-tent areas.

Given the breadth of courses and services GC of-fers, and given GC’s long history as a self-containeddevelopmental education program, the college offersa fundamental point of reference for the field. Simi-larly, it can inform current definitions and theories indevelopmental education given its unique format andlocation within a public research university. Like alldevelopmental education programs and services, thereis a sense of uniqueness in its definition and model asGC is viewed by the University of Minnesota as its mainpoint of preparation and access for many students. Itis not strictly an open admissions college, but it doesserve a diverse range of students for whom immedi-ate entry into the university would not have been pos-

sible. Because of this history, it is important to sharethis work more broadly to examine GC’s theoretical,research, and pedagogical foundations.

GC Perspectives

This monograph specifically offers perspectivesfrom GC faculty and staff who have responded to therecent call to articulate the field’s theoretical founda-tions (Collins & Bruch, 2000). In particular, this groupof authors has begun to explore not only the theoriesthat inform their own classroom practice specifically,but they offer some theories that have relevance fordevelopmental education more broadly. By collectinga set of theories from a group of teachers within oneprogram, it is easy to see the wide range of overlap-ping, and sometimes conflicting, theories that are in-fluential to developmental educators. These authorsall teach within the same program, under the samegeneral mission, but their approaches diverge in in-teresting and effective ways. They represent a broadrange of academic content and advising areas: sociol-ogy, anthropology, English composition, psychology,mathematics, history, multicultural education, philoso-phy, logic, and student support services.

In this publication, many of these authors reflecton areas that have not yet been addressed explicitly inthe field, and several expand or critique current theo-ries that are outlined in the NADE definition. For ex-ample, theories of democratic education and civic en-gagement, race-critical and multicultural theories, andtheories from cultural studies have not been lenses withwide application in developmental education, yet theyare articulated and applied more widely in other fieldsand arenas of higher education. Some of these au-thors focus on theories about institutional and culturalissues affecting students, while some focus on issues ofindividual development or behavioral theory. The lay-ers and tensions present here are important becausethey demonstrate why it is difficult to articulate a singletheory of, or a full range of theories for, developmen-tal education. Perhaps no one lens can provide a com-plete answer to the rich range of questions and situa-tions that are produced in the wide variety of services,courses, teaching methods, and students that make upthese programs.

General College also represents some unique sub-ject areas that are not typically taught in developmen-


tal programs or thought of as developmental corecourses. This can provide yet another unique perspec-tive for the field as there is work being done in theseareas that can and should be considered for develop-mental education. It is a hope and goal of this publi-cation to consider that definitions of developmentaleducation might continue to address some of the is-sues these authors have begun to explore in their ownwork. Because most developmental educators come tothe field from a specific content area, it is importantto continue to let the research in those areas informand expand frameworks for developmental educa-tion. In the future, it will also be necessary to applythese new theories for the field more directly to class-room practice and within the rich variety of contextswithin which developmental educators work.

Transforming Theory,Research, and Practice

As Martha Casazza (1998) wrote, it is evident inproducing this publication, that

These theories raise as many questions as theyprovide answers. The next step is to engage ina process of critical reflection regarding prac-tices in developmental education to see if theylead to a reconstruction of the principles cur-rently used as a framework. (p. 43)

It appears that in the field of developmental edu-cation, we are at the point of critical reflection, butwe are also still in the position of needing to articulatetheories. Silverman and Casazza (2000) have demon-strated an innovative way for education professionalsto push the current theoretical trends in the field, toincorporate new research and theory into an exami-nation of practice that transcends the traditional modelfor educating students. For example, they note that pas-sive forms of education, such as the banking model(Freire, 1970), are outdated and do not assist studentsin developing important skills such as critical thinkingand active learning stances. Although we have knownthis for awhile through research in education, it hastaken awhile for these concepts to be instituted in defi-nition, theory, and pedagogy that informs other disci-plines. In developmental education, this translates intoa push for continuing to transform our work at thelevels of research and theory that more effectively re-sponds to student needs as they make educational tran-

sitions with the support of a wide range of develop-mental programs and services.

Multi-disciplinary models for theory, research, andteaching seem to provide the best range of answers toour questions about student learning (Bruch & Collins,1999; Casazza, 1998; Silverman & Casazza, 2000).The richer the range of definitions and approacheswe provide in developmental education, the more re-sponsive our classrooms and programs can be to thediverse range of students we serve. Additionally, asSilverman and Casazza (2000) clearly addressthroughout their work, theories and research that canbe transformative to the profession provide fertileground for defining more successful future directionsfor education. Specifically, they argue that educatorsmust view themselves as ongoing agents of transfor-mation, and that they are in the most important posi-tion for illuminating future goals.

Change agents challenge the status quo. Theyare not satisfied with repeating past successesor accepting failures. Most important, they mo-tivate themselves and others, including students,administrators, and colleagues, to explore newdirections and take risks. We support this viewas a foundation for making changes in prac-tice and using theory and research to guide theway. (p. 260)

Their model for integrating a wider range of theo-ries, applied directly to student experiences throughcase studies, provides a clear direction and instructiveexample for how developmental educators can con-tinue to create change for students specifically, andthe profession more broadly. Their vantage points in-clude a wider range of theories than present defini-tions have outlined, including sociolinguistic theories,constructivist models, adult learning frameworks, cog-nitive development theories, and multicultural edu-cation and intercultural communication theories. Theirrich range of applied theories demonstrates that cur-rent individualistic models alone, which presentlydominate definitions and practice in developmentaleducation (Lundell & Collins, 1999), do not offer acomplete enough response to understanding students.

In this monograph, it is clear that we can adopteven more vantage points to add to our work in re-search and practice. In particular, some of themulticultural and sociolinguistic models for education

15Introduction

appear to provide a new standpoint, as well asconstructivist models applied in history and scienceclassrooms. No matter which discipline is examined,it is important to take a step toward doing this type ofcritical theoretical reflection. The authors and editorsof this publication hope they have offered somethingto trigger new conversations about theories of, andtheories for, developmental education.

References

Boylan, H. R. (1999). Exploring alternatives toremediation. Journal of Developmental Education,22 (3), 2–10.

Casazza, M. E. (1998). Strengthening practice withtheory. Journal of Developmental Education, 22(2), 14-20, 43.

Center for Postsecondary Research and Planning.(2000). The national survey of student engagement(NSSE) report: National benchmarks of effectiveeducational practice. Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity.

Collins, T., & Bruch, P. (2000). Theoretical frameworksthat span the disciplines. In D. B. Lundell & J. L.Higbee (Eds.), Proceedings of the first intentionalmeeting on future directions in developmentaleducation (pp. 19-22). Minneapolis, MN: Centerfor Research on Developmental Education andUrban Literacy, General College, University ofMinnesota.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York:Continuum.

Higbee, J. L. (1993). Developmental vs. remedial: Morethan semantics. Research and Teaching inDevelopmental Education, 9 (2), 99-105.

Higbee, J. L. (1996). Defining developmentaleducation: A commentary. In J. L. Higbee & P. L.Dwinell (Eds.), Defining developmental education:Theory, research, & pedagogy (pp. 63-66). CarolStream, IL: National Association for DevelopmentalEducation.

Lundell, D. B. (2000). Institutional fit: Mission andstructure of programs within different types ofinstitutions. In D. B. Lundell & J. L. Higbee (Eds.),Proceedings of the first intentional meeting onfuture directions in developmental education (pp.51-53). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Research onDevelopmental Education and Urban Literacy,General College, University of Minnesota.

Lundell, D. B., & Collins, T. C. (1999). Toward a theoryof developmental education: The centrality of“Discourse.” In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.),The expanding role of developmental education(pp. 3-20). Morrow, GA: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Malinowski, P. (2000). Defining developmentaleducation as a profession: Students, programs, andservices. In D. B. Lundell & J. L. Higbee (Eds.),Proceedings of the first intentional meeting onfuture directions in developmental education (pp.17-18). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Research onDevelopmental Education and Urban Literacy,General College, University of Minnesota.

Maxwell, M. (1997). Improving student learning skills:A new edition. Clearwater, FL: H&H.

National Association for Developmental Education(NADE). (1995). Definition and goals statement.Carol Stream, IL: Author.

Silverman, S. L., & Casazza, M. E. (2000). Learning &development: Making connections to enhanceteaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

STARLINK. (Satellite Telecast). (2000, September 21).Developmental education: Best practices andexemplary programs. Dallas, TX: Texas Associationof Community Colleges.

Wambach, C., Brothen, T., & Dikel, T. N. (2000).Toward a developmental theory for developmentaleducators. Journal of Developmental Education,24 (1), 2-4, 6, 8, 10, 29.


CRDEUL

New and Revisited Theoriesfor Developmental Education

18 New and Revisited Theories

19Approaching Theory

Recently developmental educa-tors have been urged to embrace theory (Collins &Bruch, 2000; Lundell & Collins, 1999; Silverman &Casazza, 2000; Spann & McCrimmon, 1998;Wambach, Brothen, & Dikel, 2000). What is more,the reasons given to support this change implicate thevery future of developmental education with thischoice: we either embrace theory or face academicextinction. For example, in the Proceedings of the FirstIntentional Meeting on Future Directions in Develop-mental Education, Terence Collins and Patrick Bruch(2000) write that “Given the gains to be made throughthe process of vigorously theorizing our practice, ‘de-velopmental education’ as simply a hodge-podge ofcontingent local practices guided by inexplicit andlargely unintentional theoretical frameworks is nolonger good enough” (p. 19). In an interview on thefuture of developmental education, Hunter Boylan as-serts that

An essential component of a successful pro-gram in the future will be research and devel-opment. The most successful programs aretheory based. They don’t just provide randomintervention; they intervene according to thetenets of various theories of adult intellectualand personal development. (Stratton, 1998, p.33)

Milton G. Spann and Suella McCrimmon (1998)characterize the importance of theory as follows:

The field of developmental education currentlyfaces an identity crisis. For the most part, it haslittle knowledge of its roots or a widely under-stood and articulated philosophy, a body of com-mon knowledge, or a commonly accepted setof theoretical assumptions congruent with thatphilosophy. (p. 44)

Finally, Dana Lundell and Terence Collins (1999)echo similar concerns when they write: “Much of thepublished literature in developmental education lacksa theoretical base through which the motives and goalsof seemingly disparate practices might be understoodas constituting a unified core of disciplines” (p. 4).They motivate their call to theory by citing two mainreasons:

1. Work in developmental education hasmatured intellectually to the point where wemust be overt in theorizing our enterprise sothat our research and curriculum studies cancompete with each other for credibility in fullview of the assumptions that are their intellec-tual foundation.

2. Attacks on developmental education arevery easy to mount when the grounds for dis-cussion are subject to redefinition at the whimof every legislator or academic vice-presidentwho questions the value of our practice. Thatis, we need to know why we do what we do,and we need to say these things aloud. (p. 4)

Approaching Theory inDevelopmental EducationCarl J. Chung, Assistant ProfessorPhilosophy and Logic

The purpose of this chapter is to provide developmental educators with a useful initial framework withinwhich to identify and reflect upon preconceptions concerning the nature and purpose of “theories.” I accomplishthis by presenting three general approaches to theory: the classical approach, the model-based approach, andthe contextualist approach. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each approach offers adifferent vision of the fundamental features of a theory of developmental education. I argue that no singleapproach is inherently superior to the others, and I suggest that learning to appreciate the strengths of eachapproach might lay the foundation for a robust theoretical framework unique to developmental education.


As these quotations indicate, those advocating alarger role for theory do so for a variety of reasons,including overall program success, the identity andcredibility of the field of developmental education,and the defense of the field against ongoing attacksfrom outside sources. In addition, this call to theory is,at least for some of those making it, overtly reformist.For example, the quotation by Collins and Bruch(2000) is critical of current theoretical frameworksthat are “inexplicit” and “unintentional.” That is, cur-rent theoretical frameworks have only managed toproduce a “. . . hodge-podge of contingent local prac-tices . . .” (p. 19). We, as developmental educators,are thus urged to be more systematic, explicit, andintentional in our theorizing.

One could respond to those advocating theory in anumber of different ways. For example, one mightagree (e.g., “Yes, this is obviously right; let’s get onwith it . . .”), one might ask for clarification (e.g.,“What exactly do you mean by ‘explicit’ and ‘inten-tional’ theorizing?”), or one might disagree (e.g., “No,the ‘theoretical state’ of developmental education isjust fine; I see no need to accept these recommenda-tions . . .”). But no matter which response one adopts,we, as a community, are going to find ourselves hav-ing conversations about theories and about theorizingin the context of developmental education and its fu-ture as an academic discipline.

The main goal of this chapter is to try and ensurethat those conversations about theory are constructiveand not divisive or polarizing. This is a legitimate worry,for two reasons. First, the terms “theory” and “theo-rizing” are loaded in the sense that they encompass arange of possible meanings and associations, which inturn often reflect different underlying assumptions,values, and explanatory frameworks. Second, there isthe incredible diversity to be found within the field ofdevelopmental education, including institutional di-versity, practitioner diversity, disciplinary diversity, andtheoretical diversity (e.g., Collins & Bruch, 2000, pp.19-20). This diversity only multiplies the number ofperspectives and assumptions we are likely to encoun-ter, and it increases the opportunities for disagreementand miscommunication.

To accomplish this goal I present three generalapproaches to understanding what a theory is and whatit means to theorize: the classical approach, the model-

based approach, and the contextualist approach. Foreach, I set out some advantages of that approach, somedisadvantages, and then I discuss how the approachwould characterize the fundamental features of atheory of developmental education.

The point of doing this is not to offer a definitivetypology of theoretical approaches, and it is not to de-fend one approach over others. Rather, I hope to pro-vide readers with a useful initial framework withinwhich to identify and reflect upon their own assump-tions concerning theory and what a theory of devel-opmental education ought, eventually, to look like.

The Classical Approach to Theory

One promising way to make sense of theory andtheorizing is by clarifying what those terms mean inthe context of our best examples of scientific inquiry.After all, physics and chemistry are well developed,robust, and time tested. If anything is going to countas a theory or theorizing, surely Newtonian mechan-ics and the mathematical modeling and experimentalmethodology of physics have got to be prime examples.Even if it is not possible for developmental educatorsto perform controlled experiments or to come up withmathematical equations, advocates of the classical ap-proach nonetheless believe that the theories of thenatural sciences embody an ideal standard worthy ofemulation.

To identify some of the details of that standard, anexample will help. Consider Newton’s theory of mo-tion, which is defined by three laws of motion and thelaw of universal gravitation (Beatty, 1980; Giere,1991):

First Law of Motion. If there is no forceacting on a body, the momentum of that bodywill remain constant.

Second Law of Motion. If there is a forceacting on a body, that body will accelerate byan amount directly proportional to the strengthof the force and inversely proportional to itsmass.

Third Law of Motion. If one body exerts aforce on a second, then the second exerts onthe first a force that is equal in strength, but inthe opposite direction.


Law of Universal Gravitation. Any two bod-ies exert attractive forces on each other thatare directed along a line connecting them andare proportional to the product of their massesdivided by the square of the distance betweenthem. (Giere, pp. 69–70)

Several key points flow from this example. First, itis clear that the main ingredients of a theory are lawsor universal generalizations. Second, taken togetherthese laws explain why bodies move the way they doby identifying and interrelating certain causally rel-evant factors: force, momentum, acceleration, mass,and distance. Third, the laws allow us to predict move-ments of a body by extrapolating the effects of force,momentum, acceleration, mass, and distance from ear-lier to later times. For what I am calling the classicalapproach, then, a theory is essentially a collection ofuniversal generalizations that allows us to explain andpredict phenomena in a particular domain.

For many, this classical interpretation of theory isintuitive and obvious. Applied to the field of develop-mental education, the first step toward forging a theoryof developmental education would be to isolate andclarify the causally relevant factors governing studentdevelopment, learning, retention, and success. So justas Newton had to isolate and clarify what he meant byforce, acceleration, and momentum, so must devel-opment educators isolate and clarify what they meanby such factors as, for example, motivation, learningstyle, identity formation, self-regulation, anddemandingness (cf., Silverman & Casazza, 2000;Wambach, Brothen, & Dikel, 2000).

The second step would be to formulate the laws orprinciples governing the causally relevant factors. Ex-amples of such laws or principles might be: “All stu-dents who possess learning style A will succeed whentaught with teaching method B”; or “All students inaffective state C in environment E will fail unless theyachieve affective state D”; or “No student with cogni-tive disability F succeeds without intervention G andteaching method H.” If it turns out that generaliza-tions of such universal scope (i.e., All A are B) cannotbe formulated, statistical generalizations would stillwork (e.g., Most A are B; P are probably Q; S followsin X percentage of cases studied).

Finally, the third step would be to verify and re-fine the laws or principles by further experiment or

research. Ideally, this would result in a unique set oflaws or principles that best explained student devel-opment, learning, retention, and overall success. Thiscollection of laws or principles would constitute thecore of a theory of developmental education.

Advocates of the classical approach to theory canpoint to a number of advantages of their approach.First, the classical approach allies itself with the pres-tigious tradition of the natural sciences, a tradition thatboasts some of the best examples of theory. In addi-tion, because of its emphasis on laws, it is clear that aclassical theory will be verifiable, testable, and, in thelong run, refinable. The classical approach also pro-vides an intuitive conception of how a theory explainsand predicts, again due to the emphasis on laws: basi-cally, explanation or prediction of a given phenom-enon occurs if we can identify specific causal factorsand then cite a law governing those factors. Finally,applied to developmental education, the classical ap-proach provides a clear “recipe” for forging a theoryof developmental education, and such a theory wouldhave the legitimacy and advantages noted above.

However, even with such compelling advantages,the classical approach to theory has not been immuneto criticism. One criticism is that, historically, the clas-sical approach has failed to provide a convincing gen-eral account of theory and theorizing in all areas ofinquiry. For example, it has proven difficult to makesense of the theoretical structure of psychology andevolutionary biology in terms of general laws (Beatty,1980). This has led some historians and philosophersof science to conclude that the classical approach failsprecisely because of its emphasis on laws or universalgeneralizations (Beatty). For present purposes, thisraises the possibility that there are legitimate domainsof inquiry that are simply not governed by generallaws. If this is so, then perhaps a theory of develop-mental education is possible that does not require theformulation of laws of human learning or develop-ment. One such alternative conception of theory notbased on laws is the model-based approach, which Ishall discuss in the next section.

The Model-Based Approachto Theory

Advocates of this approach hold that a theory isessentially a collection of “models.” The models of a


theory are abstract entities that serve to characterizeand define certain kinds of systems (Beatty, 1980, p.410). As such, models are like maps of an unknownterritory: they provide an abstract representation of“the lay of the land,” how the parts of the unknownterritory might be arranged or fit together, and howthe parts might interact. In the context of theories andtheorizing, such models represent some phenomenonor process we are trying to understand and explain.For example, Newtonian mechanics looks like this ifwe adopt the model-based approach: “A Newtonianmechanical system = [df] a system of objects whichbehave according to Newton’s three laws of motionand the law of universal gravitation” (Beatty, 1980, p.400).

Thus, instead of equating the theory of Newtonianmechanics with laws and specific causal factors, themodel-based approach equates the theory with asimple definition of a model or system that satisfiesNewton’s laws. The difference may seem trivial, but itis not. For the classical approach, axioms or laws con-stitute a theory, whereas for the model-based approachaxioms or laws simply serve as one way to constrainpossible models. For the classical approach, the lawsconstituting a theory apply directly to some part of thereal world—the laws are either true or false. For themodel-based approach, the models constituting atheory are what apply to some part of the real world,and instead of a model’s being true or false we focuson how well the model fits. In other words, the claimthat a model fits some part of the real world may betrue or false, but this does not make the model itselftrue or false. To evaluate a model’s fit amounts to evalu-ating how well the model represents.

Applied to developmental education, the model-based approach offers a more inclusive view of theo-ries compared to the classical approach. Instead ofrequiring that we find the causal factors and the lawsgoverning a specific domain, the model-based ap-proach would have us construct a family of theoreti-cal models that accurately represent the phenomenaof student learning, success, failure, teaching, learn-ing styles, temperament, self-concept, and so on. Thede-emphasis of laws allows this family of models todraw inspiration from a broader and more inclusivebase that includes assumptions, hypotheses, postulates,and, if forthcoming, universal laws. In this way, themodel-based approach emphasizes the construction

of models of developmental education over the dis-covery of laws.

The model-based approach is also more inclusivein another sense. Because it does emphasize broad-based model building, it can more readily accommo-date the diversity of institutions, practitioners, disci-plines, and theoretical frameworks that seem to be afact of life in developmental education. That is, whilethe classical approach appears to be committed to find-ing the single best theory of developmental education,the model-based approach allows for the constructionof clusters of models from diverse sources. To formu-late a comprehensive theory of developmental edu-cation the challenge would be to forge coherent con-nections among these clusters; this contrasts to the clas-sical approach, in which a small and powerful coreset of laws would be used to unify the disparate andheterogeneous subdomains of developmental educa-tion.

Advocates of the model-based approach havepointed to one main advantage of their view: that itmore accurately and more faithfully captures the ac-tual state of affairs in some areas of inquiry. In otherwords, while the core “natural sciences” may well bein the business of discovering universal laws and forg-ing a single best theory for each domain, this is simplynot the case for all areas of inquiry. In fact, some ar-eas of inquiry do not appear to be governed by any-thing like universal laws, and some areas of inquiryappear to require a plurality of theories to adequatelyaccount for and explain their domains (Beatty, 1980;Longino, 1990, 2000). Given that there are such law-less and pluralistic domains, the model-based approachprovides a useful means of understanding theory inthese contexts.

With respect to a theory of developmental educa-tion, the foregoing discussion prompts us to considertwo questions: Are there laws of developmental edu-cation? Can a single, unified theoretical frameworkexplain our domain adequately? If we answer “yes”to these questions, then the classical approach offersdistinct advantages; if, on the other hand, we answer“no” to these questions, then the model-based approachmight be preferable.

The fact that the model-based approach is moreinclusive, however, opens it up to criticisms from both


the classical and the contextualist approaches. Fromthe perspective of the classical approach, the model-based approach seems too inclusive. That is, eventhough it’s not the case that “anything goes” in themodel-based approach, it certainly seems as if “ev-erything goes.” How, after all, are we to halt the un-ending proliferation of models and clusters of mod-els? Or, put differently, how are we to forge a man-ageable and coherent theory given the inclusion of allperspectives and points of view allowed by the model-based approach?

From the perspective of the contextualist approach,on the other hand, the model-based approach is notinclusive enough. That is, from this point of view nei-ther the classical nor the model-based approach ad-equately accommodates the human and social contextin which theory and theorizing occur. According tothe contextualist, then, not considering these contex-tual factors and their role in theory making rendersboth the classical and the model-based approach fun-damentally incomplete.

The Contextualist Approachto Theory

In the previous two sections, I presented two gen-eral approaches to theory and theorizing. But the man-ner in which I presented those approaches itself be-comes problematic once we try to make sense oftheory and theorizing from the contextualist point ofview. In particular, I presented both the classical andthe model-based approaches as abstract and generalphilosophical positions without reference to the spe-cific contexts in which they originated or in whichthey might be deployed. For the classical approach,we need to focus on systems of universal generaliza-tions—because that is what a theory is. For the model-based approach, we need to focus on families of ab-stract models—because that is what a theory is. Butone basic tenet of the contextualist approach is thatknowledge, explanation, justification, and theorizingcannot adequately be understood unless we realizethat all these things are intricately bound up with spe-cific human and social contexts (Longino, 1990, 2000).

What I am calling the contextualist approach, then,is a broad umbrella term that includes postmodernism,poststructuralism, feminism, literary theory, socialconstructivism, and deconstruction. For purposes of

illustrating a contextualist approach to theory, I willpresent just one thread of this complex skein by fo-cusing on feminist philosopher of science HelenLongino.

Longino’s overall goal is to demonstrate that “sci-entific knowledge” is best understood as a form ofsocial knowledge (Longino, 1990, 2000). She accom-plishes this by providing an analysis of evidential rea-soning, arguing

that evidential reasoning is always context-de-pendent, that data are evidence for a hypoth-esis only in light of background assumptionsthat assert a connection between the sorts ofthing or event the data are and the processesor states of affairs described by the hypoth-eses. Background assumptions can also lead usto highlight certain aspects of a phenomenonover others, thus determining the way it is de-scribed and the kind of data it provides.(Longino, 2000, pp. 215-216)

Longino’s emphasis upon the efficacy of back-ground assumptions clearly has implications for howone is to view theories and theorizing. After all, to theextent that evidential reasoning plays a role in the de-velopment of theories and in testing them, Longino’sargument would highlight the importance of back-ground assumptions for theories as well. And if back-ground assumptions come into play in specific con-texts, then this is one sense in which theories might beseen as context dependent.

Longino (2000) continues by arguing that the ubiq-uity of background assumptions leads to a problemthat can be solved by adopting a “social account ofobjectivity” (pp. 215-216). The problem is that back-ground assumptions can include “subjective prefer-ences” and “opinions” (pp. 215-216). Given that back-ground assumptions are as important as Longino makesthem out to be, how can scientific practice ever resultin objective and intersubjective knowledge? Clearly,“there must be some way of minimizing the influenceof subjective preferences and controlling the role ofbackground assumptions” (pp. 215-216).

Longino’s (2000) solution to this problem is thekey to her account of science as social knowledge.Basically, she argues that individualistic subjectivepreferences can be overcome by the right kind of com-


munity and social interactions. As she puts it, “Thebackground assumptions that determine evidentialreasoning are those that emerge from the transforma-tive interrogation by the scientific community…” (p.216). “Transformative interrogation,” which is alsocalled transformative criticism elsewhere, amounts to“…subjecting hypotheses, data, reasoning, and back-ground assumptions to criticism from a variety of per-spectives” (p. 274).

The right kind of community is one in which suchtransformative criticism is nurtured. More specifically,such a community is distinguished by “. . . establish-ing or designating appropriate venues for criticism,uptake of criticism (i.e., response and change), pub-lic standards that regulate discursive interactions, andequality of intellectual authority…” (p. 275). Longino’sarguments concerning science as social knowledge thushighlight the contextual role of a particularcommunity’s “methodological choices, commitments,or standards” (p. 278) as essential to understandinghow that community can produce objective and well-justified knowledge.

With the above overview serving as background,we can now make sense of Longino’s (1990) claimthat

[The] theory which is the product of the mostinclusive scientific community is better, otherthings being equal, than [a theory] which is theproduct of the most exclusive. It is better notas measured against some independently ac-cessible reality but better as measured againstthe cognitive needs of a genuinely democraticcommunity. (p. 214)

I take it that a community becomes more “inclu-sive” by nurturing transformative criticism and by fos-tering social interactions that distribute power asequally as possible among members of that commu-nity. The startling conclusion that follows from Longino’saccount is that inclusive communities actually producemore objective and better justified knowledge thancommunities that are exclusive, homogeneous, hier-archical, and in which the interchange of ideas andcriticism is limited.

The upshot for those interested in pursuing theoryin developmental education is that the contextualistapproach broadens the meaning of theory and to theo-

rize to encompass communities and their epistemo-logical standards. So, to construct a good theory re-quires that we do more than merely identify causalfactors and laws or merely develop families of ab-stract models. Instead, we must be mindful of the com-munity from which our theories arise, and we mustnurture communication and criticism within that com-munity. This is so because the contextualist accountimplies that better theories require a certain commu-nity structure and a certain ongoing social interactionwithin that community.

One advantage of the contextualist approach isthat it values the diversity we find in developmentaleducation. That is, it is implicit to Longino’s positionthat a diverse community can do a better job of pro-ducing knowledge and theoretical frameworks exactlybecause such communities contain different points ofview. Adopting a contextualist approach to theorywould therefore allow developmental educators topresent the field’s incredible diversity as an asset in-stead of a liability.

In a similar vein, the contextualist approach pro-vides a novel resolution to a tension some develop-mental educators may experience regarding the callto do theory. That is, many developmental educatorsare committed to the field because they view it as ameans of reforming traditional higher education andespecially the academy (e.g., Spann & McCrimmon,1998, pp. 44-45). After all, the students we serve havebeen systematically rejected by the academy and thusdenied access to higher education and its benefits. Formany, this is a political as well as an intellectual issue.Insofar as the call to theory is interpreted as a call tobecome part and parcel of mainstream academe—to“do theory” and conform to the standards of the acad-emy—then this amounts to becoming exactly that whichdevelopmental education has traditionally stoodagainst. But the contextualist approach recasts themeaning of theory. Instead of considering theory asabstract, disconnected from practice, intellectual, andhegemonic, the contextualist links theory to social in-teraction in particular communities at particular his-torical moments. Theory thus becomes bound up withthe local, the pragmatic, the social, and the political.

On the downside, other developmental educatorsmay recoil from the contextualist’s broader concep-tion of theory. The problem is that such a conceptionstretches the meaning of theory significantly beyond


what has traditionally been meant by that term. Forexample, those who are sympathetic to the classicalapproach to theories may well find Longino’scontextualism interesting but nonetheless irrelevant tothe real business of making, testing, and refining atheory.

Conclusion

As developmental educators increasingly encoun-ter and reflect upon theory, they will find themselvesforced not only to think within a particular theoreticalframework but also to think more about theoreticalframeworks and approaches in general. Just as we havebecome mindful of different student learning styles,so must we become mindful of our colleagues’ differ-ent theory styles.

The classical, model-based, and contextualist ap-proaches to theory discussed in this chapter each en-shrine a different set of intuitions regarding theoryand research. It is worth stressing that none of theseapproaches is “inherently” or “naturally” superior tothe others. As I have tried to show, each approach hasits own advantages and disadvantages. Rather than fallinto the trap of arguing that one approach is the rightapproach, it would be very instructive for each of usto take a current research project and to consider itthrough the lens of classical theory, model-basedtheory, and contextualist theory. Doing so would al-low us to make more informed criticisms of alterna-tive approaches to theory, and it would lay the foun-dation for creating a robust theoretical frameworkunique to developmental education.

References

Beatty, J. (1980). What’s wrong with the received viewof evolutionary theory? Philosophy of ScienceAssociation 2, 397-426.

Collins, T., & Bruch, P. (2000). Theoretical frameworksthat span the disciplines. In D. B. Lundell & J. L.Higbee (Eds.), Proceedings of the first intentionalmeeting on future directions in developmentaleducation (pp. 19-22). Minneapolis, MN: Centerfor Research on Developmental Education andUrban Literacy, General College, University ofMinnesota.

Giere, R. N. (1991). Understanding scientificreasoning. San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart, andWinston.

Longino, H. E. (1990). Science as social knowledge.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.

Longino, H. E. (2000). Toward an epistemology forbiological pluralism. In R. C. Creath & J.Maienschein (Eds.), Biology and epistemology (pp.261-286). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.

Lundell, D. B., & Collins, T. (1999). Toward a theoryof developmental education: The centrality of“Discourse.” In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.),The expanding role of developmental education(pp. 3-20). Morrow, GA: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Silverman, S. L., & Casazza, M. E. (2000). Learning &development. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass.

Spann, M. G., & McCrimmon, S. (1998). Remedial/developmental education: Past, present, and future.In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.), Developmentaleducation: Preparing successful college students(pp. 37-47). Columbia, SC: National ResourceCenter for The First-Year Experience & Studentsin Transition, University of South Carolina.

Stratton, C. B. (1998). Transitions in developmentaleducation: Interviews with Hunter Boylan andDavid Arendale. In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell(Eds.), Developmental education: Preparingsuccessful college students (pp. 25-36). Columbia,SC: National Resource Center for The First-YearExperience & Students in Transition, University ofSouth Carolina.

Wambach, C., Brothen, T., & Dikel, T. N. (2000).Toward a developmental theory for developmentaleducators. Journal of Developmental Education,24(1), 2, 6, 8, 10, 29.


27Student Personnel Point of View

In 1926 the American Council onEducation (ACE) established the Committee on Per-sonnel Methods to explore student personnel programsand services in higher education (National Associationof Student Personnel Administrators [NASPA], 1989).This committee, led by H.E. Hawkes, conducted a sur-vey authored by L.B. Hopkins to determine specificinstitutional practices designed to promote students’individual development. The results of this research,published in 1926 in The Educational Record (NASPA),prompted further investigation and innovation in thearea of testing and measurements. In 1936 ACE re-placed the Committee on Personnel Methods with theCommittee on Measurement and Guidance. In April,1937, the Executive Committee of ACE sponsored aninvited meeting to examine ACE’s role in further studyand clarification of student personnel work.

The Original Student PersonnelPoint of View

The following individuals participated in the 1937conference that developed The Student Personnel Pointof View: Thyrsa Amos, F. F. Bradshaw, D.S. Bridgman,A.J. Brumbaugh, W.H. Cowley, A.B. Crawford, Ed-ward C. Elliott, Burton P. Fowler, D.H. Gardner, H.E.Hawkes, L.B. Hopkins, F.J. Kelly, Edwin A. Lee, EstherLloyd-Jones, D.G. Paterson, C. Gilbert Wrenn, C.S.Marsh, D.J. Shank, and G.F. Zook, then president ofACE (NASPA, 1989, p. 38). This list represents a vir-tual “who’s who” in the history of the profession ofcollege student development. Their report resulted inthe formation of the ACE Committee on Student Per-sonnel Work.

The Student Personnel Point of View (ACE, 1937;reprinted by NASPA, 1989) is divided into four sec-tions: (a) Philosophy, (b) Student Personnel Services,

(c) Coordination, and (d) Future Development. How-ever, it is in the first two paragraphs that the authorsestablished the theoretical framework that is the es-sence of The Student Personnel Point of View:

One of the basic purposes of higher educationis the preservation, transmission, and enrich-ment of the important elements of culture: theproduct of scholarship, research, creativeimagination, and human experience. It is thetask of colleges and universities to vitalize thisand other educational purposes as to assist thestudent in developing to the limits of his poten-tialities and in making his [sic] contribution tothe betterment of society.

This philosophy imposes upon educationalinstitutions the obligation to consider the stu-dent as a whole—his intellectual capacity andachievement, his emotional make up, his physi-cal condition, his social relationships, his voca-tional aptitudes and skills, his moral and reli-gious values, his economic resources, his aes-thetic appreciations. It puts emphasis, in brief,upon the development of the student as a per-son rather than upon his intellectual trainingalone. (NASPA, 1989, p. 39)

The authors noted that prior to the Civil War “in-terest in the whole student dominated the thinking ofthe great majority of the leaders and faculty membersof American colleges” (NASPA, 1989, p. 39). How-ever, in the latter decades of the 19th century the em-phasis of American higher education, reflecting theinfluence of the German model, shifted

through scientific research, upon the exten-sion of the boundaries of knowledge. The pres-sures upon faculty members to contribute to

The Student Personnel Point of ViewJeanne L. Higbee, Associate ProfessorDevelopmental Education

This chapter provides a history of The Student Personnel Point of View and explores how this theoreticalperspective provides a foundation for developmental education theory, research, and practice.


this growth of knowledge shifted the directionof their thinking to a preoccupation with sub-ject matter and to neglect of the student as anindividual. (NASPA, p. 39)

It is fascinating that this comment, made in 1937,mirrors the viewpoint of many educators regardingthe mission of the research university during the lastdecades of the 20th century as well.

As a result of this change of emphasis, admin-istrators recognized the need of appointing anew type of educational officer to take overthe more intimate responsibilities which fac-ulty members had originally included in theirduties. At the same time, a number of new edu-cational functions arose as the result of thegrowing complexity of modern life…. (NASPA,p. 39)

Thus, student services such as admissions, orienta-tion, financial aid, counseling and testing, career plan-ning and placement, student activities, residence life,and health centers emerged on campuses across thecountry, often under the auspices of the Dean of Menand Dean of Women, positions that later merged un-der the title of Dean of Students, and later Vice Presi-dent for Student Affairs or comparable position. “Theseofficers were appointed first to relieve administratorsand faculty of problems of discipline; but their re-sponsibilities grew with considerable rapidity…”(NASPA, p. 39).

The authors of The Student Personnel Point of Viewremarked on their preference for the term “studentpersonnel,” rather than terms like “guidance” or“counseling” to refer to their philosophical point ofview, which the authors considered “as old as educa-tion itself” (NASPA, 1989, p. 40). They went on tospecify the types of services that should be includedin student personnel work, and provided guidelinesfor the coordination of these services. They stated,

The effective organization and functioning ofstudent personnel work requires that the edu-cational administrators at all times (1) regardstudent personnel work as a major concern,involving the cooperative effort of all mem-bers of the teaching and administrative staffand the student body; and (2) interpret studentpersonnel work as dealing with the individual

student’s total characteristics and experiencesrather than with separate and distinct aspectsof his personality or performance. (NASPA,1989, p. 42)

The 1937 original version of The Student Person-nel Point of View is most closely identified with thisfocus on the whole student.

The Revised Student PersonnelPoint of View

In 1949 ACE published a revised edition of TheStudent Personnel Point of View (reprinted by NASPA,1989) that reflected the changing face of Americanhigher education, as well as noticeable anti-Germansentiment. The sections of the new report were “Phi-losophy and Objectives,” “Student Needs and Person-nel Services,” “Elements of a Student Personnel Pro-gram,” “The Administration of Student PersonnelWork,” and “The Importance of the Research Em-phasis” (ACE, 1949). In its philosophical statement therevised version built on the purpose of higher educa-tion as articulated in 1937, but focused on three addi-tional goals: (a) “Education for a fuller realization ofdemocracy in every phase of living,” (b) “Educationdirectly and explicitly for international understand-ing and cooperation,” and (c) “Education for the ap-plication of creative imagination and trained intelli-gence to the solution of social problems and to theadministration of public affairs” (NASPA, 1989, p. 17).The authors of the 1949 revision continued to empha-size the importance of educating the whole student asfollows:

Although these added goals aim essentially atsocietal growth, they affect positively the edu-cation and development of each individual stu-dent. The development of students as wholepersons interacting in social situations is thecentral concern of student personnel work andof other agencies of education. This emphasisin contemporary education is the essential partof the student personnel point of view.

The student personnel point of view en-compasses the student as a whole. The conceptof education is broadened to include attentionto the student’s well-rounded development—physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritu-


ally—as well as intellectually. The student isthought of as a responsible participant in his[sic] own development and not as a passive re-cipient of an imprinted economic, political, orreligious doctrine, or vocational skill. As a re-sponsible participant in the societal processesof our American democracy, his full and bal-anced maturity is viewed as a major end-goalof education and, as well, a necessary meansto the fullest development of his fellow citi-zens. From the personnel point of view anylesser goals fall short of the desired objectivesof democratic educational processes and is areal drain and strain upon the self-realizationof other developing individuals in our society.(NASPA, 1989, p. 18)

These paragraphs have served as the theoreticalframework for countless research studies in studentpersonnel work through its evolution into student af-fairs and student development, as well as providingthe foundation for other student development theo-rists, such as Arthur Chickering (1969; Chickering &Reisser, 1993) and Alexander Astin (1977, 1985,1993). In fact, in his preface to Education and Iden-tity, Chickering (1969) wrote:

Higher education once aimed to produce menprepared to engage with the society of man.But as the changes of the last fifty years haveoccurred, higher education has altered its im-age of man. The focus has shifted from men tosubjects, from persons to professionals. Conse-quently, men themselves have become sub-jects—subjects to majors, to disciplines, to pro-fessions, to industries. Higher education and so-ciety are mired in frustration and conflict. Theseconditions will persist until men—not materi-als, nor systems, nor institutions—again becomethe focus of human concern. (p. ix)

In Achieving Educational Excellence, Astin (1985)wrote,

During my twenty-five years of research onAmerican higher education, I have been in-creasingly attracted to what I shall term thetalent development model of higher education.Under this model, the major purpose of anyinstitution of higher education is to develop the

talents of its faculty and students to their maxi-mum potential. (p. 16)

Under the section on “Student Needs and Person-nel Services,” the revised report included a paragraphtitled “The Student Succeeds in His Studies,” as fol-lows:

The college or university has primary respon-sibility in selecting for admission students whohave basic qualities of intelligence and apti-tudes necessary for success in a given institu-tion. However, many otherwise able studentsfail, or do not achieve up to the maximum ca-pacity because they lack proficiency or per-sonal motivation for the tasks set by the col-lege, because of deficiency in reading or studyskills, because they do not budget their timeproperly, have emotional conflicts resultingfrom family or other pressures, have generallyimmature attitudes, are not wisely counseledin relation to curricular choices, or because ofa number of other factors. In order that eachstudent may develop effective work habits andthereby achieve his optimum potential, the col-lege or university should provide servicesthrough which the student may acquire theskills and techniques for efficient utilization ofhis [sic] ability. In addition to the contributionof counseling and removing blockages from hispath toward good achievement, the student mayalso need remedial reading and speech services,training in effective study habits, remediationof physical conditions, counseling concerninghis personal motivations, and similar relatedservices. (NASPA, 1989, p. 22)

Thus, just as The Student Personnel Point of Viewis the cornerstone of the student development profes-sion, it also provides a foundation for the broad defi-nition of developmental education, as articulated bythe National Association for Developmental Education(NADE; 1995).

Implications forDevelopmental Education

One of the goals of developmental education is“to develop in each learner the skills and attitudes nec-essary for the attainment of academic, career, and life


goals” (NADE, 1995). Although many developmentaleducators are unfamiliar with The Student PersonnelPoint of View, its impact can be felt throughout theprofession.

The original group of higher education profes-sionals who promulgated this theoretical perspectivein 1937 made the following statement regarding “Co-ordination between Instruction and Student PersonnelWork”:

Instruction is most effective when the instruc-tor regards his [sic] classes both as separate in-dividuals and as members of a group. Such in-struction aims to achieve in every student amaximum performance in terms of thatstudent’s potentialities and the conditions un-der which he works. Ideally each instructorshould possess all the information necessary forsuch individualization. Actually such ideal con-ditions do not exist. Therefore, a program ofcoordination becomes necessary which pro-vides for the instructor appropriate informa-tion whenever such information relates to ef-fective instruction.

An instructor may perform functions in therealms both of instruction and student person-nel work. Furthermore, instruction itself in-volves far more than the giving of informationon the part of the teacher and its acceptanceby the student. Instructors should be encour-aged to contribute regularly to student person-nel records such anecdotal information con-cerning students as is significant from the per-sonnel point of view. Instructors should be en-couraged to call to the attention of personnelworkers any students in their courses who couldprofit by personnel services. (NASPA, 1989, p.43)

Developmental education programs have a longhistory of encouraging communication among faculty,counselors, advisors, and students. The small class sizeinherent to most developmental education settings en-ables individualization and enhanced contact betweenstudents and faculty. Starks (1994) notes that thesepractices encourage the retention of developmentalstudents “because they support academic and affec-tive needs” (p. 25). Similarly, Neuberger (1999) states,

“Programs which are comprehensive in nature—thosethat combine services and do not offer developmentalcourses in isolation—tend to be more effective” (p. 5).Boylan and Saxon (1998) provide a historical contextfor the link between developmental education and thefocus on the whole student:

There are those who believe that the term “de-velopmental education” originated during the1970s as a politically correct label coined toavoid offending minorities by referring to themas “remedial,” “nontraditional,” or “disadvan-taged.” This is a gross misconception. The term“developmental education” reflects a dramaticexpansion in our knowledge of human growthand development in the 1960s and 1970s. As aresult we began to understand that poor aca-demic performance involved far more com-plex factors than a student’s being unable tosolve for x in an algebraic equation or write acomplete sentence using proper grammar. Ifsuch deficiencies were the only problems forstudents having difficulty in college, simpleremediation would be an appropriate solutionfor everyone. A variety of noncognitive or “de-velopmental” factors, however, were also dis-covered to be of critical importance to studentsuccess. These additional factors include suchthings as locus of control, attitudes towardlearning, self-concept, autonomy, ability to seekhelp, and a host of other influences having noth-ing to do with students’ intellect or academicskill.

By the late 1970s, educators who workedwith underprepared students developed an en-tirely new paradigm to guide their efforts. In-stead of assuming that students were simply de-ficient in academic skills and needed to havethese deficiencies remediated, they began toassume that personal and academic growthwere linked—that the improvement of aca-demic performance was tied to improvementin students’ attitudes, values, and beliefs aboutthemselves, others, and the educational envi-ronment. This created a new model for work-ing with those who had previously been un-successful in academic tasks.


The new model involved the teaching ofbasic skills combined with assessment, advis-ing, counseling, tutoring, and individualizedlearning experiences designed not just to re-teach basic content, but also to promote stu-dent development. The resulting model becameknown as “developmental education,” and thosewho participated in it were described as “de-velopmental students.” (pp. 7-8)

Boylan and Saxon, like others writing in the field(e.g., Neuberger, 1999; Stahl, Simpson, & Hayes,1992), further assert:

Successful developmental education…involvesmore than just the teaching of basic skills. Un-derstanding that there is a link between per-sonal and academic growth is the key differ-ence between “developmental” and “reme-dial” education. For developmental interven-tion to be successful, student development mustbe promoted through services such as advis-ing, counseling, and tutoring. For these treat-ments to be effective, developmental educa-tors must attend to noncognitive variables.(1998, p. 12)

A review of the developmental education litera-ture reveals numerous models for addressing thenoncognitive needs of students (e.g., Farmer & Barham,1996; Gallagher, Golin, & Kelleher, 1992; Hammond,1990; Higbee & Dwinell, 1998; Nelson, 1998; Rob-erts, 1990; Roueche & Baker, 1994; Upcraft & Gardner,1989) and research studies that support the effective-ness of these models (e.g., Boylan, Bliss, & Bonham,1997; Clark, 1987; Higbee & Dwinell, 1990, 1992;Kulik, Kulik, & Schwalb, 1983; Starke, 1994;Weinstein, Dierking, Husman, Roska, & Powdrill,1998). Both research and practice in developmentaleducation reflect the importance of addressing theneeds of the whole student. Some programs, like theUniversity of Minnesota’s General College (Wambach& delMas, 1998) provide a full range of student sup-port services, from orientation to scholarships, advis-ing, an early warning system, freshman seminars, anacademic resource center, career planning, a programfor non-native speakers of English (Murie & Thomson,in press), and special services for students who areparents.

However, perhaps even more important than thisemphasis on the whole student are the goals set forthin the 1949 revision that focus on “a fuller realizationof democracy,” “international understanding,” and “the solution of social problems” (NASPA, 1989, p. 17).Developmental education is committed to the demo-cratic ideal of access to higher education. Hardin(1998) explains,

Some argue the philosophical issue of devel-opmental education, suggesting that highereducation should be “higher” and, therefore,limited to the financially able and academi-cally gifted. Others argue that the Americaneducation system is based on the Jeffersonianconcept that all American citizens are entitledto achieve their fullest academic potential. (p.15)

Hardin further notes,

Perhaps higher education has been “higher”because colleges and universities were able tostay above the problems of society; however,this is no longer possible. The problems of pov-erty, violence, drugs, mental illness, andhomelessness are being brought to institutionsof higher education…. (p. 22)

Developmental educators can take the lead in pro-viding access to all levels of higher education, includ-ing the research university, through both content-basedcore curriculum courses (Brothen & Wambach, 1999,2000; Ghere, 2000; James & Haselbeck, 1998; Jensen& Rush, 2000) and skill development elective courses(Higbee, Dwinell, & Thomas, in press) for graduationcredit that enhance retention as well. They can alsoplay a prominent role in promoting the celebration ofdiversity both within and outside the classroom, andfacilitating understanding of and creating solutions forsocial problems. Recent trends in developmental edu-cation that support the accomplishment of these goals,in addition to content-based developmental courses insuch areas as history and the social sciences (Ghere,2000, in press; Pedelty & Jacobs, in press), includecommunity-linked programs such as workplace lit-eracy projects (Griffith, 1999; Longman, Atkinson,Miholic, & Simpson, 1999), service learning (SL;Borland, Orazem, & Donelly, 1999; Gordon, 1999;


McKenna, 1999; Robinson, 1999; Rockwell, 1999;Schnaubelt & Watson, 1999; Slimmer, 1999; Troppe,1999), community partnerships (Tompkins, 1999;Wiseman, 1999), and other innovations that linkhigher education in general and college students inparticular to the world outside the doors of the institu-tion. In an interview (Mack & Nguyen, 2000) for arecent edition of Community Connection: A Newslet-ter for Service Learning and Community Involvement,Barajas-Howarth states, “Historically, the University hasdrawn on the community for research purposes. Butwe need to also be mindful that our teaching and re-search, in turn, benefit those communities” (p. 8). Shefurther explains,

SL is about much more than humanitarianism.This work is about learning, about making edu-cation come alive through application. Aspeople privileged to enjoy the benefits of highereducation, we have the obligation to learn fromas well as to give to our community (p. 8).

It is imperative that the developmental educationprofession continues to provide leadership in the ar-eas of pluralism (Higbee, 1991; Kezar, 2000; Walters,2000) and public service (Coles, 1993). Smith (2000)reports that senior recipients of leadership awards atLongwood College had significantly higher cumula-tive grade point averages (GPAs), and that students withhigh GPAs but no leadership awards “showed far fewersocial and personal gains” (p. 27), as measured by theCollege Student Experiences Questionnaire. Promot-ing intellectual competence (Chickering, 1969;Chickering & Reisser, 1993) is only a small part of themission of higher education. Developmental educa-tion programs can continue to lead the way in en-hancing the growth of the student as a whole person.

The Student Personnel Point of View may be morethan 50 years old, but it still has much to teach thedevelopmental educator. By familiarizing themselveswith the basic tenets of this theoretical perspective,developmental educators can guide students to achieveto their fullest potential, while also setting an examplefor other higher educators who have lost sight of thefundamental purpose of higher education.

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37Democratic Theory

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois predictedthat the problem of the twentieth century would bethe problem of the color line (Du Bois, 1982, p. xi).For higher education, and most acutely for develop-mental education programs, the challenge of thetwenty-first century will be the challenge ofmulticultural democracy. The challenge ofmulticultural democracy is not the same as the prob-lem of the color line. The color line of Du Bois’ timewas institutionalized through official discrimination—through practices or policies that intended to eitherfavor or penalize individuals on the basis of socialgroup identification. Discrimination has, since the timeof Du Bois’s prediction, become illegal and sociallyunacceptable. Yet despite the best efforts of reforms,many of the social group hierarchies of Du Bois’ eracontinue to structure higher education in particularand public life in general.

The new challenge, the challenge of multiculturaldemocracy, demands that those of us within develop-mental education understand and respond to the ob-stacles to equality that remain after the implementa-tion of formal nondiscrimination. One difficulty at thispoint in meeting the challenge of multiculturalismwithin developmental education is that researchershave not yet deeply examined the implicit concep-tions of democratic social relations—the theories ofhow knowledge and power relate to democracy—thatstructure research in the field. As a result, develop-

mental education research has largely operated withinthe broad popular assumption that we can best serveour students by supporting their individualized par-ticipation in existing institutions, where participationmeans fitting in and playing according to the rules ofthe institutions as they are currently defined. Giventhis focus, much of our research pursues strategies forhelping students to adapt themselves to what Paul Fidlerand Margi Godwin (1994) identify as “curricula, stu-dent services, and campus environment based on awhite [sic] middle class norm” (p. 35). Hunter Boylan(1991) has drawn attention to the complex and con-tradictory roles that such research plays, commentingthat

all programs that work with nontraditional stu-dents have one, and only one, bottom line. Andthat’s to make opportunity a reality rather thanan abstraction, a fact rather than a noble fic-tion, an outcome rather than a piece of legisla-tion. (as quoted in Craig, 1997, p. 23)

Boylan here pinpoints the social motivation ofresearch and teaching in developmental educa-tion—making equal opportunity real one person at atime.

In addition to identifying our bottom line, Boylan’scomment points to the frustrating experience of on-going group inequality despite the erasure of the color

Democratic Theory andDevelopmental EducationPatrick Bruch, Assistant ProfessorWriting

In our present circumstances, it is incumbent upon developmental educators to construct alternatives to theprivatized democratic theories of knowledge and power that, though once progressive, today propel rollbacksof support for underprepared students and widespread misunderstandings of educational success and failure.This chapter represents a contribution to this project of reimagining the definitions of democratic socialrelations that provide foundations for any talk of the social purposes of education. I analyze the contemporaryimpasse of privatized democracy as a theoretical framework for defining and defending developmentaleducation. I discuss how two significant strands of contemporary democratic social theory can expand thecurrent focus on discrimination and inattention to oppression. I conclude with a discussion of how developmentaleducators might build on the strengths of currently available alternatives to privatized democratic theory.


line and the implementation of formal nondiscrimi-nation and individualized access. Boylan’s referencesto equality as an “abstraction,” a “noble fiction,” oran unrealized “piece of legislation,” hints at the needfor a new vision of democratic equality. Boylan lo-cates our efforts as struggling against the present con-dition of having extensive rules about equality but areality of profound inequality. His comments suggestthe need for theoretical discourses that can redefinethe rhetoric and reality of equality. We need theoriesof knowledge and power that can help us to amelio-rate the gap that currently exists between individual-ized strategies on one hand and historically, cultur-ally, and institutionally entrenched relations of groupprivilege and oppression on the other. But despite thenagging sense that, on its own, “not only is an agendaof socialization insufficient for enfranchisementbut…it might be detrimental to enfranchisement”(Prendergast, 1998, p. 50), developmental educatorshave not pursued a research agenda for redefiningeducational enfranchisement. Although important asa partial strategy, if pursued exclusively, the currentlydominant research agenda ignores how facially neu-tral knowledge can, in practice, reinforce the powerof dominant groups.

In what follows, I examine the relationships be-tween democratic theory and developmental educa-tion, highlighting theories of democratic equality thatoffer more robust foundations for responding to thechallenge of multiculturalism. I begin with a discus-sion of the democratic theory implicit to most con-temporary research in developmental education. Here,I draw from the educational theory of David Sehr(1997) to argue that developmental education oper-ates within a theoretical paradigm of privatized de-mocracy. Next, I draw from research within develop-mental writing to outline the value of privatized de-mocracy as a conceptual tool with which to erase thecolor line, and the inadequacies of privatized democ-racy as a conceptual foundation for grappling withthe challenges of multicultural democracy. I followthis critical engagement with a discussion of resourcesavailable within two significant theories of democraticpublic life that seek to address the weaknesses of priva-tized democracy. I conclude with a discussion of howthese theories might transform research and practicein developmental education in particular and highereducation in general.

The Foundations of DevelopmentalEducation in Democratic Theory

In their discussion of the evolving definition ofdevelopmental education, Emily Payne and BarbaraLyman (1996) have recently pointed out that “devel-opmental education, perhaps more than most disci-plines, has been influenced by trends and issues out-side the field” (p. 13). The most recent of these trendsand issues have grown out of demands from and re-sponses to social movements for group justice. Primaryamong the demands have been calls for institutionaltransformation to enact group equity. A primary re-sponse has been a focus on overcoming the legacies ofthe color line by more vigorously pursuing neutral stan-dards for individual participation and success in pow-erful institutions like education. Responding to the waythat the color line established inequality by definingand treating people as members of groups, the trendhas been to define and strive to treat all people as sepa-rate individuals, and to support each individual’s ef-forts to succeed.

Sehr (1997) has called this trend toward nondis-crimination and individualized competition “priva-tized democracy” (p. 1). For Sehr, privatized democ-racy refers to visions of democratic public life thatemphasize individual self-determination and freedom.This strand of democratic theory has dominated UnitedStates social thought and policy to such a degree that ithas become an invisible assumption within educationaldiscourse. Thus, as Sehr points out, “behind the cur-rent clamor for educational reform, restructuring,privatization, and vouchers, is the assumption that thepurpose of public education is to prepare Americansto compete, both as individuals and as a society” (p.1). Importantly, privatized democracy defines equal-ity as a relationship between individuals, detractingattention from the effects of the social and culturalcontexts, the contexts of group relations, within whichindividuals interact.

This trend toward privatized democracy outsidethe field has influenced research and practice withindevelopmental education. As suggested by Boylan’scomment about making equality more than a prom-ise, developmental educators have worked within asort of double consciousness. On one hand, our closecontact with marginalized, at-risk, first generation,and minority students has demonstrated to us the struc-

39Democratic Theory

tural, social group, roots of our students’ difficulties.These include, as Payne and Lyman (1996) point out,“unequal academic opportunity across socioeconomiclevels, unequal funding of K-12 programs, unequaland unfounded academic expectations of students fromdifferent racial, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds,and erroneous and inappropriate student placementand tracking” (p. 15). On the other hand, faced withthe reality of classrooms full of individuals who arebeing held out of educational and other opportunitiesby their location on the wrong side of facially neutraltalk of standards and criteria of excellence, we havededicated our research efforts to figuring out how bestto enable these students to meet these standards ofunfairness. Thus, within a context of privatized de-mocracy emphasizing neutrality as a strategy for over-coming past favoritism toward dominant groups, de-velopmental educators have spent less time question-ing the possibility of neutrality and more time tryingto help students succeed according to existing stan-dards.

The broad and deep commitment to privatized de-mocracy that has emerged as a cultural dominant inthe post-civil rights era is a double-edged sword.Through the vigorous pursuit of institutional policiesand practices that propose to treat all persons as equalindividuals and ignore group dynamics, the categori-cal mistreatment of some has been fundamentally chal-lenged and, in places, eradicated. This progress is realand has supported economic and social prosperity forsome individuals from historically marginalizedgroups. Although highly successful as a response toinstitutionalized discrimination, though, privatizeddemocracy has been unable to transform some grouplevel injustices. For example, within developmentalwriting, Tom Fox (1993) has challenged the “accessthrough language pedagogy” that continues to domi-nate developmental writing, calling this strategy “anunqualifiable failure” (p. 42) in dealing with the edu-cational disenfranchisement of African American stu-dents. Fox documents how, despite official nondiscrimi-nation, skill remediation does little to transform thegroup level results of past discrimination. As he pointsout, “If you trace participation in higher education byAfrican Americans in the last two decades, you see anugly picture of slow, actual decline until 1988, a smallincrease in the last few years, and an overall picturethat no significant change is occurring” (p. 42). Al-though access through language appears to work for

some individuals, it best serves those least in need. Also,by reaffirming the valued position of currently domi-nant forms of knowledge, narrow access approachesjustify the disconfirmation and exclusion of many.

The decades-old dilemma of no significant changefor African American and other students at the bottomof academic and socioeconomic ladders translates intodata like those collected by Eleanor Agnew and Mar-garet McLaughlin (1999) who found that “[White]students who were not successfully remediated in onequarter” of basic writing still “have more than twicethe success rate in subsequent college courses as black[sic] students who did pass the course” (p. 45). Build-ing on this kind of empirical evidence documentingthe weakness of trying to grapple with group levelinjustice at the individual level, it is incumbent uponeducational researchers to reflect upon models ofdemocratic equality that can support meaningful en-franchisement of historically marginalized groups.Within a paradigm of privatized democracy that ig-nores group relations, the best that can be hoped for isequal access to a fundamentally unjust work and so-cial world. At the present time, the disproportionatelack of success among students from socially oppressedgroups pulls practice towards individualized skillremediation that perpetuates the cultural and socialexclusion of students from those groups.

Thus far, I have demonstrated that much of theresearch within developmental education can be un-derstood as implementing privatized democratictheory. I have drawn attention to the limits of thistheoretical paradigm for dealing with the group chal-lenges of multicultural democracy. In short, privatizeddemocracy represents a way of responding to the chal-lenges that define developmental education that, inthe long run, chronically underserves some of our stu-dents. Although it is valuable as a partial response tothe challenges we face, it is anemic as a total response.

Though historically dominant, privatized democ-racy has always been challenged by alternative viewsof democracy that have emphasized participation andredefinition of social institutions as essential democraticactivities. Sehr (1997) calls these theories of publicdemocracy. Extending the intellectual traditions ofThomas Jefferson and John Dewey, these theories em-phasize the importance of relationships, participation,and common good over private gain. Where priva-


tized democracy offers a universal vision of individu-als as possessed of rights that should not be violated,public democracy expands the notion of citizenshipbeyond individualized access to existing institutions toinclude equitable participation in institutions and ac-tive, continuous redefinition of those institutions.

Dana Lundell and Terence Collins (1999) haverecently begun pushing developmental education re-search towards a critical examination of the theoreti-cal assumptions about knowledge, power, and democ-racy that underlie currently dominant practices. Spe-cifically Lundell and Collins investigate “assumptionswhich, though unarticulated, seem to shape the re-search in developmental education” highlighting astrong need for “integrated models that are thought-ful in naming [the] prior assumptions” (p. 7) that mo-tivate practice in the field. They conclude that, be-cause it is primarily dedicated to enabling student as-similation to what are assumed to be inherently valu-able (i.e., because institutionally valued) forms ofknowledge, “research in developmental education pri-marily focuses on individual deficit and its remediation,even though the rhetorical emphasis is on serving di-verse or non-traditional populations of students” (p.7).

As an alternative that is practically as well as rhe-torically committed to serving diverse or nontraditionalstudents, Lundell and Collins propose a broadreconceptualization of developmental education thatwould focus on expanding discourse participationrather than discrete skill remediation. For Lundell andCollins, success in higher education involves learningto participate in communicative, affective, intellec-tual, cultural, and social norms and patterns that aredistant from and potentially at odds with the normsand patterns that many students bring with them toschooling. In order to really serve these students, de-velopmental education programs must create contextsin which the discourses of higher education can beselectively adopted while not being uncritically over-valued.

As Lundell and Collins suggest, the challenge ofresponding to group oppression is to come up withnew ways of formulating the relationships betweenknowledge and equality that resist the trap of seeingknowledge as neutral and equality as dependent onindividualized assimilation to an inherently valuable

norm. Their theory of discourse is important becauseit invites reconsideration of the role of developmentaleducation and the democratic purposes of schooling.

Lundell and Collins have initiated a necessary re-examination of the foundational assumptions shapingwork in developmental education. In what follows, Iundertake further work needed for discourse theoryto constructively challenge the dominant frameworkof developmental education research. Recognizing thathigher education is a discourse—a social constructionthat defines and distributes power—does not neces-sarily challenge developmental educators to rethinkthe assumption that exclusively redistributing currentlyvalued academic discourses to more individuals canprovide a ground for equal participation and oppor-tunity. Nor does discourse theory necessarily invitecritical reflection on how expanding access to privi-leged ways of being and knowing might unintention-ally extend and reinforce the institutional privilegesof currently dominant groups via those groups’ pre-ferred discourses even as it enables some individualslimited access to some of the privileges enjoyed bythose groups. In other words, Lundell and Collins’ pre-sentation of discourse theory assumes the foundationalinsights of a critical theory of democracy and differ-ence currently absent from developmental education.Without making these foundations explicit, discoursetheory might not, in practice, engage the relationalhierarchies that pit some discourses against others sothat adopting one is to disconfirm and silence the other.

In order to make opportunity a fact and a reality,the reconceptualization of academic participation thatLundell and Collins propose will need to be rooted ina vision of knowledge and power that interprets andaddresses the shortcomings of the currently dominantemphasis on nondiscrimination. Such theories providea framework for redefining the inequalities we needto address in schools and other institutions, emphasiz-ing the importance of transforming as well as distrib-uting privileged discourses and providing a picture ofwhat necessary transformations might look like. In thefollowing sections, I outline the major tenets of twosignificant theories of public democracy and discussthe ramifications that each might have for develop-mental education. These theories provide rationale andcriteria for critically challenging currently dominantdiscourses or forms of knowledge in the academy. Inorder to make my discussion of these theories man-

41Democratic Theory

ageable, I concentrate on the implications that thesetheories have for rethinking our definitions of literacy.

Communitarian Democracy:Literacy and Mutuality

I begin my discussion of theories of public de-mocracy with the communitarian model. Many po-litical theorists look to a more robust community asthe theoretical alternative to the individualism that theyunderstand as the rip tide undermining social solidar-ity and group equality within privatized democracy.The most influential discussion of communitarian de-mocracy as an antidote to the negative effect of priva-tized democracy is Benjamin Barber’s Strong Democ-racy: Participatory Politics for the Modern Age (1984).In what follows I discuss specific contributions thatthe communitarian perspective makes towards refor-mulating the democratic prospects of literacy. Thesecontributions include the foundational principle thatliteracy and other forms of knowledge are social con-structions that should enable persons to participate inmaking and being made by history, and the connectednotion that rather than a stable set of skills, literacy isa flexible practice of continuously redefining and en-acting just relations among persons—communicativerelations that enable all to participate meaningfully increating a shared truth.

First, I will address how Barber’s (1984)communitarian perspective formulates language as apractice for participating in, rather than escapingfrom, history. The communitarian view of languagediffers from the traditional privatized view with re-spect to the relation within each model between lan-guage and the historical contingency of truth. In eachmodel, language plays an essential and definitive rolein facilitating “democratic” relations among persons.Within privatized theory, language is understood asan ahistorical bridge between the autonomous self andthe rational world. Standing apart from individualsand enabling individuals to stand outside of history,literacy enables the democratic community to argueabout truth through appeals to reason. Barber con-tends that in order for the privatized model of indi-vidualist meritocracy to make sense, “the individualmust know . . . truth in and of himself but also univer-sally” (p. 59). As the connective tissue among indi-viduals, language must itself be impartial. Thus, within

the privatized democratic community, language pro-vides a sphere for contestation over which perspec-tives or interpretations accurately reflect a universaltruth outside of language. Through language, in priva-tized democracy, “reason is the vital link [among per-sons]—the common process that gives to individualdiscovery the legitimacy of mutuality” (p. 59). It isthis view of language that has led developmental edu-cators to the access through language model that Fox(1993), Prendergast (1998), and Agnew andMcLaughlin (1999) challenge.

Drawing on the idea promoted by the group move-ments of the 1960s that “objectivity,” “universality,”and “impartiality” are socially determined terms thatjustify overvaluing some perspectives at the expenseof others, communitarianism challenges the privatizedview of language and truth. For communitarian theory,rather than existing outside of language, truths aboutwho we are and what the world is like are products ofthe ways that we use language. Given this, multiculturaldemocracy demands a definition of literacy—the lan-guage practices we value—as a public mode of par-ticipation that gives democratic legitimacy to truthsthat structure social life. In opposition to the priva-tized model in which language embodies the autonomy,rationality, and universality of truths, in communitariantheory, language expresses the mutuality and common-ality that citizens construct through the process ofmaking truths. In the communitarian model, then, thesocial function of language is not to provide a spherefor argumentation concerning autonomous truth, butto provide a sphere of participation in creating sharedmeanings that serve the common good within particularcircumstances. For communitarian democracy, in dis-tinction from privatized democracy, truths are “pro-duced by an ongoing process of democratic delibera-tion, judgment, and action, and they are legitimizedsolely by that process” (Barber, 1984, p. 170).

The major democratic prospect of literacy incommunitarian theory is “challenging the paradigmaticpresent” (Barber, 1984, p. 194). As a way of measur-ing literacy, challenging the paradigmatic present putsschool knowledge in support of the civic practice ofcreating greater mutuality by contesting convention-alized uses and valuations of terms for describing con-temporary realities. This discursive activity expressesthe communitarian commitment to meaningfully in-volving citizens in creating shared interpretations of


public life. Rather than simply acquiescing to whatexists, allowing others to define reality, or excludingpersons from participating, citizens are understoodthrough their obligation to deliberate over meaningsfor the terms they use to define themselves and othersin ways that expand relations of mutuality. Strongdemocratic civic literacy emphasizes that languageshould be a sphere through which citizens continu-ally question the present realities they face as a way ofenacting the recognition that present realities are prod-ucts of talk. In other words, for democracy, we mea-sure our ways of talking not to question their truth buttheir consequences. Thus, Barber argues that “to par-ticipate in a meaningful process of decisionmaking...self-governing citizens must participate inthe talk through which the questions are formulatedand given decisive political conception” (p. 196). Strongdemocratic literacy emphasizes that the formulationof problems and issues by citizens must be open andcritical. Literacy must be defined by the ability to chal-lenge the consequences of the language used to de-fine a given issue.

Within communitarian theory, knowledge is seenas social and is measured in part by the relations amongpeople that it operationalizes. The stark difference withrespect to literacy within communitarian theory re-flects its distinctive understanding of difference as aningredient of, rather than an obstacle to, democracy.Within privatized democracy, difference is understoodas personal and private, properly exterior to publiclife structured by universal and thus impartial truths.Within communitarian theory, difference is under-stood as a beginning perspective, a starting point, thatdemocratic participation provides an arena for trans-forming. Within communitarian theory, then, the com-munity is defined by its perennial transformation ofdifferences into mutualities. The construction of com-munity is idealized as mutually transformative and thusdifference is not understood as defection from a neu-tral or universally valuable norm. Such a reading ofliteracy and difference holds great promise for equip-ping developmental educators to meet the challengeof multiculturalism. Specifically, the principle of mu-tuality potentially lifts the burden of assimilation frommarginalized groups and creates conditions for chal-lenging dominant forms of knowledge. At the sametime, formulating all differences as formally equalstarting places, Barber (1984) does not question therelations among them and thus abstracts difference

from the realities of group relations. In this sense, thehistorical focus of education on the contingency ofcurrently conventional truths and relations fails toquestion the invisibility to dominant groups of the waysthat group privileges inflect their views.

As such, the way that communitarianism windsup constructing democratic equality, as a process ofovercoming individual difference, exhibits certain con-spicuous inadequacies for addressing the current chal-lenge of multicultural democracy. The inadequaciesof communitarianism revolve around the characterof the mutuality that Barber (1984) advocates and theindividualist understanding of difference that, withinhis vision of democratic community, mutuality worksto overcome. It is important to point out that only bysituating the project of mutuality historically as a re-sponse to specific problems that privatized democracycannot adequately ameliorate, can communitarianismdistinguish its own calls for mutuality from models ofsocial life that use appeals to community and com-monality to justify the suffering of members of socialgroups defined as different. Barber recognizes thisneed to historicize in his conception of language, butdoes not understand difference in terms of histori-cally specific relations of power among groups.

The difficulty with the definition of communitythat Barber (1984) advocates is that it obscures theneed for consideration of the historically situated re-lations of power between and among perspectives asthese perspectives are grounded in the society that cur-rently exists. Many of the conflicts that thecommunitarian perspective would see as opportuni-ties for mutuality, conflicts over curriculum contentfor instance, are interactions among socially differen-tiated groups defined by unequal relations of powerand privilege. As such, the mutuality created must spe-cifically account for the practical inequality that cur-rently defines the positions to be transcended. Barber’sview of mutuality relies on assuming that the perspec-tives brought to a situation are equally legitimate. Butif the positions are representative of historic and con-temporary group inequities, then a democratic en-counter should not consider all positions equal becausethey are defined, in part, by their relations to otherpositions. Instead of ignoring the social inequity thatinforms positions, the democratic encounter shouldemphasize challenging inequity and the impasse indeliberations that inequity creates. The democratic en-

43Democratic Theory

counter should emphasize the public authority of thosesocial groups that suffer from the formal but not ac-tual equality of all perspectives.

Communitarian principles that knowledge is a so-cial construction and that the purpose of schooling isto enable equitable participation rather than to justifyexisting hierarchies are important. Still, Barber (1984)can ignore the need to define mutuality historicallybecause he distances communitarian theory from realworld group struggles that have tried to implementparticipatory practices. By defining equality as a com-municatively enacted relation among persons,communitarianism makes the important gesture of re-formulating the privatized conception of individualsas static entities towards the view that individuals arecreated by their communicative relations with others.But in advocating a shift in emphasis from together-ness grounded in neutrality to mutuality constructedby deliberation as in and of itself sufficient to democ-ratize society, Barber fails to account for the ways thatsocial group hierarchies inflect the ways individualsare able under current conditions to relate and delib-erate. Here, different positions must be understood inpart through attention to the historical and currentgroup relations of power that give differences socialsignificance. In this perspective mutuality must be de-fined as a relationship that transforms the unequal re-lations of power that structures the meanings of dif-ference between and among groups. Without explic-itly recognizing that difference is not personal, but afunction of norms and conventions that institutional-ize power, the ideal of mutuality risks reiterating his-torical assaults on members of groups whose differ-ence has been negatively charged. The ideal of all-encompassing mutuality risks targeting differencerather than inequality as the obstacle to democracy. Itdistances talk of democracy from the hopes anddreams of the civil rights movement, feminism, andother social group movements by distancing theoryfrom the central lesson learned in these groupstruggles—that group injustices cannot be transformedby knowledge that proposes to transcend rather thanengage group relations.

Critical Cultural Pluralism:Iris Marion Young

To recall the discussion thus far, withincommunitarian theory the purpose of valued

knowledges like literacy is to affirm social equalityamong persons. In contrast to the opposition constructedby privatized democracy and communitarian democ-racy between truth and consequences as the goal ofvalued knowledge, Iris Marion Young (1990) has theo-rized a model of democracy that concentrates atten-tion on the weak point of each of these theories, theunexamined assumptions within each about risingabove group inequalities. She articulates the criticalcultural pluralist view of knowledge, power, and de-mocracy through her argument that equality is some-thing that people do in relation to others, an exercisedependent upon conditions of enablement, rather thana possession. Further, conditions of enablement arecontexts deeply informed by the overall social grouphierarchies that structure the society. In this view,knowledge itself is a way of being a member of socialgroups, a way of exercising affiliation with some anddifferentiation from others. For Young, given the rolethat knowledge forms play in the construction, affilia-tion, and differentiation of social groups, and giventhe reality that social groups exist in relations of powerand authority, competing knowledges cannot not becharged with intense political force. This concern forhow structural group dynamics shape the conditionsof doing in schools makes critical pluralism particu-larly valuable to educators. It provides foundations forrevising the knowledges we value in the interest ofaddressing injustices.

In Justice and the Politics of Difference, Young(1990) fully articulates her vision of the justificationfor and social realization of a democratic cultural plu-ralism. She begins with a critical reading of the dis-tributive paradigm of equality that operates in priva-tized democracy. Distributivism assumes that socialgoods and burdens exist separately from persons andseparately from language that names and measuresthem. Significantly, then, within this view, social goodsand burdens are conceived as distributable things, andthus “What marks the distributive paradigm is a ten-dency to conceive social justice and distribution as co-extensive concepts” (p. 16). In the case of education,for instance, distributivism limits conceptions of edu-cation to distributing currently valued knowledge.

For Young (1990), the distributive definition ofequality is valuable in defining the ways that quantifi-able resources such as wealth, food, health care, andother such discrete goods should be distributed in or-


der to make material relations more fair. She argues,however, that the distributive vocabulary suffers sig-nificant inadequacies for dealing with nonquantifiablegoods, goods like the feeling of belonging, culturallegitimacy, or power that are significant to the chal-lenges of multicultural democracy. First, distributivism“tends to ignore, at the same time that it often presup-poses, the institutional context that determines mate-rial distributions” (p. 18). Second, “when extended tononmaterial goods and resources, the logic of distri-bution misrepresents them” (p. 18). Taken together,these characteristics conceptually separate goods, per-sons, and institutionalized language, rules, processes,and assumptions. The effect of this separation is to ig-nore the significance of social groups as institutional-ized identity relationships and thus to ignore the pri-mary forms of injustice in contemporary democra-cies—group domination and oppression. In otherwords, distributivism understands persons and socialgoods as atoms that can be attached to each other butthat exist independently. Distributivism is unable toappreciate how persons are in some senses created bythe relations of burdens and goods they inhabit withrespect to each other through institutional processesand practices. Thus, distributivism focuses on quanti-tative redistribution rather than the deeper needs forcultural and institutional transformation.

Rather than focusing exclusively on distribution,critical pluralism also addresses group oppression. Incontrast to distribution, Young (1990) defines oppres-sion as “the disadvantage and injustice some peoplesuffer not because a tyrannical power coerces them,but because of the everyday practices of a well-in-tentioned liberal society” (p. 41). For Young,

oppression consists in systematic institutionalprocesses which prevent some people fromlearning and using satisfying and expansiveskills in socially recognized settings, or institu-tionalized social processes which inhibitpeople’s ability to play and communicate withothers or to express their feelings and perspec-tive on social life in contexts where others canlisten. (p. 38)

An unintended consequence of privatized democ-racy, rather than a contradiction of its basic tenets,social group oppression expands understandings ofdemocratic foundations for education.

Critical cultural pluralism is a particularly potentresource for responding to the challenge ofmulticulturalism because it addresses the significanceof groups and the need for group equity beyond non-discrimination. For critical cultural pluralism, socialgroups constitute persons by giving structure to thesocial perceptions that create how one is seen and un-derstood by others and how one sees and understandsothers. Group conventions of knowledge and inter-pretation give group members shared experiences andperceptions so that “a person’s sense of history, affin-ity, and separateness, even the person’s mode of rea-soning, evaluating, and expressing feeling, are consti-tuted partly by her or his group affinities” (Young,1990, p. 45). Further, other persons’ ways of relatingto one are structured by group relations of power andauthority. As a White, able bodied, middle class, male,then, one exercises privileges and is treated with formsof regard that enact the social dominance of the group.Thus, although dominant political discourses oftenexplain group difference as the cause of injustice andidealize transcending groups and seeing all persons asindividuals, differences of language, social experi-ence, modes of affiliation, are not themselves obstaclesto democratic social life and are probably impossibleto eliminate. The point, from a culturally pluralist per-spective, is to recognize that social groups only havemeaning in their relations with and to other socialgroups and that these meanings become ways of con-stituting individuals in relations of enablement or con-straint. Individual oppression or privilege is the effectof what social groups are enabled to do in relation toother groups, not existence of group differences them-selves.

For critical cultural pluralism, then, individual dif-ference is, in part, a function of group relations. Theindividual identity of any person is not exhausted byan explanation of the social groups with whom oneidentifies because group identification is contextualand contingent, dependent upon circumstances andconditions, and thus always shifting and multiple. Still,groups can be said to “constitute individuals” (Young,1990, p. 45) because they are the primary ways thatpeople give meaning to their own sense of self andinterpret others in social contexts. As social collectivi-ties of identity affiliations and differentiations becomeinstitutionalized cultural practices within societies, onecannot not identify oneself through social groups. One“finds oneself a member of a group, which one expe-

45Democratic Theory

riences as always already having been . . .For our iden-tities are defined in relation to how others identify us,and they do so in terms of groups which are alwaysalready associated with specific attributes, stereotypes,and norms” (Young, p. 46). Thus the meanings thatpersons have are expressions of social relations be-tween groups. Groups carry and enact—by their ex-istence in and through their relations with othergroups—the cultural meanings, knowledges, assump-tions and practices that enable or constrain individualactions.

Young’s (1990) central claim deriving from herattention to institutionalized relations among socialgroups is that although injustice is experienced by in-dividuals, it is institutionalized as relations among thesocial groups that give definition to individuals’ sociallocations, perceptions, and identities. Given this, Youngdefines a democratic view of difference in terms ofinstitutional conditions and practices that enable indi-viduals as members of different groups to enrich andenhance the social life that informs their own and oth-ers’ identity and action. This involves but exceeds en-joying fair material circumstances to include,

learning and using satisfying and expansiveskills in socially recognized settings; participat-ing in forming and running institutions, and re-ceiving recognition for such participation; play-ing and communicating with others, and ex-pressing our experience, feelings, and perspec-tive on social life in contexts where others canlisten. (p. 37)

These are relational goals concerning communi-cative actions. They suggest that social justice demandsinstitutional practices that go beyond not devaluingany person or social group. The democratic commu-nity should instead of formally disabling no one, ac-tively enable all. For Young, the communicative im-perative of creating institutional conditions ofenablement suggests that part of the goal of demo-cratic institutions must be to uplift members of socialgroups who experience social relationships that con-strain the meaningfulness and authority of their ac-tion and participation. Rather than overcoming dif-ference, such goals prioritize reproducing and en-abling group differences while working to challengethe meanings that disable ascription of positive valueto differences.

Building on her challenges to privatized demo-cratic conceptions of knowledge and difference andher advocacy of a relational model of society that at-tends explicitly to group consciousness and the poli-tics of difference, Young (1990) explains how publiclife would be structured under cultural pluralism, ar-guing, “the good society does not eliminate or tran-scend group difference. Rather there is equality amongsocially and culturally defined groups, who mutuallyrespect one another and affirm one another in theirdifferences” (p. 163). This ideal of cultural group dif-ference and equality demands, in Young’s view, dis-pensing with the ideals of community and individual-ity that have underwritten the continuation and en-trenchment of social group injustices since the era ofcivil rights reform. Since that time, the logic of thecommunity versus individuality opposition has becomea commonsense feature of debates over democracy sothat “for many writers, the rejection of individualismlogically entails the assertion of community, and con-versely any rejection of community entails that onenecessarily supports individualism” (p. 229). But forYoung the privatized and communitarian views ofcommunity are bound together by the fact that “eachentails a denial of difference and desire to bring mul-tiplicity and heterogeneity into unity” (p. 229). In thissimilarity, they each deny the politics of differencethat inspired and were developed by the group move-ments born in the 1960s. Young thus constructs “anormative ideal of city life as an alternative to boththe ideal of community and the liberal individualismit criticizes” (p. 237) as a way of trying to articulate amodel of democratic social life that exercises and in-stitutionalizes social transformation through attentionto difference.

Through her definition of city life as a model ofthe good society, Young (1990) works to locate oppor-tunities for more just social norms within the existingmaterial and historical realities we face. Despite therealities of contemporary cities where the depth ofsocial injustice is blatant, Young outlines the featuresof a democratic cultural pluralist public by outliningthe virtues hinted at within the reality of present daycities. For her, the ideal of city life involves a sharedlife in which “differences remain unassimilated” (p.241) and where “the public is heterogeneous, plural,and playful, a place where people witness and appre-ciate diverse cultural expressions that they do not shareand do not fully understand” (p. 241). Bringing to-


gether persons of diverse backgrounds, interests, cul-tures, and beliefs, cities also bring together diverse ac-tivities of life and become spheres of exposure tomultiplicity and dynamic possibility. For Young, theinassimilable diversity of city life presents a model ofthe good society to the degree that difference is asso-ciated not with notions of exclusion and inclusion, butwith overlapping variety, attraction to difference, andpublicity. Further, by enabling differentiation withoutexclusion through the simultaneous existence of so-cial group differences and overlaps, the city demon-strates that social justice requires a politics of differ-ence that “lays down institutional and ideological meansfor recognizing and affirming diverse social groupsby giving political representation to these groups, andcelebrating their distinctive characteristics and cul-tures” (p. 240). In the ideal city, for Young, the pur-pose of public life is to institutionalize social groupequality.

As a resource for defining and defending devel-opmental education, Young’s (1990) vision of the cityexhibits prominent strengths. Her view of the latentpotential within urban social relations envisions an al-ternative to the institutionalized social group oppres-sion that is not addressed by privatized orcommunitarian appeals to nondiscrimination, indi-vidual freedom, or community togetherness. Young’sview attends to the suffering experienced by groupswhose experiences, practices, cultures, histories, per-ceptions, and members are “feared, despised, or atbest devalued” (p. 235) by practices and norms thatpropose themselves to be impartial.

By constructing her model of the good societythrough the norms of city life, Young places herselfand the definition of democratic society in solidaritywith downtrodden social groups who make up themajority of urban residents in many areas. At the cur-rent historical juncture, cities signify in the public con-sciousness non-White cultural spaces. As well, in ma-terial fact, from Detroit to Newark, Los Angeles toMiami, non-White cultures, practices, and perspec-tives exercise more public authority in cities than inany other space. Thus, holding up the city as repre-sentative of the social relations that our society shouldseek inherently denotes the significance of differenceto a democratic vision of the future. As a model of acritically compassionate democratic society that notonly accommodates difference but that institutional-izes equality across differences, Young’s ideal of city

life as a terrain of social group justice is compellingand promising.

Conclusion

The civil rights movement and the cultural up-heavals of the 1960s have provided a new vocabu-lary—the vocabulary of nondiscrimination—for de-fining and defending developmental education pro-grams. Drawing on this vocabulary, developmentaleducation has extended a legacy of human hope thathas historically sustained an interventionist attitude to-ward the suffering that society produces. In the after-math of these efforts, new theories of democracy haveemerged to make sense of unprecedented social re-alities and social hopes. The prospect raised by thecivil rights struggles was that full participation in allaspects of shared life should not require assimilationto norms and practices that devalue any group’s cul-tural heritage, perspectives, or practices. The socialgroup movements, in contrast to individualist liberal-ism, subscribed to positive views of group differenceand group solidarity, and thus audaciously hoped forand sought to realize, through thought and action, apublic that would do justice to difference. In the af-termath of the privatized democratic civil rights era,theory and practice must continue to challenge cul-tural genocide as a prerequisite for social equality.

In this chapter, I have discussed theoretical re-sponses to privatized democracy. These theories ex-hibit strengths and weaknesses for redefining and de-fending developmental education. In the aftermath ofthe civil rights era, human suffering has expandeddespite the dominant language of equal treatment forall. As Henry Giroux (1997) has argued, in such acontext, theory must be understood as an ethical andpolitical undertaking: “Theory should be seen as ab-stract and anticipatory: abstract in that it makes theself-evident problematic; anticipatory in that it pointsto a language and project of possibility” (p. 206). Us-ing this definition of theory, we can measure the valueof theories of democracy by examining the kinds ofhope and insight that the theories can inspire for edu-cators. What aspects of the relations we have do thesetheories make problematic and what “projects of pos-sibility” do these theories sustain?

Communitarianism hopes for a total transforma-tion of privatized individualist social relations. The par-

47Democratic Theory

ticipatory democratic community uses appreciation ofthe rhetorical nature of our relations to place mutual-ity rather than universality as the measure of the le-gitimacy of the truths that a community shares.Through commitment to enhancing bonds with othersas a way of communicatively enacting democratic citi-zenship and as a way of maintaining the conditionsfor democratic decision making, civic literacy usescontingency to define the community. Engagementswith others through literacy or other forms of valuedknowledge is a process of self transformation in lightof the partiality of any singular perspective and in aneffort at “understanding individuals not as abstractpersons but as citizens, so that commonality and equal-ity rather than separateness are the defining traits ofhuman society” (Barber, 1984, p. 119). As a model ofcommunicatively created mutuality, communitariantheory inspires hope that the human capacities forcollaboration can prevail over the logic of privatizedcompetition.

As a foundation for education, the communitarianmodel argues that “Democracy means above all equalaccess to language, and strong democracy means wide-spread and ongoing participation in talk by the entirecitizenry” (Barber, 1984, p. 197). In this sense,communitarianism as a theoretical model allies itselfwith the hope of making good—through participa-tion—on the promise of social equality at the centerof education. There is much to value in Barber’s theo-retical recognition that democratic principles are onlygiven meaning as they are lived out and transformedby persons. As I have discussed, however, despite theappealing notion of personal change for the publicgood in communitarianism, the ideal of individualequality through participation and the hope for a so-cial equality that transcends differences of social groupperception, history, and practice, ultimately refuses toinvest in social group affirmation. Barber ignores thecomplex obstacles to individualized equality that so-cial group movements have encountered in recentdecades. Whether equality among individuals is un-derstood as a truth that precedes participation or as anoutcome of participation, equality must be defined interms of how it will transform the relations of socialgroup injustice that currently exist. By refusing to talkof groups, communitarianism refuses hope for defini-tions of equality that respond to the claims from un-privileged social groups that inequality is not personaland individual, but a relation of groups.

In contrast to communitarian theory, critical cul-tural pluralism offers a powerful critique of existingtheories and a utopian vision of an alternative society.Critical pluralism sees the hope of democracy in termsof social groups and emphasizes the transformationof institutionalized social group hierarchies as a cen-tral feature of an adequate definition of democraticcommunity. It is this ideal of institutionalizing socialgroup equality that most poignantly distinguishesYoung’s (1990) cultural pluralism from privatized orcommunitarian democratic theory. As a resource uponwhich to ground practice in developmental educa-tion, critical pluralism would enable professionals toredefine curriculum around the goal of just relationsamong competing knowledges and the groups thoseknowledges represent, and to define and defend de-velopmental programs in terms of the educationalmission of group justice.

References

Agnew, E., & McLaughlin, M. (1999). Basic writingclass of ’93 five years later: How the academicpaths of Blacks and Whites diverged. Journal ofBasic Writing, 18, 40-54.

Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatorypolitics for the modern age. Berkeley, CA:University of California.

Boylan, H. (1991, June). Opening remarks: Address tothe opening session of the 1991 Summer KelloggInstitute. Paper presented at the Summer KelloggInstitute of the National Center for DevelopmentalEducation, Appalachian State University, Boone,NC.

Craig, C. (1997). Empowering nontraditional students.In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.), Developmentaleducation: Enhancing student retention (pp. 19-24). Carol Stream, IL: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1982). The souls of Black folk. NewYork, NY: New American Library.

Fidler, P. P., & Godwin, M. (1994). Retaining AfricanAmerican students through the freshman seminar.Journal of Developmental Education, 17, 34-6, 38,40.


Fox, T. (1993). Standards and access. Journal of BasicWriting, 12 (1), 37-44.

Giroux, H. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope:Theory, culture, schooling. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Lundell, D. B., & Collins, T. (1999). Toward a theoryof developmental education: The centrality of“Discourse.” In J. L. Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.),The expanding role of developmental education(pp. 3-20). Morrow, GA: National Association forDevelopmental Education.

Payne, E. M., & Lyman, B. (1996). Issues affecting thedefinition of developmental education. In J. L.Higbee & P. L. Dwinell (Eds.), Definingdevelopmental education: Theory, research, andpedagogy (pp. 11-20). Carol Stream, IL: NationalAssociation for Developmental Education.

Prendergast, C. (1998). Race: The absent presence incomposition studies. College Composition andCommunication, 50, 36-53.

Sehr, D. (1997). Education for public democracy.Albany, NY: State University of New York.

Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics ofdifference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.

49Toward a Theory

Postsecondary developmental edu-cation encompasses a wide range of practices in a num-ber of disciplines. The purposes and practices of de-velopmental education have undergone a variety ofhistorical transformations. Indeed, the term “devel-opmental education” itself has emerged only recentlyto identify educational approaches or a set of prac-tices which deliberately and holistically address stu-dents’ educational needs and diverse backgrounds.Shifting demographics and social imperatives haveinfluenced these developments. Educators have iden-tified the need and demanded recognition for pro-grammatic models that assist students in their educa-tional transitions, specifically those students whosebackgrounds may not include experiences and dis-courses valued in higher education. Terms such as “re-medial,” “special,” and “developmental” have conse-quently evolved to define both the population servedand the educational paradigm through which such stu-dents enter higher education, with “developmentaleducation” being the current term of choice.

Much of the published literature in developmen-tal education lacks a theoretical base through whichthe motives and goals of seemingly disparate prac-tices might be understood as constituting a unified coreof disciplines. This is perhaps a symptom of the ener-getically pragmatic purposes which drive this body ofresearch and practice. Much of the research we pro-duce remains at an applied or assessment level, lack-ing a connection across the wide variety of subjectareas and socio-cultural contexts that our practicesseem to assume and which our disciplinary approachesseem to have in common. We propose a closer exami-nation of the assumptions which, though unarticulated,

seem to shape the research in developmental educa-tion, and we seek the creation of integrated modelsthat are thoughtful in naming such prior assumptions.The purpose of this discussion is to identify commonassumptions made by developmental educators in cur-rent published research and to challenge these assump-tions constructively with the goal of expanding ourdefinitions and theories. We propose to do so, thoughnot out of any disdain for the committed practice ofour colleagues who, like us, struggle with very prag-matic concerns at the level of practice day in and dayout. Rather, we assert the need for such an enterprisefor two closely related reasons:

First, work in developmental education has ma-tured intellectually to the point where we must be overtin theorizing our enterprise so that our research andcurriculum studies can compete with each other forcredibility in full view of the assumptions that are theirintellectual foundation;

Second, attacks on developmental education arevery easy to mount when the grounds for discussionare subject to redefinition at the whim of every legis-lator or academic vice-president who questions thevalue of our practice. That is, we need to know whywe do what we do, and we need to say these thingsaloud.

Method

To get at an understanding of what the profession’scommon assumptions and what the extant ofunarticulated theories might be, we surveyed repre-sentative articles in developmental education. These

Toward a Theory of Developmental Education:The Centrality of “Discourse”Dana Britt Lundell, DirectorCRDEUL

Terence Collins, Director of Academic Affairs and ProfessorWriting and Literature

This chapter is reprinted with permission. It was originally published in J. L. Higbee and P.L. Dwinnell (Eds.),The Expanding Role of Developmental Education.


articles varied in topic and purpose, including broadhistorical overviews, emerging definitions, and em-phases on specific disciplinary areas such as math andwriting. The primary source for the publications sur-veyed was the National Center for DevelopmentalEducation’s recent Annotated Research Bibliographiesin Developmental Education, Volumes 1 and 2 (1997,1998), which identifies articles in seven content do-mains, including articles from major field journals andresearch reports. That is, we took inclusion in the an-notated bibliographies to be an indication that thepiece under consideration had achieved credible sta-tus in the developmental education canon. In select-ing articles and research reports for our overview, wefocused on items that reported significant findings orthat proposed curricular practices based on research.In each disciplinary domain, this included identifyingpopular debates and targeting articles that addressedthese issues. The study also focused on key historicaloverviews, articles, and research reports exploringdevelopmental education’s definitions or foundations.

Our methodology in this literature survey includedthe identification, selective review, and meta-analysisof these works. We focused on the selection of ap-proximately 20 articles from each of the seven majorresearch and practice categories from Volume 1 (as-sessment and placement, critical thinking, develop-mental reading, developmental writing, developmen-tal math, minority student retention, and tutoring). Toidentify “representative” articles from each category,we reviewed both abstracts and articles by prominentauthors in each discipline (who had more than onearticle included in the volume), and we marked re-curring themes or issues being discussed in the litera-ture drawn from a thematic reading of the abstracts.Additionally, we surveyed approximately 25 more ar-ticles reflecting new categories in Volume 2 which re-organized the previous seven categories into 48 sub-headings, including new areas of emphasis such asprogram evaluation, legislation, program manage-ment, and instructional design. Focusing on this rep-resentative sample, we then examined these to iden-tify major themes, research topics, primary assump-tions, and articulations of theory related to develop-mental education and/or disciplinary-based orbroader educational foundations.

Our purpose in this overview was to identify andexamine the underlying assumptions of published re-

search in developmental education. It was our hypoth-esis that this body of research and practice lacksthoughtfully articulated theories or definitions of prac-tices that adequately describe the range of studentbackgrounds and socio-cultural activities reflected indevelopmental educational programs. Furthermore, wespeculated that a survey of representative articles andreports would reveal these gaps in our collective ar-ticulation of our theory. Research and practice in de-velopmental education continues to evolve at an im-portant time at the national level, and an ongoing ex-ploration of these assumptions and definitions withinand across the disciplines is key to strengthening pro-grammatic foundations and addressing student needs.

Definitions ofDevelopmental Education

A first finding grew from a cluster of articles witha focus on definition. The term “developmental edu-cation” is a fairly recent evolution from past termsand politics, suggesting an increasing awareness of thediversity of student educational needs and personalbackgrounds served in the range of sites which formour field. Terminology is important, for in our succes-sive attempts to name ourselves are found traces ofunarticulated theory which have given rise to our prac-tice. Primarily, this work has emphasized issues rel-evant to students’ transitions between high school andcollege at sites such as community colleges and pre-paratory programs within four-year institutions.

Payne and Lyman (1996) outline the history andshifts in political climate that mark the progressivechanges in terminology used to describe studentsthought to be underprepared for higher education.These changes are intricately linked to national eco-nomic trends and an ongoing examination of thelarger role of education in American society. Devel-opmental educators debate among themselves over thevocabulary used to describe their programs, students,and pedagogies, and recently have pointed to “an iden-tity problem, if not an identity crisis” within these dis-ciplines, suggesting that “developmental educators con-sider renaming themselves” in response to outside criti-cisms (Payne & Lyman, 1996, p. 13). This call for are-examination of the foundations of developmentaleducation marks an important moment in the historyof this expanding body of research and practice. Al-though it may appear to be a time of crisis, it also

51Toward a Theory

creates an opportunity for self-reflection, construc-tive critique, and a further articulation of basic defi-nitions and guiding principles.

In recent monographs, The National Associationfor Developmental Education (NADE) has establisheda working definition for “developmental education”which includes a holistic focus on cognitive and af-fective development of students, acknowledges a spec-trum of learning styles and needs, and promotes aninterdisciplinary range of approaches and student ser-vices. Higbee (1991) further examines this definitionwithin the context of cultural pluralism, emphasizinga more positive framework for viewing students in theirfull complexities, not as “deficient” as past terms suchas “remedial” have traditionally implied. These termshave created definitional and programmatic “myths”(p. 74) which Higbee challenges, acknowledging thebarriers and stereotypes that arise amidst this confu-sion over terminology. These challenges and currentdefinitions represent the most recent efforts to exam-ine foundations and create a critical agenda for thefuture of developmental theory and practice. But atthe same time, the recurring nature of the definitionalargument actually discloses the first tacit theory: itappears that as a profession, we operate from an as-sumption that students or their home environmentsmust be “fixed,” that the students served in our pro-grams or their families or their neighborhood are insome way pathological when seen against an imag-ined “healthy” norm.

Tomlinson’s (1989) report also identified the com-plex, shifting definitions during the past century, not-ing definition ambiguities and challenges facing de-velopmental educators. She traces the history of termsused to label underprepared students which prima-rily have emphasized models of deficiency. Again, theevolution toward the currently preferred term “de-velopmental” shifts away from these notions of stu-dents as “lacking” as individuals or in their back-grounds, to a model which focuses on how “to bringsomething into being as if for the first time” (p. 7).This term has called for the shifting of discussions aboutthese students and their programs away from deficittheory to more ability-based definitions and assump-tions. Even this more broad-based definitional shift ex-poses a theory some might find problematic: if thegoal of developmental education is “to bring some-thing into being as if for the first time,” the tacit theorymust include the notion that what is already “in be-

ing” about the student is to be devalued as unfit forthe new environment.

Despite recent critical assessment of foundationalterminology, however, developmental educational re-search and practice, and its definitions, remain in astate of flux and are subject to both external and in-ternal challenges as many items in the literature indi-cate. This may simply be the result of the wide rangeof local conditions and shifting demographics that in-fluence definitions, student populations, and program-matic structures (Tomlinson, 1989), or it may indeeddisclose a lack of professional consensus on key issuesof theory, on key issues of how we construct intellec-tual frameworks for practice.

Primary Assumptions

Beyond the basic definitions offered in recent lit-erature, there are many unstated assumptions inform-ing most research studies and program models. Evenas programs fall within the general scope of “devel-opmental education,” they vary widely, and within thisvariation is the measure of our lack of a coherenttheory, or rationalization, for what we do. Ourunexamined practice and unarticulated theory—in adomain which is already marginalized in higher edu-cation research—places our enterprise further into asubordinate position. Despite a pattern of recurringcalls for thoughtful self-definition, noted above, theprimary body of literature in developmental educa-tion remains focused on under-theorized curricularpractice and traditional disciplinary-based models forstudents and programs. The literature discloses sev-eral patterns:

1. Disciplinary-specific models and definitions ofdevelopmental educational practice which emphasizepractical, pedagogical issues are the norm in the re-search.

2. Articulated assumptions about developmentaleducation focus on attitudinal, psychological, and af-fective dimensions, primarily at the level of the indi-vidual and related mostly to behavioral and skills-basedissues and needs.

3. Research in developmental education prima-rily focuses on individual deficit and its remediation,even though the rhetorical emphasis is on serving di-verse or non-traditional populations of students.


4. The bulk of articles reflecting more broadly onnational and historical issues relevant to developmen-tal education tend to focus primarily on assessmenttools and paradigms, reinforcing dichotomized “in-sider/outsider” categories for students in terms of bar-riers and educational hierarchies.

5. Few programs have articulated and presentedtheir own models to a broader audience, specificallyas they relate to relevant educational theories inform-ing their conception and relationship to current defi-nitions of developmental education.

Despite recent efforts to expand the definitions ofdevelopmental education, it is apparent that popularconversations which place students into simplistic, as-sessment-based categories prevail. The predominantorientation of these five patterns indicates a primaryemphasis in the field on issues of pedagogy, and a ten-dency to reflect or borrow existing theoretical mod-els, primarily in the field of psychology and from as-sessment measures. The majority of these models pri-oritize definitions and theories of students pitted againstan imagined societal norm, discounting their priorknowledge, strengths, and home cultures. In our as-sessment of the literature, this theoretical stance ap-pears to be adopted mostly by accident, through ourcumulative lack of attention to the primary theoreti-cal foundations and philosophies of our local prac-tices in developmental education. We propose thatthese conversations will need to shift in the future to-ward an examination of these five assumptions as theywill challenge current perceptions of our field, and asthey will more thoughtfully contribute to our positionas a theory-making entity within higher education. Ourconversation begins with an exploration of how thesepatterns are mapped out specifically within the pri-mary research canons in developmental education.

Evidence in the Literature

To uncover these assumptions, we reviewed ourrepresentative literature sample carefully to identifybasic definitions, foundations, and stances toward re-search and practice in developmental education. Eachdomain we examined in the annotated bibliographiesreveals a productive contribution to the field in termsof research publications that address practical andtheoretical issues within specific disciplines. Yet asdevelopmental education encompasses many disci-

plines, interdisciplinary links in information abouttheory and practice which cut across these areas havenot been as widely produced. Individual, discipline-specific articles emphasizing pedagogical issues pre-vail over broad-based examinations of educational anddevelopmental theories. It was our primary assump-tion that this reflects a historically constructed stanceand ethos in developmental education which futureconversations need to interrogate. While this positioncertainly reflects a richness in our commitments toclassroom practice and to our students, it is an ap-proach that has not led to expanded theoretical con-ceptions that can effectively articulate our primarycontributions and foundations within higher educa-tion.

To test this first assumption, we sampled the con-tent areas and categories in the literature for evidenceof how the canon currently reflects this primary peda-gogical orientation. The areas of reading and writing,for example, provide a thoughtful representation ofthis history in developmental education research. Ar-ticles in these content areas address issues in meta-cognitive development (Applegate & Quinn, 1994;Flower, 1989; Hodge, 1993), learning theory and class-room methods (Davis, 1992; Easley, 1989), process-based instructional paradigms (Commander & Gibson,1994; Williamson, 1988), motivation (Mealey, 1990),support services like tutoring (Hartman, 1990), andassessment-related issues such as grammar and En-glish as a Second Language (ESL) instruction (Diaz,1995; Doyle & Fueger, 1995; Sedgwick, 1989). Domi-nant theories in the fields of education and composi-tion also inform developmental reading and writingresearch, including areas such as socio-cultural issuesrelated to theories of remediation in basic reading andwriting (Hull & Rose, 1989) and histories of theoreti-cal changes in these fields (Goodman, 1984; Quinn,1995; Williamson, 1987). Although discipline-specifictheories offer the possibility of connecting more broadlytoward definitions of developmental education prac-tice across the disciplines, the information typicallyremains rather pedagogically focused and disciplin-ary-bound within these primary content areas.

Our criticism of this research is not in its lack ofability to evolve our pedagogies and shape curriculain our local programs; rather, we see this as develop-mental education’s inherent strength. In fact, it is thisprimary attention to the diverse instructional needs of

53Toward a Theory

our students which marks our work as progressive inhigher education. However, as we have given priorityto this standpoint in the past, we have often remainedmyopic in these examinations as they are positionedmore broadly across the disciplines. It is our challengeto the evidence of this first assumption that we need tobegin the next step in a process of increasing devel-opmental education’s visibility. We also believe thiscan be done through an extension of existing research,for its implications are rich, but as yet unarticulatedin their connections to a theory of developmental edu-cation. For example, theories and strategies in the de-velopment of critical thinking (Chaffee, 1992; Elder& Paul, 1996) that appear in developmental educa-tion research have the potential for further applica-tion across the disciplines. Similarly, studies of minor-ity students and multi-cultural issues (Boylan, Saxon,White & Erwin, 1994; Knott, 1991; Miller, 1990) pro-vide evidence of rich and untapped resources for theo-retical development across the disciplines. An exami-nation of these philosophical foundations and an ap-plication of these tenets to definitions of developmen-tal education can create a more unified perspectiveof how our students learn with a focus on their mul-tiple contexts, not just what we are teaching them inthe content areas.

Even in this bibliographic categorization of theseas separate content areas in the 1997 bibliographies—critical thinking, and minority student retention—aparticular pedagogical and epistemological stance isreflected. These categories seem to reflect a possiblepoint of transcendence over the traditional disciplin-ary divisions as they prioritize theoretical orientationsand culturally relevant issues over pedagogical tac-tics. Yet while it is necessary to address content-basedapproaches within our current structures for devel-opmental programs, it appears that our most widelyuseful theoretical models often remain bound withinthese preconceived categories. This results in a strong,ongoing assessment and sharing of practice-based is-sues, but it does not ultimately lead to a strengtheningand building of relevant theories that can be appliedacross the disciplines and contribute to a better un-derstanding of our culturally diverse student popula-tions. The most recent bibliographic volume (Volume2, 1998), however, reflect a more integrated approachto its organization as it shifts from the content-basedlabels to a richer blend of foundational, pedagogical,and theoretical areas reflected in the research. This

shift positively challenges the first assumption simplythrough its suggestion that a range of issues, ratherthan a fixed set of disciplines, is what unifies us as abody of research and practice. However, our theoryand research designs need to follow similarly in thisapproach to work more explicitly as a theory-build-ing entity in higher education, a move which ultimatelybest serves our students through our strong traditionof pedagogical critique.

The second assumption we uncovered is reflectedin a recurring focus on attitudinal, psychological, andaffective dimensions in the field which emphasize in-dividual, behavioral, and skills-based issues and needs.These have certainly provided one of the most infor-mative and active frameworks through which we havechallenged reductionist education models and ex-panded definitions. In surveying the most recent(1998) bibliographic collection, we noticed that learn-ing assistance, advising, tutoring, and skills-based mod-els for learning reflect our primary developmentalmodels. These are informed by a rich history of learn-ing development theories based on cognitive and af-fective processes (Boyle & Peregoy, 1990; Hylton &Hartman, 1997; Smith & Price, 1996; Spann, 1990).These models have contributed to the development ofone of the unique features of developmental educa-tion programs—the use of additional educational sup-port services such as learning centers which offer in-dividualized assistance. However, as far as these skills-centered instructional modes go to address these cog-nitive factors, they do not expand much beyond thismode of learning enhancement to challenge this defi-cit-based programmatic model.

The third assumption in the literature describeshow these individualistic models tend to reinforce no-tions of remediation even as they may purport to re-ject them, especially as they apply to diverse studentpopulations. When our definitions remain focused onlinear, stage-oriented developmental schemes, we de-velop only one aspect of a more complicated pictureof students’ backgrounds and of the role institutionalcontexts play in these interactions. This includes a broadrange of social, economic, political, and cultural back-grounds which intersect in ways that affect students’experiences in the classroom. While our rhetoric em-braces notions of diversity and recognizes that weserve non-traditional populations of students in greaternumbers than most programs in higher education, our


research does not similarly reflect this reality. Linearmodels of cognitive and affective development areoften used to justify and validate assessment tools andbehavioral labels, and they typically categorize stu-dents within a limited range of specific “skills sets” orlinear developmental tasks. What is missing from ex-isting frameworks is a culturally-based examinationof student needs and pedagogical implications.

A broader recognition of the diverse contextswithin which developmental education takes place isessential. For example, the notion of multiple contextsand communities (Phelan, Davidson & Yu, 1998) withinwhich students, their programs, and their teachers liveand work is key in this evolving understanding of de-velopmental education. Work, family, peers, school,languages and other communities are interconnectedin this broader picture. Such culturally-specific mod-els for development address students holistically as theymake transitions into higher educational settings. Theseissues are especially important as we continue to dis-cuss educational opportunities and experiences rel-evant to the needs of students of color and other tradi-tionally bypassed populations such as students forwhom English is a second language, low-income andfirst-generation college students, and students with dis-abilities.

Current individualistic definitions simply do notextend far enough in recognizing multiple culturalissues which are important factors in student successin higher educational settings. We propose that inter-disciplinary theoretical models be incorporated intodefinitions of developmental education. More researchmust be done in this area to challenge individualisticmodels which often separate students and their aca-demic skills from their communities. Such researchmight help developmental educators challenge deficitmodels of students by constructing models that canview students as fully formed individuals—and notmerely as “underprepared.” Students can be seen in-stead as individuals who are traversing the territory ofnew communities while retaining and bringing theirprevious strengths and identities into higher educa-tion. This might also lead us to expand beyond thelinear views in developmental psychological theorieswhich unrealistically tend to scaffold and compart-mentalize students’ development. This would answerHigbee’s (1996) call for an ongoing focus on the morepositive, domain-oriented educational models whichaddress intellectual development.

A fourth assumption uncovered by the survey fo-cuses on conversations about assessment, which formthe bulk of research studies in the developmental edu-cation. The reality is that most educational programsare frequently defined by local contexts such as legis-lation, politics, test scores, and other external factorsof placement. This is perhaps the reason for the rich-ness in programmatic models and emerging defini-tions in the field, yet these conversations also tend toreinforce the language of barriers and “insider/out-sider” notions even as much of the recent research inthis area has attempted to challenge this trend (Dar-ling-Hammond, 1994; Gabriel, 1989; Fuentes, 1993;Kerlin & Britz, 1994; Jitendra & Kameenui, 1993;Seybert, 1994). Whereas this assessment bind may beinescapable in many locales, it also marks an impor-tant place in our practice where the challenge to ex-ternally-limiting definitions can continue. As defini-tions in developmental education become less focusedon a language of remediation and more on inclusive,holistic models, it is important that research in assess-ment also begin to challenge its traditional stance ofdivisiveness and barrier-making language—evenwhen these realities continue to be binding. While as-sessment tools certainly create initial placement linesand define who does or does not enter programs, de-velopmental education does not begin or end with thesepreconceived boundaries.

The final assumption we uncovered in this surveyfocuses on the articulation of programmatic models tobroader audiences—beyond the boundaries of indi-vidual disciplines, specifically as they relate to relevanteducational theories informing their conception. Thereis a strong history of sharing classroom models andstrategies within field-specific domains, but few ofthese are linked directly to definitions of developmentaleducation and an explanation of relevant educationaltheories which inform their foundations. Programsneed to be more self-reflective about current goalsand theories, like La Guardia Community College(Chaffee, 1992; Simpson, 1993) has done in the past.Discussions such as these, which are oriented towardthe unveiling of tacit theories underscoring local prac-tice, provide directive starting points and useful mod-els for other programs to investigate and share theirwork with a national audience. Such ongoing articu-lation and sharing of programmatic philosophies andeducational foundations is important, especially in afield which is interdisciplinary by nature. Researchcenters like the National Center for Developmental

55Toward a Theory

Education (Spann, 1996) and national organizationslike NADE also continue to provide forums for thisshared information. However, this strand of our con-versation needs to move beyond the sharing of peda-gogical and classroom models and toward an inclu-sion of broad-based representations of programs, theirlocales, their educational philosophies, and the com-munities they serve. This will contribute to a richerdefinition of developmental education, and it can pro-vide ongoing, interdisciplinary frameworks linked touseful theories in education which, in turn, can leadus to expanded research in the field.

Toward Theory: James Paul Gee andthe Centrality of “Discourse”

We argue that a healthy next step for this discus-sion would be consideration of a variety of theoreticaldirections for developmental education. As a profes-sion, we have operated on the basis of tacit theories ofdeficit models and normative socialization. Such tacittheories are disclosed by examination of our prac-tices. But the examination of practices to discern whatour tacit theories might have been seems backwards,at best. A more deliberate engagement with theory asa precondition for adoption of practice is consistentwith developments such as the recent public articula-tion of definitions of developmental education amongNADE members (Higbee & Dwinell, 1996). In rec-ommending a greater engagement with theory, we riskappearing to be judgmental about or dismissive to-wards the literature reviewed above. Nothing couldbe further from our intention. In calling on col-leagues—and ourselves—to articulate and apply theo-ries which might guide our practice and form a frame-work for further testing of our assumptions, we hopeto add value to the everyday efforts which are at theheart of developmental education and access programsin higher education. We recognize, too, that exami-nation of theory is inherently frustrating. As eachtheory is examined and tested, its limits become ap-parent and competing theories enter our field of vi-sion. Moreover, as we embrace any one theory forthe space of time it takes us to learn from it, we areinevitably in a reductionist posture toward the com-plex domain of developmental education. Theory ishumbling, as well, in that fiscal and human resourcesrather than theory typically provide and define thetangible limits of our efforts. Recognizing that, how-ever, we also remain convinced that in the absence of

evolving theories of what we do, we are left withoutthe complex bases on which compelling cases can bemade for both what we do and how we propose to doit.

As a starting point in engaging theory which mightbetter inform our practice as developmental educa-tors, we point to James Paul Gee’s notion of “Discourse”(Gee, 1996). Building from the intersection of cul-ture studies and sociolinguistics, Gee defines a Dis-course as follows:

A Discourse is a socially accepted associationamong ways of using language, other symbolicexpressions, and “artifacts”, of thinking, feel-ing, believing, valuing, and acting that can beused to identify oneself as a member of a so-cially meaningful group or “social network”,or to signal (that one is playing) a socially mean-ingful “role.” (p. 131)

That is, Discourses are ways of being in the world.(Gee [1996] uses the upper case “D” to distinguishthis complex meaning from “discourse” in its every-day uses tied to spoken language). A Discourse “is away of speaking/listening and often, too, writing/read-ing in specific social languages, as well as acting, in-teracting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believ-ing, with other people and with various objects, tools,and technologies” (Gee, 1998, p. 9). Our “primaryDiscourse,” most typically the one we acquire at homeas children, forms our language uses and defines forus the basic terms of human interactions. This pri-mary Discourse makes available to us a sense of val-ues, a set of cues from which we learn our roles andresponse patterns. The primary Discourse and its wayswith words, ways with people, ways of carrying our-selves, ways of understanding the complex varietiesof human behaviors that make up home life and neigh-borhood life, is powerfully formative. This primaryDiscourse gives us, according to Gee (1998), “our ini-tial and often enduring sense of self” (p. 9) More-over, the primary Discourse gives form to our cultur-ally specific vernacular language, the language we takeout into the world with us when we go off to school.

For Gee, Discourses are embricated with ideol-ogy. Without our giving it much critical reflection, weacquire values, world views, perceptions of others, anda definition of ourselves within the deeply complexaffective and cognitive domains of the family or other


unit of early socialization. These include our situatedlanguage (our family or community’s version of En-glish, for instance) and our initial perceptions of what“counts” as knowledge and its meaningful expression(like storytelling from individual experience as the unitof knowledge and its expression, as an example). Theselanguages and perceptions are acquired within thesame deep contexts as are our sense of what is right,what is wrong, how the social world is modeled orimagined, and a host of other “truths” (i.e., percep-tions) through which we construct our social selveswithin the everyday realities we inhabit. As a result,Discourses are comprised of interpenetrating patternsof values, “knowledge,” language, beliefs, roles, andrelationships.

From this vantage point, one’s life can be said tobe marked by the interplay of different Discourses.Our primary, or initial, Discourse is added to or modi-fied by the series of secondary Discourses with whichwe come into contact and to which we attach value aswe live our lives. Gee (1998) notes emphatically thatas we acquire or learn secondary Discourses, we “fil-ter” (p. 10) them through our primary or initial Dis-course. New Discourses (such as the Discourse ofbeing a student in a school) are acquired or resisted inproportion to their perceived compatibility with theprimary Discourse. Furthermore, acquiring any sec-ondary Discourse (where “acquiring” means that itsfeatures become part of one’s enduring sense of self)requires both learning the terms of the new Discourseand recurring meaningful practice of its key features.

School is comprised of sets of Discourses—“waysof using language, other symbolic expressions… think-ing, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting” (Gee, 1996,p. 131). In the U.S., the Discourses of schools aremarked by white middle class ways (how adults areaddressed; how a child is groomed; how authority isasserted or acknowledged; how limited forms of En-glish are used; how literate knowledge is primary; andhow knowledge is expressed, and so forth, for ex-ample). In addition, school Discourses reflect andvalue the practices and world-views of specializedcommunities, such as science or law. Children in manyfamilies, of course, learn within their primary Dis-course many of the features of the secondary Dis-courses they will encounter when they enroll inschool. That is, they will have a primary Discoursewhich includes values, ways of expressing themselves,dispositions toward what counts as knowledge, ways

of dressing and behaving, which are consistent withthe specialized Discourses of school. An individual’s“enduring sense of self” (Gee, 1996, p. 9) can be saidto have been constructed in ways which dispose himor her towards the Discourse of school. For “success-ful” students, school becomes the place in which theyacquire through both learning and meaningful prac-tice the peculiar set of secondary Discourses that com-prise school knowledge and behavior.

How successful one will be in acquiring a newDiscourse depends in large part on the degree to whichthe new Discourse conflicts with or threatens the pri-mary Discourse and the enduring sense of self it spon-sors. From this perspective, some students who do notdo well in school might be seen to have not acquiredschool Discourses (school values, preferred languageforms, authority structures, constructions of knowledge,ways of expressing knowledge, social practices) be-cause the new Discourse threatened or conflicted withthe primary Discourse and its ways in those domains.And it is often such students who enter the programswhere developmental educators work.

Gee (1998) calls such students who come to highereducation without having successfully acquired schoolDiscourses “latecomers” (p.11). However, as he hasevolved the term recently to reflect a more positiveconnotation, he now calls them “authentic beginners”to describe “people, whether children or adults, whohave come to learning sites of any sort without thesorts of early preparation, pre-alignment in terms ofcultural values, and sociocultural resources that moreadvantaged learners at those sites have” (Gee, 1999,p. 1). For authentic beginners, who lack experiencesin and familiarity with the domain of education and,in particular, higher education, the task of acquiringthe new Discourses in ways which might lead to fullmastery of knowledge sets and fluency in skills is com-plex. In fact, he notes, “People who teach latecomers[authentic beginners] require the most knowledge, so-phistication, heart, and talent of any teachers I canthink of” (1998, p. 20). Gee assigns to higher educa-tion an assembly of specialized Discourses, all of whichwould be situated as secondary Discourses against theprimary Discourses of students whose families or earlysocializing environment has not led them to smoothacquisition of school Discourses. (In this he is consis-tent with developmental education legislation underthe U.S. Department of Education TRIO Programs, inwhich special supports are targeted at “first-genera-

57Toward a Theory

tion college students” on the assumption that the pri-mary Discourses of such students will not be formedin ways which lead to ready acquisition of the sec-ondary Discourses of school and higher education.)

A number of implications for developmental edu-cation might be derived from Gee’s Discourse theory.When we invite “underprepared” or developmentalstudents to join us in the enterprise of higher educa-tion, we invite them into a social world where sets ofcertain secondary Discourses define the terms of suc-cess. Certain modes of social behavior, certain rangesof spoken and written English, certain conventions ofdress and of interpersonal relations, and certain modesof inquiry, all of them interpenetrating, interact to de-fine what is appropriate, what is valued, what countsas knowledge in this environment. These secondaryDiscourses are most typically outside the range of the“everyday” world inhabited by our students as an ex-tension of their primary Discourse. The acquisition ofthe new secondary Discourses of higher education forsuch latecomer students is no simple matter. Gee(1998) articulates a number of features necessary forthe success of developmental students and which willmark successful developmental programs for “late-comer” students in higher education. Each has impli-cations for our practice. Taken together they add toour capacity to affirm some aspects of current prac-tice and to critique elements of the status quo as evi-dent in the survey of the literature cited earlier.

First, Gee argues that effective efforts aimed atdevelopmental students must have a “low affective fil-ter” (Gee, 1998, p. 16). That is, the new Discourse ofhigher education must be organized and made avail-able to latecomers in ways which will not promoteconflict with their primary and other extant Discourses.He notes that central to this is treating latecomer stu-dents and their other Discourses with respect, and “al-lowing them to actively build on what they alreadyknow and feel as a bridge to acquisition of a new Dis-course” (Gee, 1998, p. 16). When our utterancesand our practice as developmental educators repre-sent the primary and other extant Discourses of ourstudents in a deficit model needing remediation, wehave already lost the battle.

Second, latecomers will acquire the Discourse ofhigher education most efficiently through what Gee(1998) calls “situated practice” (p. 16). He arguesthat people learn by “engaging in authentic practices

within the Discourse [and] finding patterns in thoseexperiences” (p. 16). He draws on research in a num-ber of disciplines to argue that people need “lots andlots of actual and meaningful experiences (practices)in a new Discourse” (p. 16) if they are to acquire it.Developmental education programs which posit a“quick fix” or instruction disembodied from mean-ingful practice (as some drill and practice programshave been characterized) offer a low probability ofsuccess, despite their attraction to legislators and ad-ministrators with pinched purses.

Third is the principle of “automaticity” (Gee,1998, p. 17). Gee asserts the need for developmentalstudents to acquire simultaneously both lower orderand higher order skills of the Discourse of higher edu-cation in the context of meaningful practice. Throughrepeated practice in meaningful contexts, the learnermasters lower order skills to the point of their beingautomatic, while the higher order skills are used andalso mastered. He uses the example of reading to il-lustrate. To read efficiently, one relies on mastery oflower order skills (e.g., recognizing words) in orderto do the important work of making inferences fromthe text (the higher order skill). Students will acquirethe lower order skill of recognizing words at the levelof automaticity only through repeated meaningfulpractice in actual Discourse contexts (suggesting thereis something important to be learned). The principleof automaticity seems to argue for developmental pro-grams in which the authentic-beginner student en-gages in meaningful practice toward important learn-ing, and suggests, perhaps, that “skills” are acquiredonly in the context of meaningful engagement withthe subject matter curriculum rather than in isolatedpreparatory skills courses.

Gee’s fourth principle is “functionality,” whichhe defines succinctly:

It is impossible for people to acquire any sec-ondary Discourse unless they truly believe (notjust say they believe) that they will be able (andallowed) to actually function (at least eventu-ally) in the new Discourse and get somethingvalued out of it. Of course, one good way togain this belief is to experience oneself as ac-tually functioning in and benefiting from (atprogressively more sophisticated levels) a Dis-course as part and parcel of the process of ac-quiring it. (p. 17)


Developmental programs which isolate studentsfrom “real college” and unduly postpone the experi-ence of its benefits are at odds with the principle offunctionality. Most importantly, programs which cre-ate (or which are perceived to function as creating)an overly “contingent” relation between the studentand the mainstream of the institution might be coun-terproductive.

Students who are engaged in meaningful practicein the ways of the new Discourse of higher educationthrough their developmental programs are, accord-ing to Gee (1998), on the right track toward acquisi-tion of the Discourse. But the practice must be struc-tured in ways that the student learns from experiencethe “right” and “wrong” ways of operating. This is hisfifth characteristic, which he calls “scaffolding” (p.17). As he outlines this principle, Gee notes that late-comer learners engaged in meaningful practice mustinteract with teachers or others who have masteredthe Discourse, so that these “masters” can intervenein the midst of this practice to say “pay attention tothis now” (p. 18) or otherwise provide explicit guid-ance, explanations, or perhaps modeling of the “right”ways of performing within this aspect of the Discourse.“Scaffolding” would seem to argue for developmen-tal education practices such as supplemental instruc-tion, basic writing workshops of small enough enroll-ment to make the process of intervention possible, su-pervised homework sessions in mathematics, and otherlearning situations that are sufficiently constrained toallow the learner to see the teacher as one who inter-venes in the process of practice as a trusted coachwith mastery cues.

Gee’s (1998) sixth principle is related to the ideaof scaffolding. He articulates it as “meta-awarenessof what one already knows” (p. 18). As noted severaltimes, the acquisition of new Discourses is optimallypossible when the new Discourse is not seen as threat-ening to or demeaning of the learner’s primary or otherextant Discourses. Similarly, the acquisition of a newDiscourse is easiest when the process assists the learnerin coming to know better what it is that he alreadyknows on related matters—to know better what it isone has already mastered in the primary or other ex-tant Discourses. An obvious example of this can befound in those basic writing pedagogies in which us-ers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)acquire so-called “Standard English” through prac-

tice which builds on becoming aware of what theyalready know through their mastery of AAVE.

From the perspective of Gee’s (1998) seventh point,for authentic-beginner learners to acquire the new orsecondary Discourse of higher education, they mustengage in a process of “critical framing” (p. 18) ofcompeting Discourses. Gee notes (1998) that thosewho are “core members” of a Discourse tend to be“true believers” (p. 18). That is, when we are groundedin a Discourse, we are not disposed toward critiquingit. After all, as we acquire Discourses we are formingthe self, or at least the social self, in new ways. Thisreluctance to critique a Discourse in which we aresituated is thus understandable, given the complex in-terweaving of values, social forms, linguistic forms,beliefs, roles, etc. which comprise a Discourse in whichwe feel “at home.” When we attempt to acquire anew Discourse, it is important that we be able to iden-tify conflicts between old and new Discourses—thatwe “frame” one within the other in order to see bothcritically. In the instance of the latecomer student,such critical framing might lead to an awareness ofthe limits of both the old and new Discourses, andmight also help the learner see the potential each Dis-course has in their domains of strength.

Finally, Gee (1998) insists that authentic begin-ners must be involved in a process of “transformedpractice” (p. 19) in regard to the Discourses they in-habit. In particular, says Gee

It is necessary that they come to understandhow Discourses work to help and harm people,to include and exclude, to support and opposeother Discourses. It is necessary that latecom-ers develop strategies of how to deflect the gate-keepers of Discourses when their newly wonand hard fought for mastery may be challengedor begin to fail them. It is necessary that theydevelop the power to critique and resist the im-positions of Discourses when these Discoursesare used to construct people like themselves as“inferior” (often because they are latecomers[authentic beginners]). (p. 19)

Gee seems to be arguing that those of us who workin developmental education need to invite our studentsinto a very clear discussion of the ways in which highereducation as a Discourse operates as an agent of so-cial construction. In the process of helping our stu-

59Toward a Theory

dents to enter that specific Discourse as developmen-tal or “remedial” students, it is critical that we assistthem in coming to understand the nature of Discoursesin general and the place they occupy from their loca-tion as latecomers caught between competing waysand contradictory values on their way into thestrange—or strangely wonderful—construct we knowas higher education.

The implications of Gee’s observations might takeus in a number of directions. His theory of Discourseand synthesis of features of educational programswhich lead to the acquisition of the Discourses ofhigher education seem to point toward developmentaleducation programs which (a) respect through rheto-ric and practice the students’ primary Discourses ac-quired in family and community; (b) engage studentsrecurrently in meaningful practice in situations wherereal learning is the goal; (c) provide full disclosure ofthe terms of success through ambitious and meaning-ful practice marked by frequent, supported interven-tions by trusted “masters” which guide the learnerstoward patterns and ways which are “right” in thecontext of the new Discourse; (d) build explicitly onwhat students already know; and (e) disclose the es-sential features of higher education, its values, andthe nature of its practices. At the same time, Gee’stheory of Discourse points us away from simplistic defi-cit models and a preoccupation with assessments whichare not thoughtfully constructed and carefully ex-plained. The theory might further provide the basisfor critique of developmental programs of short du-ration or overly limited scope. Gee reminds us thatwhen we invite authentic-beginner students intohigher education through the portal of developmen-tal education programs, we invite them into a com-plexly structured institution with arbitrary norms, intoa socially and culturally constructed Discourse whichmay well be at odds with the “enduring self” (1998,p. 9) of the student as formed within the circle of familyand community—and that to do so puts the burden ofwelcome and inclusion on us, the students’ instructors.Above all, the theory of Discourse engages us in anoptimistic re-examination of various assumptions andprinciples which have formed both our professionalpractice and our literature. In that spirit, we offerthis essay as a start toward a discussion of theory.

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CRDEUL

Culture and Constructivism

64 Culture and Constructivism

65Considering Race

This last year has found the callfor a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework forpractice in developmental education getting louder.The reasons for this are numerous, but Martha Max-well (2000) gives both academic and practical rea-sons. Maxwell states that developmental education “notonly lacks academic standing, but its practitioners donot have power to set or even contribute to policy de-cisions within their academic communities” (2000, p.8). Judith Shapiro (2000) writes that students tend todefine the term “racism” as discrimination based onwhat we take to mean physical differences of one kindor another. This definition prompted her to ask stu-dents what “class” means. What Shapiro expected tohear was a definition of class that included the struc-ture of our society and how socioeconomic inequali-ties were built into it. However, her students seemedto be concerned about individuals—prejudice againstindividuals belonging to less-privileged socioeconomicgroups. Shapiro’s experience provoked her to ask avery important question: Were students also viewingracism exclusively in terms of individual identities andinterpersonal relationships? Shapiro’s fear is that thegoal of creating a more just society had dwindled intoa matter of sensitivity training or what she refers to as“sociological illiteracy” (p. A68). She states, “as a per-son may be illiterate in the most literal sense (unableto read or write), or scientifically illiterate, so a per-son may be uneducated in the social sciences, and thusunable to make use of the insights and tools that those

disciplines provide (p. A68). Her argument is simple.If people know nothing about scientific topics theyare “generally aware of their ignorance, readily ad-mit it, and realize the remedy for their ignorance isserious and systematic study” (p. A68). However, whenthe subject is society, how society operates and whypeople behave in particular ways, people tend to con-fuse their beliefs with knowledge. We all walk aroundwith theories about the social world in our heads justlike sociologists. Unfortunately, people tend to do itbadly. This brings us to our role as educators in a fairlysociologically illiterate society. Shapiro states that aseducators, we must take our share of the responsibil-ity to provide “to all of our students…basic tools ofsocial and cultural understanding…to teach them howhistorical understanding is constructed” (p. A68).Shapiro issues this challenge to social science educa-tors. I would like to issue that same challenge to us asdevelopmental educators.

As our multi-disciplinary and diverse populationof educators continues in its efforts to understand anddefine developmental education, we must not proceedwithout considering the way we think about race, be-cause how we think affects the way we understandand relate to students of color. This is not to say thatdevelopmental educators do not consider issues ofgender, race, and class particularly in practice. How-ever, developmental education theoretically tends tostand in the same place as other disciplines such as

Is Developmental Education a Racial Project?Considering Race Relationships inDevelopmental Education SpacesHeidi Lasley Barajas, Assistant ProfessorSociology

As a sociologist teaching in a developmental education unit, I am acutely aware that both disciplines, sociologyand education, revolve around White theorists, create spaces that are inherently White, and create a cultureof Whiteness that is more apt to study persons of color than to utilize their skills, talents, and ideas. Thetheoretical arguments and empirical evidence in this article explore the possibility that schools are whatcritical theory terms a racial project in which everyday school experiences and the school process are raciallyorganized. Often, participation in racial projects silences students of color, and creates barriers to resourcesmuch like gendered spaces silence and create barriers for women.


sociology, as a “White” discipline. Hartmann (1999)recounts that in 1975 a sociologist named Joyce Ladneralong other colleagues attempted to ameliorate thissituation through the critique of traditional sociologyas inattentive to the ongoing struggles for freedom,equality, and justice for people of color. He states thatfor Ladner, doing so would mean more than studyingpeople of color and their particular problems. AlthoughLadner and her peers introduced the need for a changein traditional sociology 25 years ago, Hartmann ac-knowledges that a new millennium has come and theWhiteness of traditional sociology has not been de-toured. His claim is that sociology has remained en-trenched in traditional ideas because race is not, andshould be, treated as a distinct area of sociological spe-cialization. In addition, Hartmann argues the sociol-ogy that is specific to race relations tends, unlike otheracademic disciplines, to be framed in assimilationisttheory. History, American studies, legal studies,women’s studies, and literature all have taken on thetask of treating framing research in a race-critical ap-proach.

This last year has found developmental educationattempting to redefine its current theoretical frame-work based in psychological theory to include a cross-disciplinary approach. One of the reasons for doingso should be similar to those Ladner (1972) stated werenecessary for a change in sociology—the traditionalframework in developmental education tends to focuson deficit and normative models of student educa-tional attainment rather than on the struggle for edu-cational equality and justice for people of color. Whatcomplicates the situation of developmental educationis the rich literature that speaks to how we practice aseducators. The literature contains impressive consid-eration of students who do not fit the mainstream pic-ture of education. However, we seldom utilize theo-retical frames that help us explain the experiences ofstudents of color beyond their skills. The consequencesare that we cannot understand how the structure ofour relationship with the institution affects our rela-tionships with our students, regardless of what thatinstitution is, rather than just exploring the student-institutional fit. The introduction of race-critical basedtheory to a theoretical framework for developmentaleducation is important as part of the foundation ofpractice. Exploring the processes and mechanismsthrough which we work as educators is vital to under-standing how we practice. However, race-critical based

theory acknowledges that individual agency, and thestruggle and resistance social actors employ, are notalways in opposition to existing structures, but havedeveloped as a part of the reproduction and transfor-mation of those structures. Acknowledging such a pres-ence serves an equally important part in developmen-tal education; that is the effect that a theoretical frame-work that includes race-critical theory potentiallycould have on policy.

Race and Schools: What Is Left Out?

Leading theories about race and educational at-tainment assume that students of color in general havetwo options: assimilate to an established norm and suc-ceed or resist that norm and fail. The exception to adichotomous model is found in Hugh Mehan’s (1979,1992, & 1996) work. Mehan’s excellent piece ofscholarship and example of applied sociology discussesways in which Latino students resist yet succeed inpublic school. However, one exception has not yet di-minished the prevalence of dichotomous models foundin much of the theory. The reason may be that evenwhen citing structural disadvantages as a cause ofschool failure, resistance to school norms and successare often considered mutually exclusive and deter-mined by student decisions alone. Such an approachignores the processes and mechanisms through whichstudents are privileged or disadvantaged.

We do, in education, look at relationships in schoolsas we explore how to understand educational institu-tions, and there is no doubt that we talk about raceand schools. Overall, however, we look at schoolsthrough the eyes of those who are employed in theinstitution, the eyes looking at the population we serverather than through the eyes and experiences of thosewe serve. I suggest we think about how relationshipsexperienced in school look through the eyes of stu-dents of color. To do so, I will explore how race-criti-cal theory explains a small sample of my empiricaldata about Chicano Latino students. Between 1996 and1998, I interviewed 45 university Chicano Latino stu-dents participating in a mentor program housed at alarge Midwestern university. Thirty-one are femaleand 14 are male. Thirty-three participating studentsare bilingual, Spanish and English speaking, and 12speak only English. University participants ranged inage from 18 to 25. They relate both kindergartenthrough 12th grade and university experiences.

67Considering Race

Chicano Latino Students inSchool Space

Chicano Latino students more often than not de-scribed schools as “White spaces.” I had to figure outwhat this meant. As I looked for patterns in their ex-planations, I found examples of institutions acting asWhite spaces through their formal practices. By for-mal practices I mean school policy, such as admis-sions, financial aid, and what programs educationalinstitutions provide for students of color, or what is notprovided. In addition to formal policies, some aspectsof schools as White spaces may be identified throughinformal practices such as control over the classroomenvironment, grading practices, and the assignmentof negative attributes to Chicano Latinos as a group.The examples for this chapter focus on informal prac-tices because that is where many Chicano Latino stu-dents relate the importance of strong cultural identityand with that strength, appear to negotiate the conse-quences of informal practices occurring in Whitespaces.

University students often disclosed that they weredrawn to certain things as younger children, but notnecessarily being aware of these things as part of acultural identity. As a process, these students nurturedan awareness that their difference is important, andstrengthening connections to what made them differ-ent is important. This was particularly true in situa-tions where those connections were disrupted. For ex-ample, Laticia, a 21 year old Chicana university fresh-man relates that

when I got into high school it became some-thing very important to me because I went to ahigh school where the population was upperclass and mostly White. And I learned that Ihad frustrations with the mentalities or the ide-ologies that the students had . . . So I think inhigh school that is when I really tried hard tounderstand Spanish and get everything downgrammatically and verbally. And that is whenI started to seek out other opportunities whereI could hang on to my culture or gain knowl-edge of different parts of my history.

When asked if she could remember a specific ex-ample of this “White mentality,” Laticia recounted asituation in her high school humanities class, basically

an English literature class. The class was reading Heartof Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1969). In the class dis-cussion, this student had brought up the ignorance ofthe author by referring to the trek into Africa as dark-ness, equating the darkness with an evil energy strip-ping the White men of their will to work and hope.Laticia had even read an essay by an African Ameri-can writer who made this argument. She went on totell me that several White students in the class wereoffended by her comments, saying that Conrad wasn’teven talking about race, only about how much veg-etation surrounded the river. After the first comment,Laticia raised her hand to participate in the conversa-tion, but the teacher refused to call on her, and afterfive comments from White students about the offen-siveness of this talk about race, the teacher closed thediscussion. Laticia talked to the teacher after class andasked why he didn’t call on her. He told her, “I did notcall on you because I knew what you were going tosay, and it is too upsetting to the other students.” Laticiatells me,

I understood that the assumption of the Whiteteacher, that White students, who were the ma-jority of the class, were in need of protection[and that] silenced me. It also taught me thateven in academic discussions, I am not part ofthe White world of my school.

This student clearly understood the school worldas White. Furthermore, the power a majority of Whitestudents and a White teacher have in a classroom dis-cussion is about more than numbers. How do we dis-cuss this experience? What concepts define patternslike this? The mechanism that allows White teachersand students to participate in a conversation like thisone is what I have termed the taken-for-granted or-ganizational logic that orders classroom interactionsas White spaces. The environment or climate of theclassroom situation was more than chilly for Laticia.She does not say she is “uncomfortable” or that shefelt others were not taking her seriously. Nor did shesay she felt discriminated against. Laticia defines herexperience as someone who is not White upsetting thosewho are White, consequently being told through wordsand actions that she should keep that difference invis-ible. Furthermore, Laticia learned through this expe-rience that appropriate relationships in the classroomare those that keep her difference invisible. Whitestudents receive the same messages but in a differentway. They were able to participate in the classroom


by being who they are, but not necessarily by beingaware that who they are is the norm because the schoolis a White space. Laticia’s White teacher may under-stand he has authority and therefore power in the class-room, but may not associate that power and authoritywith practices that reinforce his classroom as a Whitespace. Yet, the teacher by his actions and words madethe student of color disappear. This is how invisibleWhite space is to White people in that space, and howvisible it often is to the “other” in that same space.

Relationships as Part of OrganizationLogic and Racial Formation

Feminist theorists such as Joan Acker (1989) andJennifer Pierce (1995) have addressed the idea of aspace operating as a place of advantage or disadvan-tage. Their research argues that a process exists bywhich “advantage and disadvantage, exploitation andcontrol, action and emotion, meaning and identity arepatterned through and in terms of a distinction be-tween male and female, masculine and feminine”(Acker, 1989 as quoted in Pierce, 1995, p. 30). Inaddition, Acker’s definition of organizations asgendered states that “gender is not an addition to on-going processes, conceived of as gender neutral. Ratherit is an integral part of those processes, which cannotbe understood without an analysis of gender” (1989,p. 146). This distinction is important because bothAcker’s and Pierce’s research support the concept ofspace as gendered, and as having negative conse-quences for women. The way in which a genderedspace operates is through the relationships in that space.What I discovered in the empirical evidence from mystudy is that school spaces racialize (read like gender)as White space silences students of color, and createsbarriers to resources much like gendered spaces si-lence and create barriers for women in the workplace.In the educational institutions I studied, White spaceis created and reproduced through a specific kind oforganizational logic, a mechanism of informal prac-tice and formal policy that renders “difference” todisappear in order for the institution to appear raceneutral. Such an organizational logic does not neces-sarily support perceptions about race strictly throughoutward markers of race, such as skin color or sur-name. The organizational logic is devised through sym-bolic meanings of what it means to be White in a Whitespace and what it means not to be White in a White

space. Organizational logic conceptually exists in otherinstitutions besides education. For example, the lawutilizes a kind of legal logic that determined the out-come of the Susie Phipps case in 1983 (Omi & Winant,1994). Phipps, a light-skinned woman, unsuccessfullysued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records in order tochange the racial classification on her birth certifi-cate from Black to White. Louisiana’s “one-drop” lawdefines anyone with one thirty-second “Negro-blood”as Black. Therefore, outward appearance, such aswhite skin, cannot determine the assignment of a ra-cial category because the organizational logic of thecourts, a kind of legal logic, maintains the symbolicmeaning of what it means to be “Black” in a Whitespace.

Although social scientists have theorized aboutspace as affected by race, no one has defined the pro-cess by which organizations become a racialized spaceas clearly as Acker (1989) has defined organizationalspaces as gendered. This is because Acker suggeststhat in a work organization, power exists in the rela-tionship between what is male and what is female.The concept of space as racialized is also about rela-tionships. The relationship is between a White space,valuing White, male, and middle-class interpretationsof what has worth and what does not, and other inter-pretations of worth. This concept of space as Whiteconstructs differences in the school along racial linesand has real and often quite negative consequencesfor those who are defined as the “other.”

The next theoretical point is to define what I meanby racialize. In order to understand race relationshipsin the school and how these relationships are createdand sustained, we need to talk directly about race. Forthe most part, issues of race and education are discussedthrough language such as stratification, inequality, andsegregation. However, the educational process formany students of color is also tied to cultural identity,original community, and ways that social actorsnegotiate the educational process. These issues comeinto play because race relations are a fundamentalcomponent of the educational process. Race relationsin educational institutions, however, are more complexthan prejudice and discrimination. . . . . Race relations area part of the hegemonic workings of the structure andthe individual social actor, and linked to how theindividual explanations of his or her behavior in thecontext of peers, family, and school relations.

69Considering Race

Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) ap-proach these issues theoretically through a processcalled racial formation. Racial formation is the “socio-historical process by which racial categories are cre-ated, inhabited, transformed and destroyed” (p. 55).An ideological link to how we think about race is pro-vided through racial projects connecting what “racemeans [their emphasis] in a particular discursive prac-tice and the ways in which both social structures andeveryday experiences are racially organized” (p. 55).Racial formation, according to Omi and Winant, is a“process of historically situated projects [their empha-sis] in which human bodies and social structures areorganized” (p. 58). Racial projects become part ofthe social structure through our understandings aboutrace that we believe are “common-sense” (p. 59). Com-mon-sense understandings give us the ability to inter-pret racial meanings according to preconceived no-tions. These notions condition meanings about who fitsinto which category and how we expect categorizedpeople to behave. Conversely, our ongoing interpreta-tion of our experiences in racial terms shapes our re-lations to the institutions through which we are em-bedded in social structure. On the level of everydaylife, we categorize individuals, often unconsciously, inthe ways we “notice” race (Omi & Winant, p. 59).

The concept of racial projects is best understoodby first defining race. Although I do not define raceor ethnicity in terms of physical characteristics, socialrelations in the United States do categorize individualsand groups according to physical characteristics suchas skin color. According to Omi and Winant (1994),“race is not an essence, nor is race fixed, concreteand objective, nor is race an illusion or a purelyideological construct” (p. 54). In other words, thereare real material consequences to the way we practicerace. Having defined what race is not, Omi and Winantsuggest race be defined as a “concept which signifiesand symbolizes social conflicts and interests byreferring to different types of human bodies [theiremphasis]” (p. 55). They further argue that the conceptof race cannot be minimized, such as viewing the socialworld as “color-blind,” because doing so would meanposing race as a problem or irregularity within thesocial world when race should be considered a centralorganizing principle of human representation. Forexample, like many other students, Josie states thatgrades are important because they are the way that

other people evaluate your academic abilities. As Josiestates,

Grades are important because they are a waythat people figure out if you are a hard workeror not and that’s important to me. I have a verystrong work ethic. I don’t care what people thinkabout Latinos, my family is very work orientedand if you have all “Cs” then it looks like youdon’t do anything...even though you knowyou’re working 35 hours a week and a C wouldbe doing quite well, you know other people’sperceptions would be that you’re not working.

Laziness as a common expected behavior assignedto Latinos frustrates many university Latino students.At the university level, students often choose whichcourses they want to pass with high grades and whichcourses they are willing to simply pass. Latino studentsbelieve they may not always make this choice becausethey do not want people to assume they are lazy orincapable, common expectations and behaviors as-sumed in the organizational logic of the school. Thismeans White students are advantaged, able to assign adifferent meaning, to earning a lower grade. For Whitestudents, this choice is not about a strong work ethic.Choice may also be about practicality or the ability toprioritize. What Josie says suggests that the organiza-tional logic of the school questions Latino academicability and, when ability is proven, links the choice toperform at a lesser level to a poor work ethic. Latinostudents find themselves in the position of doing morewhen more may not be academically necessary, butnecessary to negotiate an organizational logic that con-tributes to schools as White spaces.

There is a problem with examining school expe-riences through racial formation. Omi and Winant(1994) state that a conscious understanding of racialformation and racialization empowers the racializedindividual to reconstruct racialized identity and to dis-continue living in categories that demand we look atthem as different. As good as this sounds, their theorystill focuses on the subordinate position of the racializedindividual. In addition, empowering racialized peopleto reconstruct their own identity does not necessarilymean others have reconstructed their identity. Studentsof color, although they may have raised their own con-sciousness about who they are, have not experienceda change in how they are categorized within the insti-


tution. How do we avoid limiting Omi and Winant’sastute observations about racial formation? I suggestwe begin to produce a better understanding of racerelations in schools by not positioning students of coloras the only racialized participants in schools. We needto consider the position occupied by Whiteness as aracial category. Work by David Roediger (1991),David Wellman (1994), and Ruth Frankenberg (1993)examines Whiteness as a privilege often void ofracialized meaning among White people. People ofcolor, however, have a clearer understanding of theconnection between Whiteness and privilege. Roedigerreminds us that “for at least sixty years, Black writershave stated that race in the US is a White problem,with consequences that fall on people of color” (p. 6).The way we continue to approach race is through acolor-blind lens. However, color-blind actions erasethe color of the “other” and privilege Whiteness asthe norm, whereas recognizing racialized differenceswould highlight that privilege. Why privilege? Becauseas Cheryl Harris (1993) argues, Whiteness becomesproperty, something that we own that is as beneficialto us as a piece of real estate.

Recognizing or understanding the consequencesof schools as White spaces is important to the educa-tional development of students of color. . . . . The majorityof the literature suggests that students of color havetwo options, assimilate and succeed, or resist and fail.My data suggests that Latino students negotiate educa-tional success through other means. For example, Latinastudents accommodate the organizational logic of theschool by appearing to adapt to prominent ideologies.However, through awareness of the school as a Whitespace and their position in that space, they havelearned to value other things. They have discoveredthat White spaces necessitate the creation of whatPatricia Hill Collins (1990) calls “self-valuing” (p. 107)to compensate for common-sense interpretations ofracial meanings practiced through the organizationallogic of the school. This kind of knowledge gatheringis different from and beyond what is required of domi-nant culture students.

Our sociological thinking and general understand-ing by the larger society of success and failure is re-flected in Robert Merton’s (1957) argument about as-similation. Merton suggests there are no alternativesother than to accept or reject the “means to an end”assimilation requires. Individuals from other cultures

must accept discarding their ways of being in order toassimilate into the American melting pot. Rejection ofthe means (i.e., discarding one’s own culture) pro-poses not obtaining the ends (i.e., assimilation). Theunderlying assumption in the informal practices andformal policies of school organizations is successthrough assimilation. However, the organizational logicof the institution may not allow for complete assimila-tion because that space is racialized.

Power differentials exist that influence the conse-quences of an organization logic that distinguishesalong race lines. This power exists because once theorganizational logic is racialized as White, it is diffi-cult for groups of color to break into that logic. Giventhe power differentials Whiteness enjoys in the edu-cational institution, as in the larger society, Whitegroups acquire greater benefits from the racializeddivisions in the organizational logic and in the organi-zation. Take for example the ability to acquire hous-ing or taking advantage of a legacy admission to anIvy League university, or racial profiling leading tohigher arrest rates of African Americans for smalleroffences such as driving without a license. This is notto say that power and control are always intentional orpart of a White conspiracy against folks of color. AsGramsci (1971) and Omi and Winant (1994) pointout, the social construction of race becomes “com-mon-sense” and hegemony is achieved through whatis believed to be commonsensical. The organizationallogic at work in the school socially constructs race in acommon-sense way. Just as Acker (1989) claims thatorganizations are not gender neutral even though whatis masculine is considered neutral in our society, I ar-gue that the school’s organization logic views White-ness as natural and therefore is considered neutral.Organizational logic, built on assumed ideas and cat-egorizations that White is natural and neutral, per-meates that organization’s material and symbolic prac-tices and policies. Furthermore, this organizationallogic racializes the very space of the institution into aWhite space, a space that privileges White and disad-vantages people of other color. If the organizationallogic of the school that privileges Whiteness is not in-tentional, how may this concept be observed and howis it reproduced?

As Nina Eliasoph (1999) suggests, sociological treat-ments of how Whites “objectively reproduce racialoppression may be found in how they buy a house in

71Considering Race

one neighborhood and not another, pick one schoolover another, locate a company in one part of townand not another” (p. 483). However, to understandhow decisions are made by Whites when neitherprejudice (Wellman, 1994) or profit (Kirschenman &Neckerman, 1991) fully account for these decisions,we must look to other kinds of explanations. To beginwith, the assumed rules for interaction inside organi-zations such as the school and in the workplace aresubjectively colored with Whiteness in their everydaydecisions and activities (Eliasoph, 1999; Fordham,1988; Gould, 1999). Illuminating ways in which theorganizational logic of the school neutralizes interac-tions may help us understand why many participatingin school organizations do not understand that color,especially Whiteness, matters.

More than half of the university students and highschool students I interviewed related instances whenteachers expressed surprise at their knowledge, writ-ing skills, or preparation for class. Many times, theseremarks were related to assumed lack of language orwriting skills by someone with a Latino surname. Anorganizational logic that defines expectations and ap-propriate behaviors from Chicano Latino students basedon a White norm is another observable element thatdefines school space as a racialized White space. Forexample, in an American literature class at the uni-versity, Josie’s teaching assistant (TA) wrote on her firstpaper, “your writing is coming along well,” which shefound offensive. She talked to the teaching assistant tofind her suspicions were correct—that the TA had as-sumed because of her surname, she was not Ameri-can and therefore not English speaking. Josie states thatthe TA was surprised by Josie’s response because shefelt she “was responding to my paper in a culturallysensitive manner rather than just critiquing the writ-ing as she would any other paper.” What the TA mis-took for cultural sensitivity is a liberal response to in-terpreting a situation through the lens of an organiza-tional logic that responds to difference as less than thenorm.

Positive statements are helpful to any student butdo not take the place of positive critique. In this case,the TA did not apply positive critique because she as-sumed the student to lack the skills necessary to writea better paper. Josie identifies this “treatment by myuniversity TA and generally within school as difficult.”Josie does not analytically understand what is diffi-

cult. However, over time, Josie gathers this informa-tion into a kind of understanding that she uses to helpher negotiate school practices. She reports, “I figuredout how to do school. I appropriated the system andhave been doing so ever since.” Although not sayingso in these words, Josie developed an understandingof school as a White space working through an orga-nizational logic that privileges markers that assumeWhite values, and constrains markers that are assumedto be less than White. The constraint also neutralizesJosie’s “difference” by not holding culturally differ-ent students to the same standard as “normal” students.In practical terms, this means Chicano Latino studentsat the university will not benefit from the same levelof constructive criticism, one of the most importantprocesses for becoming a better writer. Josie explainsshe has found a way to negotiate the organizationallogic of this space by appropriating the way to “doschool.” Josie states that there is a difference between“doing” school and learning. She comments,

I like learning. I like being interested in whatI’m learning and I’m not very hard to interestin stuff. Because the one thing I know is thatwhatever I learn, I relate to myself, and then itis a part of me.

Josie has learned that school consists of more thangaining intellectual knowledge. She has also learnedwhat is expected of her as a student, appropriate re-sponses to that expectation, and a way to “do” aracialized other in a White space. What Josie does isnegotiate the organizational logic that neutralizes herdifference by making the topic of learning a part ofherself. It appears she has found a way to be in theWhite space of the school without being part of theorganizational logic, which would make her disap-pear. Instead, she mediates that space and gains whatshe wants: to learn. Regardless of her efforts to appro-priate the system, there continue to be expected andappropriate behaviors in a White space that impactJosie’s decisions as a Latina student.

Through these experiences, we gain insight intohow schools as racial projects function through a Whitespace, and how that space delineates relationships andcreates barriers for students of color within the schoolalong race lines. We also see how White space is ne-gotiated through positive resistance. Resistance is a dif-ficult term in that we often attach resistance to fail-


ure, and we also generally perceive it as negative ratherthan positive. Patricia Hill Collins (1990) argues thatAfrican Americans have developed a specific under-standing of what is necessary for a Black person tosurvive in a White world. Collins describes Blackwomen resisting imposed racialized identity througha clear definition of self and identity. Collins statesthat identity is not the goal, but the point of departurefor creating a self-definition that challenges externaldefiners. Self-definitions and self-valuations happenin safe spaces that Black women create for each other.Defining and valuing generates what Collins charac-terizes as “an independent consciousness as a sphereof freedom” (pp. 142-143). Furthermore, Collins statesthe process of defining and valuing the self is not aboutfinding an increased autonomy as a separate indi-vidual. Instead, Black women’s self-defining and self-valuing is found in the context of community. In mystudy, I found that Latinos often resist White space yetsucceed in school by creating safe spaces, spaces thatPatricia Hill Collins refers to as “spheres of freedom”(p. 103). These are spaces where self-valuing com-pensates for common-sense interpretations of racialmeanings practiced through the organizational logicof the school. Understanding this phenomenon expandsour ability as educational practitioners to help studentsof color develop in areas previously not considered,but is nonetheless part of their educational develop-ment.

Discussion

Let me summarize what Chicano Latino studentstold me and what observations and analysis of the in-stitutions revealed. The gist is that color-blind actionserase the color of the “other” and privilege Whitenessas the norm. What happens in schools? The taken-for-granted assumption is that educational institutionsare race neutral organizations and what is esteemed,White, middle class, male values, is neutral. In otherwords, schools, as Chicano Latino students inform me,are White spaces. What I discovered in my researchis a mechanism that sustains this seemingly color-blindappearance of the institutional process, an organiza-tional logic that advances White, middle class valuesand disadvantages those who do not fit into this privi-leged box. This organizational logic assumes a neutralposition by distinguishing along racial lines in taken-for-granted aspects of school policy, and informalpractices that determine what behaviors for people of

color are allowed and expected in White spaces. Whatdistinguishes this process is that “the others” are neu-tralized, or made to disappear in order for an assumedneutrality to continue. So it is more thanmarginalization of the other, it is about making theother disappear because recognizing racialized dif-ferences would highlight White privilege.

What do students do? My research indicates thatLatino students negotiate their educational experiencesthrough a process of self-definition and self-valuing.This process is dynamic, changes over time, and dif-fers from person to person relative to that individualChicano Latino’s personal history. There are, however,patterns in this process that allow us to see a distinctprogression in self-definition and self-valuing in con-nection to the school experience. The process is alsoaffected by the degree to which the individual isgrounded in the context of a community that providesa safe space, or sphere of freedom that challengesdominant definitions and valuing.

Our solutions thus far to educating other thanWhite, middle class Americans are to provide com-pensatory education, special programs for students ofcolor, and to proclaim schools as dedicated to diver-sity, multiculturalism, or at the least cultural sensitiv-ity. There are three problems with these solutions. First,these solutions place the burden of change on the vic-tim of an unjust educational system. Although direct-ing efforts to improve the educational experiences ofLatinos to Latinos may be helpful, why many of thesestudents need “help” is not clear. Latinos as well aseducators and the general public may unconsciouslybelieve they need special help because they are defi-cient. One of the reasons schools and education in gen-eral continue to focus on individuals is because, likeShapiro’s (2000) students, we tend to forget the struc-ture of our society and the inequalities built into it.Instead, we are concerned about individuals, easilycharacterizing their ability or inability to participatefully in the educational process as individual and in-stalling mechanisms for change accordingly. Further-more, the individual on which the mechanism is fo-cused is usually the person of color, not the seeminglyable mainstream student. This is true for special pro-grams designed for marginalized student populations,and for those designed to change the behavior of au-thoritative groups such as teachers. What we end upwith in education in general is watered-down cur-riculum changes, half-hearted attempts to address

73Considering Race

learning style differences, and mandatory multiculturaltraining for teachers and administrators. In develop-mental education specifically, we continue to utilizedeficit and individualistic models and definitions ofdevelopmental education masking other kinds of re-lationships in the educational organization that affecttaken-for-granted assessments of student skill and stu-dent need. As long as education, educators, and re-searchers continue to attack the problems in educa-tion on an individual level, including our views onracism in the schools, that the privileged group canignore, we will not change race relations or educa-tional institutions. bell hooks (1994) explains it thisway:

Despite the focus on diversity, our desires forinclusion, many professors still teach in class-rooms that are predominantly White. Often aspirit of tokenism prevails in those settings. Thisis why it is so crucial that “Whiteness” be stud-ied, understood, discussed—so that everyonelearns that affirmation of multiculturalism, andan unbiased inclusive perspective, can andshould be present whether or not people ofcolor are present. (p. 43)

hooks illuminates a crucial issue in race relationstoday. White people do not think about race unlessthey are thinking about people of color. The reasonfor this is well explained by George Lipsitz (1998),who states that “[W]hiteness is everywhere in the U.S.culture, but it is hard to see…as the unmarked cat-egory against which difference is constructed, White-ness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowl-edge its role as an organizing principle in social andcultural relations” (p. 1).

What does this mean in terms of developmentaleducation? What would happen if education in gen-eral, and developmental education in particular, be-gins to look at itself, its research, and application as aWhite space? What would it mean to those participat-ing in the relationships in that space? My analysis ofChicano Latino experience may appear as if onceagain the entire burden for change is on students’ ofcolor ability to find spheres of freedom. To the con-trary, students who have found this safe space in whichto pursue their education have enlightened us as tothe need for structural change, and given us some hintsas to how to effect that change.

First of all, we need to pay more attention to racerelations as the central subject of discovery. I wouldchallenge White folks in educational institutions to lookfor and define those taken-for-granted assessments ofstudents and applications of teaching in developmen-tal classes, not in terms of curriculum, but in terms ofhow the relationships in the classroom are affected byour assumptions. In order to ask these questions aboutWhite space and the relationships that take place inthat space, researchers and practitioners must firstconsider approaching their work recognizing institu-tions as racial projects built on White spaces. The theoryin which we ground our research and practice mustbe considerate of race relations. Our research andpractice must recognize the institution as historicallyand contemporarily built on values and ideas that arespecific to one group rather than assuming the neu-trality of the spaces in which we work. Our researchand practice must recognize that our participation inthe social structure, our statuses and roles, are not neu-tral. Most of all, we must listen to students of colorand really hear them. What students tell us is theirreal experience, and we must believe and respect themrather than dismissing them through our own pater-nalistic interpretations of their experiences. What stu-dents in my research discuss is not racism, or indi-vidual prejudice such as Shapiro’s (2000) studentssuggested. These students discuss their relationshipsto education as a part of the social structure, and weshould respond accordingly by seeking structuralchange. Because we cannot change the entire struc-ture of the institution overnight, we must find a start-ing point. That point is to allow students of color tofind spheres of freedom—give them time and spaceto address what the reality of their educational pro-cess really is in our classrooms, our offices, and in ourresearch. We must consider that the spaces those of uswho are the mainstream population research and prac-tice in is a safe space for us, but not necessarily forthose who are not like us. If we begin here, we will begiving more than rhetorical responses to the race re-lations in educational institutions as part of the racerelations in the larger social world.

References

Acker, J. (1989). Doing comparable work: Gender,class and pay equity. Philadelphia: TempleUniversity.


Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought:Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics ofempowerment. New York: Routledge.

Conrad, J. (1969). Heart of darkness. New York:Heritage.

Eliasoph, N. (1999). Everyday racism in a culture ofpolitical avoidance: Civil society, speech andtaboos. Social Problems, 46, 479-502.

Feagin, J. R., & Feagin, C. B. (1994). DiscriminationAmerican style. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fordham, S. (1988). Racelessness as a factor in Blackstudents’ school success: Programmatic strategy orpyrrhic victory? Harvard Educational Review, 58,54-84.

Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters:The social construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota.

Gould, M. (1999). Race and theory: Culture, povertyand adaptation to discrimination in Wilson andOgbu. Sociological Theory, 17, 171-200.

Gramsci, A. (1971). The study of philosophy. In Q.Hoare & G. N. Smith (Eds.), Selections from theprison notebooks (pp. 321-343). New York:International.

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. HarvardLaw Review, [On-line], 1709 (106). Available:Lexus-Nexus.

Hartmann, D. (1999). Toward a race critical sociology.Critica: A Journal of Critical Essays, 21-32.

hooks, b. (1994), Teaching to transgress: Education asthe practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Kirschenman, J., & Neckerman, K. (1991). We’d loveto hire them but . . . : The meaning of race foremployers. In C. Jencks & P. Peterson (Eds.), Theurban underclass (pp. 203-234). Washington, DC:Bookings Institute.

Ladner, J. A. (1972). Tomorrow’s tomorrow: The Blackwoman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment inWhiteness: How White people profit from identitypolitics. Philadelphia: Temple University.

Maxwell, M. (as cited in D.B. Lundell & J.L. Higbee,2000). Introduction. In J.L. Higbee & D.B. Lundell(Eds.), Proceedings of the first intentional meetingon future directions in developmental education(pp. 7-9). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Researchon Developmental Education and Urban Literacy,General College, Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota.

Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University.

Mehan, H. (1992). Understanding inequality inschools: The contribution of interpretive studies.Sociology of Education, 65, 1-20.

Mehan, H. (1996). Constructing school success: Theconsequences of un-tracking low achievingstudents. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.

Merton, R. K. (1957). Social theory and social structure.Glencoe, IL.: Free Press.

Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation inthe United States. New York: Routledge.

Pierce, J. L. (1995). Gender trials: Emotional lives incontemporary law firms. Berkeley, CA: Universityof California.

Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of Whiteness: Raceand the making of the American working class.London: Verso.

Shapiro, J. (2000, March). From sociological illiteracyto sociological imagination [Point of view].Chronicle of Higher Education, 46, A68.

Wellman, D. (1994). Portraits of White racism (2nd

ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.

75The Place of Culture

To: [email protected],[email protected]

From: [email protected]: social science classes at GCDate: June 13, 2000

Hello, my name is George P. Burdell. I aman incoming General College freshman, andI am interested in taking a social scienceclass during my first semester. The lasttime I had a social science class wasduring my junior year of high school, andit was pretty basic. I remember that Iliked the unit on popular culture best,but I can’t recall if that fell under theanthropology or sociology sections. I wouldlike to learn more about popular culture,especially issues about music. Should Isign up for the introduction to sociologycourse or the introduction to anthropologycourse? Thank you.

To: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: social science classes

at GCDate: June 14, 2000

Dear George,

Your note comes at an interesting moment.We have been asking similar questions aswe rethink the curriculum to meet the needsand interests of General College (GC)students. Forgive us if we provide a fairlylong-winded, yet indefinite answer to yourquestion. We have used the occasion ofyour query to begin a dialogue amongourselves concerning the benefits andlimitations of our disciplines as well aspotential ways to improve and integratethe sociology and anthropology curriculum.Given your direct interest in the issue,we decided to let you in on the discussion.We’d love to hear what you think afterreading our responses!

Walt will be able to tell you more aboutthe People and Problems (Introduction toSociology) course. I will begin byexplaining the benefits of anthropologyin regard to your interest in popular cultureand music.

The major strength of anthropology is thatit is comparative. By that I meananthropologists have studied thousands of

The Place of “Culture” in DevelopmentalEducation’s Social SciencesMark H. Pedelty, Assistant ProfessorAnthropology

Walter R. Jacobs, Assistant ProfessorSociology

Recently, developmental educators have argued that we should view students in their full complexities, ratherthan as “deficits” to be fixed. This position can be actualized in the social sciences sector by retheorizing“culture.” Whereas many common assumptions of anthropology stress semiotic meanings of culture and manysociological approaches focus on structures and processes, we argue that developmental education shouldinclude both meaning and structure in understandings of culture. We use a cultural studies framework tocombine anthropological and sociological groundings into a model of culture that demands that we firstaccess students’ pre-college lived experiences and understandings, and work with them to expand, ratherthan replace, their knowledge with the formal discourses that they must master to negotiate academic spaces.In our model, culture is the collaborative practice of continually making and remaking contexts (i.e., structuresand meanings) that provide students with dynamic tools to succeed in the academy and beyond.


cultures, and therefore make an attempt tounderstand behavior by comparing differentcultural lifeways. For example, rather thanstudy popular culture in the United Statesalone, an anthropologist would tend tothink about those familiar cultural formsas part of the larger human culturalexperience. Anthropologists have studiedrock and roll music as ritual (Hämeri,1993), in Australian aboriginal culture(Dunbar-Hall, 1997), Papua New Guinea(Gewertz & Errington, 1996), Western Canada(Johnston, 1980), and throughout the world.

One of the advantages of our comparativemethodology is that by studying others’cultural realities we can begin to realizethat we, too, have constructed our world.In other words, we begin to see that theinterpretive realities we mistake forobjective or natural reality are insteadspecific cultural interpretations of theworld. These cultural interpretations ofthe world are developed partly through“enculturation,” the process through whichindividuals are taught the symbolicpatterns shared by others around them. Forexample, what people in a capitalistsociety refer to as human nature is insteada reflection of capitalist culture.Similarly, the folk category of race asdefined in the United States is a culturalconcept, a way of (very poorly) categorizinghuman phenotypic (i.e., physical) diversityaccording to cultural beliefs, rather thana set of biologically significantcategories (Fish, 2000).

The work of Margaret Mead serves as athird example. Freudian theory, as amanifestation of the Western culturalbelief system, holds that human beingsexperience a major and traumatic breakbetween childhood and adulthood, resultingin adolescent rebellion against theparents. By studying adolescence in othercultures, however, many anthropologists,including Margaret Mead (Mead & Boas, 1928),have demonstrated that adolescence is notthis way in all societies. In somesocieties, for example, the age-period wehave defined as adolescence is consideredto be full adulthood. Conversely, for othersocieties, this period is marked byuninhibited social and sexualexperimentation, without the extreme

personal and intergenerational traumasassociated with “coming of age” in Westernsocieties.

It is quite common for us to mistake culturefor nature. That is one of the issues westudy in Introduction to CulturalAnthropology. Therefore, the study ofcultural anthropology is partly a processof discovering the cultural matrices (i.e.,webs of meaning) we inhabit. That processof discovery can often be a liberatingexperience.

Marcus and Fischer (1986) call thecomparative aspect of anthropology“defamiliarization by cross-culturaljuxtaposition” (p.157), which is justanother way of saying that weanthropologists hold up other ways of lifeas a critical mirror to our own. We dothat so we might better understand our owncultural patterns. As a result of suchcritical exploration, we might find better,more humane ways to construct our culturalrealities and conduct our social lives.

In discussing the comparative element ofanthropology, I have indicated anothermajor emphasis of the discipline.Anthropologists believe that in order tounderstand any given behavior or belief ofanother society, you must first try tounderstand it within its surroundingcultural context. This is called culturalrelativism, and it is the opposite ofethnocentrism. The ethnocentric persontends to judge other cultural behaviorsand beliefs based on his or her own culturalvalue and belief system. Conversely, theresearcher practicing cultural relativismtries to understand other cultures on theirown terms.

Cultural relativism requires that weunderstand the internal logic of anothercultural behavior or belief, rather thanjudging others according to our own culturalvalues. For example, White people in NorthAmerica have often referred to AmericanIndians as unfriendly or distant, based onthe cultural tendency in many NativeAmerican cultures to be very reserved withstrangers. In many Native Americansocieties, the cultural rules for gettingto know another person require significant


time and silence, not to mention the factthat interactions with strangers have had,on the whole, extremely negativeconsequences for Indian peoples.Conversely, the White tendency is toaggressively shake hands to begin anencounter with strangers, and one issupposed to engage in conversation in orderto get to know them. These two culturalmodes are often in conflict, and theresulting misunderstandings have hadnegative repercussions in political,educational, and business settings. Whiteteachers working with Indian students, forexample, have often misunderstood themeaning of silence in the classroom.

A number of anthropologists, particularlyanthropological linguists, have studiedsuch cultural misunderstandings in depth(Basso, 1970). The goal of such study isto increase people’s understanding ofothers’ behavioral tendencies, so thatintercultural relations can be based oncommunication, understanding, knowledge,and respect.

Given your interest in popular culture,the Introduction to Cultural Anthropologycourse would work well for you. Culture isthe main focus of anthropology. Although Icannot speak for sociology (I’ll let Waltdo that), the historical tendency ofsociology has been to emphasize socialstructure (i.e., society), whereasanthropologists tend to examine thesymbolic world (i.e., culture). In otherwords, sociologists tend to be moreinterested in social organization, whereasanthropologists tend to emphasize beliefsystems, ritual life, and the symbolicpatterns that the members of a given societyshare. Therefore, although sociologistscertainly are interested in culture, andsome are dedicated almost exclusively tosuch studies, the historical tradition ofthe field has been to study socialinstitutions and behavior in modern,Western nations. Conversely, although thereare certainly anthropologists who studysocial structures particularly in smallscale societies and subcultures, the mainemphasis of the field has been culturallife in the non-Western world. Althoughneither Walt nor I represent thesetendencies in our own research and courses,

our respective disciplines are largelydifferentiated according to geographic(First vs. Third World) and topical (Societyvs. Culture) foci.

This difference between the disciplinesis represented in methodology as well.Sociology, as a field, has tended toemphasize large-scale, quantitative study,emphasizing survey, interview and censustechniques. The study of large-scale socialstructures often requires such methods.

Conversely, anthropologists tend to use“ethnographic” methodology. Ethnographyinvolves long-term study from within aculture. One must spend a great deal oftime to learn some of the basic ways ofthinking in another culture. In other words,the ethnographer essentially becomes achild again. Just as a child learns largelythrough trial and error, an anthropologistbecomes a student of another culture,learning how to behave by being taught howto, and how not to, behave in that society.

Anthropologists are mainly interested inthe “emic” point of view, which is thecultural insider’s interpretation of theworld. That is as opposed to the “etic”point of view, the interpretation of anoutsider. Granted, we always remainoutsiders, and will therefore alwaysmaintain and express etic perspectives aswell, but the goal is to immerse ourselvesin the other culture.

Whereas other disciplines will use broad,yet shallow, quantitative methodologiesto gain an outline of mass behavior, welive in and amongst a culture for longperiods of time, a narrow and deep strategy.Sociologists often work with populationsin the hundreds, thousands, or tens ofthousands. We tend to focus on smallcollectives of less than 100 people. Forexample, a sociologist studying thequestion of illegal drugs might conduct asurvey of thousands of respondents in orderto answer a very specific research question,such as relationships between drug use,ethnicity, age, gender, education,occupation, employment, income, maritalstatus, household composition, and othervariables. Conversely, an anthropologistwould be more likely to live in and among


a group of drug sellers or consumers for along period of time in order to find outwhy people sell and buy drugs (Bourgois,1996). As a result, anthropologists attemptto create a more complete and in-depthpicture of an actual cultural world. Doingso, however, requires that one study arelatively small social group. The resultsare generally deeper in terms of culturalmeaning and understanding, but not as broadand generalizable as data derived throughtraditional sociological methods. Eachperspective and methodology has its placeand purpose.

Whereas interviews might be considered adeep investigative method in other fields,for us the formal interview might be justday one of a year or two period of livingwith those in another culture. Thereafter,we emphasize participant observation, whichsimply means taking part in some of theessential cultural activities of othersso that we might understand them better.Rather than talking to them once, we keepa dialogue going for long periods of time,as one would with a friend or family member.

So, getting back to the point, what mightthis mean in terms of your interest inpopular culture and music? Well, thathappens to be my area of interest as well.I have been studying the popular cultureof Mexico for several years now. In orderto do so, I have conducted interviews,observed hundreds of musical rituals fromneo-Aztec drumming to Mexican rock androll, learned to sing boleros, and to dancethe danzón (poorly, like a Gringo). I havebeen studying musical ritual in MexicoCity as a form of public pedagogy, examiningthe ways in which the state, church, andother social organizations attempt toinstruct people through musical ritual. Iam now writing about that research,primarily for a U.S. audience, because Ithink people in the U.S. should know moreabout our “Distant Neighbors” (Riding,1986).

I bring issues of popular culture and musicinto my class. The course is based on aworkshop format, emphasizing “hands on”student research projects. Therefore, ifyou were interested in Irish folk music

and culture, for example, you might planand conduct an ethnographic study of anIrish folk music group here in Minneapolis.In class you would study some of the basictheories, concepts, and methods ofanthropology, and then apply them in yourresearch project.

However, I am certain that you would alsobe able to learn a great deal about popularculture and music in People and Problems.Walt’s research and teaching also emphasizethese issues. He’s writing an e-mail toyou, too; it should arrive soon. Good luck.

Mark Pedelty

To: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: social science classes

at GCDate: June 15, 2000

George–

I received your note a couple of days agoand am thrilled that you are coming to theGeneral College and have an interest inthe social sciences. We have a lot ofopportunities here and hope that you usethem to the fullest extent. Once you arriveon campus, feel free to stop by my officeat any time to chat.

I see that Mark (Dr. Pedelty) has alreadyanswered your e-mail, and he did a greatjob of describing his course and hisdiscipline of anthropology. He also did avery good job of describing some of themain ideas of my field of sociology aswell! So, I won’t repeat what he said, butlet me go into a little more detail abouthow sociologists view culture. I do thisbecause (a) this concept is central to allof us here in GC’s social science division,and (b) it’ll give you a foundation tobetter understand your interest in popularculture.

One of the things that you’ll discoverabout most academic disciplines is thatthey have a specialized vocabulary todescribe terms and concepts. Sociology is


no exception. It may be useful, then, forme to provide a glossary of terms here atthe beginning of the e-mail so that youcan better understand the ideas I explainlater.

Glossary

autonomous individualism: belief thata person can obtain any goal with enougheffort; other forces are irrelevant

beliefs: ideas about reality

binary opposition: a concept that hastwo parts, and each part is the exactopposite of the other, e.g., good and bad,night and day, male and female

cultural capital: set of symbolicelements valued by the dominant class,such as etiquette, artistic tastes, speechpatterns

culture (summary): group way of lifethat is simultaneously constrained andenabled by both historical memory andcontemporary stratification

culture as map of behavior: culture isunderstood as a force for order andstability

culture as map for behavior: culture isunderstood as scene of debate and struggle

dominant class: those with high-levelpositions in government, businesscorporations, or the military

doxa: that state where a person’ssubjective beliefs closely approximateshis or her objective social positions

expressive symbols: representations ofideas and things

hegemony: process by which groups withpower maintain power by combination ofcoercion and consent of other groups

heterogeneous social contexts:situations where people have many differenttraditions and values

homogeneous social contexts: situationswhere people are more or less the same

ideology: distortion of reality

mentality: state of mind

norms: rules for behavior

sociological imagination: process ofconnecting personal experiences with largerstructural issues

stratification: unequal distribution ofresources and rewards based on social groupmembership

structuralists: a group of socialtheorists who believe that humansunderstand the world in terms of binaryoppositions

symbolic interactionists: a group ofsocial theorists who believe that cultureis a set of common meanings generated inface-to-face interaction

thick description: detailed, multi-layered, analytical narrative about socialgroup structures and experiences

values: attitudes about what is goodand bad

In Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary(Mish, 1985), there are two broadclassifications of culture. On one hand,culture refers to aesthetics: a culturedperson has excellent tastes, moralfacilities, training, and so on. On theother hand, culture refers to a patternedway of life of a group of individuals.Sociologists are more interested in thesecond usage. Within this definition,however, many different approaches to thestudy of culture can be categorized.Peterson (1979), for example, discussesfour broad perspectives on culture: asnorms, values, beliefs, and expressivesymbols. Wuthnow and Witten (1988),alternatively, lump norms and values intoone perspective, and compare thatorientation with two others: culture asbeliefs and as mentality. Additionally,there are several other ways to classifyculture, such as discussed by Griswold


(1994), Mukerji and Schudson (1986), andSwidler (1986). Which are we to use?

I believe that an instructive categorizationis one that compares approaches of “cultureas a map of behavior” with “culture as amap for behavior” (Peterson, 1979). Indeed,each perspective leads one to ask verydifferent questions and construct disparateanswers: the former sees culture as a forcefor order and stability while the latterviews culture as a process of contentiousproduction and change. I will review thesetwo perspectives in turn, providingexamples and discussing their strengthsand weaknesses. I will then conclude witha brief discussion of my own orientationto the concept of culture and how it’sused in the People and Problems(Introduction to Sociology) course.

Culture as Map of Behavior

In this paradigm, culture is theorized asa force for order and stability: values,traditions, norms, beliefs, and attitudesare seen as regulating the conduct ofeveryday life. Furthermore, these forcesare usually theorized as workingimplicitly; it is the task of the analystto discover them and probe their innerworkings in relation to larger socialstructures. For example, you may thinkthat it’s “natural” to change classes whenthe bell rings, or go to your locker atthe end of the day, but these things aredetermined by the set-up of your school;in an alternative school you may not havebells at the end of periods (or class“periods” at all!) or lockers, because theadministrators have a very different viewof how the school should be run than thoseof public schools.

A group of theorists called thestructuralists help us understand culturewhen theorized this way. They believe thatvalues and traditions are the result ofthe human mind ordering experience intocategories of binary oppositions (seeMukerji & Schudson, 1986; Williams, 1981).The major problem with this approach,however, has been a tendency to focus on“high” and “low” forms of cultural

expression. Such a conceptualization ishighly problematic in a society as complexand fluid as the U.S. (Gans, 1974).

Clifford Geertz’s (1973) interpretativeapproach, on the other hand, wasinstrumental in a shift towards efforts tostudy popular forms of culture (Mukerji &Schudson. 1988). Emphasizing “thickdescription” as the means of discoveringeveryday understandings and culturalpractices, Geertz argues that symbolicexpression is the defining feature of thehuman species. Geertz, along with otheranthropologists influenced by sociologistEmile Durkheim (like Sahlins, 1976, andTurner, 1967) argue that humans areprimarily meaning-making animals insteadof profit-making animals, and that symbolicexpression is the necessary basis ofpractical activity. At this point you maybe wondering, “just how is shared meaningreached?” Although thick description isvery useful within tightly boundhomogeneous social contexts, it is ofreduced utility when investigating theproduction and expression of culture inexpansive heterogeneous social contexts.

Here the work of Bourdieu (1977, 1990) isuseful. His “cultural capital” is a set ofsymbolic elements that are valued by thedominant class. Individuals, families, andgroups are believed to spend resources togain cultural capital, which is in turnreinvested to gain more valued resources.Note that the focus is on obtaining theperspectives of the dominant class, notthe other way around.

A weakness with Bourdieu’s workspecifically, and the culture as map ofbehavior camp in general is itsreductionism. Social class is the mostimportant force for Bourdieu; he pays littleattention to ways in which locations suchas age race, ethnicity, gender, and sexualorientation affect things like doxa. Forexample, Bourdieu would not consider thateven if you are from an upper-class family,as someone who is under 21 you can not yetfully participate in American culture: youcan’t legally purchase alcohol. It seemsthat culture as map of behavior theoristsare too focused on the one or two key


elements that hold the entire culturalworld together.

Sometimes, however, a few elements can beeffectively isolated to form powerfulinsights about implicit culturalunderstandings. When reading Habits of theHeart (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler,& Tipton, 1985), for instance, I initiallythought that interviews with 200 White,middle-class Americans unduly excluded largesegments of the population (recall Mark’spoint that sociologists usually studypeople in very large numbers). Theirresulting discovery, however, of anisolating language of autonomousindividualism does seem to be a realityapplicable to other groups. Perhaps a majortask of culture as map for behaviortheorists is to investigate how culture ina homogeneous context operates verydifferently in another, heterogeneouscontext: it shifts from a relativelyharmonious process of discovering a sharedsense of values and norms to a blueprintfor never-ending contentious debate andstruggle. I now turn to that orientation.

Culture as Map for Behavior

This revised imagery—culture as “toolkit” for constructing “strategies ofaction,” rather than as switchman di-recting an engine propelled by inter-ests—turns our attention toward dif-ferent causal issues than do tradi-tional perspectives [of culture asmodel of behavior]. (Swidler, 1986,p. 277)

When reviewing Bourdieu’s work, it is notentirely clear as to which of our twoperspectives he belongs. The notion ofcultural capital, after all, does stressthat some groups strive to produce andconsume symbolic content valued by thedominant class; in a sense, culture as thepossession of cultural capital is a resourcethat individuals can use flexibly to guidebehavior. Swidler’s concept of culture as“tool kit,” however, theorizes culture asan active process, where groups explicitlyarticulate interests and strive to realizethem. Cultural capital, on the other hand,

is theorized as passively achieved, throughsuch vehicles as socialization througheducational institutions (Peterson, 1979);cultural capital is a “switchman” governedby the interests of powerful elites thatdirect the masses onto certain tracks.Bourdieu, then, belongs in the culture asmap of behavior camp.

Staying in the realm of education, theinvestigations of critical literacyscholars more clearly illustrate theculture as map for behavior perspective(Giroux, 1994; McLaren, 1995). Theseanalysts theorize educational institutionsas places where groups bring conflictingunderstandings of the world to bear onlearning. Although the interests of elitesare privileged, other groups can—and do—resist the imposition of eliteunderstandings; culture is theorized asthe process of setting up alternativeperspectives, and expressing theseunderstandings symbolically. There is notone culture that everyone participates in,but numerous cultures that are not uniformlyspread through the social system.Individuals face a variety of pressures(from both within and without the variousgroups involved) as they negotiate in andbetween various cultures.

Let me give you an example that contrastsBourdieu’s map of behavior with the criticalliteracy people’s map for behavior. If youcame to GC and excelled (as we know thatyou will!), Bourdieu would say that thisis because you learned rules by watchingand listening to the professors, and thenfollowed the rules without question. Thecritical literacy people, on the otherhand, would say that some type ofnegotiation took place: you learned somerules of GC but at the same time adaptedthese rules to take advantage of your ideasand experiences, such as specificallyscheduling classes that were taught in astyle that uses your strengths.

The tradition of symbolic interactionismcan also be said to operate in the cultureas map for behavior perspective (Becker &McCall, 1990; Denzin, 1992). Culture, forsymbolic interactionists, is understoodas the set of common meanings generated in


face-to-face interaction, which are openfor flexible interpretation. A weaknesswith this approach, however, is that toolittle attention is paid to largerstructures that affect local interactions,which is a vitally important considerationin our increasingly non-face-to-facemediated worlds (Gottdiener, 1995).

Analysts operating within the paradigm ofcultural studies explicitly examine theimportance of mediated communication insymbolic expression and experience. Kellner(1995), for instance, argues that the mediahave become the dominant influences onsubjectivity: both our sense of who we areand how we act are deeply influenced byexposure to mediated information.Furthermore, the individual’s position insocial groups creates certain forms ofsymbolic expression that are continuallynegotiated in hegemonic space (see alsoGrossberg, 1992; Lury, 1996; Rose, 1994).Culture, in sum, is theorized as a group’sresponse to its social experiences, in aneffort to increase its ability to articulateits interests and maximize access to valuedresources.

A weakness of the culture as map forbehavior perspective is that it oftenapproximates the notion of “ideology” as adistortion of reality, only without negativepermutations and connotations; in somecases, ideology can be substituted for“culture.” In many cases, however, symbolicexpression operates above and beyond mereideological motivation. For instance, theelaborate expressive styles of many rapmusic artists and their fans surrounddesires to make lots of money, more sothan they support aspirations of upliftingthe community or engaging anti-hegemonicstruggle (Rose, 1994). Furthermore, whenwe expand the scope of analysis, thestrength of the perspective becomes itsapplicability for a large and extremelyheterogeneous society like the UnitedStates, with its history of conflictingnorms and values: groups have and willexplicitly express interests and mobilizesymbolic expression to achieve ends inother social spheres. Culture as map ofbehavior, in this context, is quite apowerful construct.

As is probably clear by now, my ownorientation to the concept of culture liessquarely within the culture as map forbehavior camp. I personally define cultureas a group way of life that’s simultaneouslyconstrained and enabled by both historicalmemory and contemporary socialstratification. I see this way of life asincreasingly mediated: members of socialgroups use symbolic content, especiallyin electronic form, to guide theconstruction of visions of who they were,are, and should be, and how they shouldinteract with other groups. This process,further, is inherently flexible anddynamic, as groups constantly use materialand symbolic objects in public- and popular-sphere efforts to define and articulatethemselves and their interests in never-ending hegemonic struggle:

Hegemony always involves a struggleto rearticulate the popular. There canbe no assurance ahead of time what theresults will be, for it depends uponthe concrete contexts and practicesof struggle and resistance. Speakingin the vocabulary of popular ideolo-gies, using the logics by which peopleattempt to calculate their most ad-vantageous position, celebrating thepleasures of popular culture, appro-priating the practices of daily life –this is where hegemony is fought andwhat is fought over. (Grossberg, 1992,p. 247)

Through a combination of force and freewill, they persuade other people that theruling group’s interests are really theinterests of all the other groups; cultureis the ground on which much of this processis done. My People and Problems course,essentially, is a semester-long explorationof how hegemony works in the United States.From time to time I will discuss processesin other parts of the globe, but the focusis on how we can use these understandingsto better understand our situation here athome. Eventually, of course, one shouldknow a little about the cultures of othercountries in their own right as well asthe ins and outs of United States cultures,so I’d recommend taking courses in bothanthropology and sociology.


In People and Problems I help studentsdevelop their “sociological imaginations”(Mills, 1959), the process of connectingpersonal experiences with larger structuralissues. I use popular culture throughoutthe course to help students do this: welook at both processes of production (e.g.,how things like movies and TV shows arecreated and marketed) as well as consumption(i.e., how people receive these productsand the meanings they construct about them).So frequently we watch clips from TV showsor music videos, or look at print ads, andthen have class discussions about them. Myclass is primarily oriented towards visualmedia so I don’t explore music in as muchdepth as Mark does, but if you’re intomusic videos you can be sure that we’llanalyze a few during the semester!

Overall, because I use the culture as amap for behavior perspective, I’m veryinterested in working with what studentsbring to the classroom, so I always buildin plenty of time to explore intereststhat I cannot anticipate ahead of time.Last year, for instance, students werevery interested in the Y2K computer problemso we spent an extra day on it. In thefuture, I expect to devote additional timeto hot topics built into the syllabus aswell as to explore subjects that studentsinitiate. Who knows, maybe you’ll bring upan issue that students will get excitedabout? I can hardly wait to find out…

–Walt Jacobs


From: [email protected]: negatives of sociology and

anthropologyDate: June 16, 2000

Dear Dr. Pedelty and Dr. Jacobs,

Thank you for your replies to my questionregarding the social sciences at GeneralCollege. I have one follow-up question.Dr. Pedelty emphasized the benefits of hisdiscipline while Dr. Jacobs looked atstrengths and weaknesses of sociology’sdefinitions of culture. Dr. Pedelty, what

are some of the negative aspects of yourdiscipline for a student interested inpopular culture and music? Dr. Jacobs, isthere a big weakness of sociology overallfor a student like me?

Thank you,

George P. Burdell

To: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: negatives of sociology

and anthropologyDate: June 17, 2000

Dear George,

I am very glad that you asked this question.Indeed, there are many limitations toanthropology for a student interested instudying popular culture. And, there aremany problems with the discipline ofanthropology, in general. I’ll cite a fewhere. Pardon me if I get a bit long-winded.We anthropologists have a tendency to ripapart our discipline. And, ultimately, Ibelieve that is literally what needs to bedone to the discipline.

But, as you read this, please rememberthat these are just my views, not necessarilythose of the field as a whole. One of thethings that you will learn in college isthe importance of turning opinions intoactual arguments and supporting each thesiswith evidence and a cogent line ofreasoning. Hopefully, the arguments Ipresent here will help you decide whichdiscipline best matches your interests.

Let me start my critique of culturalanthropology by citing the strengths ofsociology. Sociologists are particularlygood at identifying the major problems inlarge scale, contemporary, Western,capitalist societies. Althoughanthropologists may suggest alternativesbased on comparative study of small scale,non-Western societies, past and present,sociologists usually offer more detailedand engaged critiques of the types of socialcontexts most of us actually experience in


our daily lives. Sociology is thus often amore practical discipline, contributingmore to social change on regional, national,and global scales than anthropology.Anthropology often deals with moremarginalized people and problems. Althoughthese problems are important, they may notrelate as directly to the experiences ofmany students as the issues tackled bysociologists.

Sociologists are also good at looking atissues of scale. Anthropological work isgenerally focused on small-scalecollectives, such as rural villages orurban neighborhoods. Anthropologists areoften not so hot at putting such localrealities into national, regional, andinternational contexts. With importantexceptions, the discipline has onlyrecently turned significant attention tolarger scale issues, such as the affectsof globalization on national culturalsovereignty and identity. Sociologists havemade such issues the bread-and-butter oftheir discipline for decades.

Likewise, cultural anthropologists aresometimes accused of being culturaldeterminists. Cultural determinism is thetendency to reduce all explanations tomatters of culture. In fact, archaeologistsand physical anthropologists often critiquecultural anthropologists foroveremphasizing the role of culture. Indeed,the emphasis on symbolic reality may causeanthropologists to act as if all of realityis simply constructed, denying any sort ofmaterial reality beyond that which is formedvia human interpretation. Complex systemsof interaction between the physical, social,and cultural worlds may all be reduced toissues of interpretation and “text.” As aresult of this theoretical bias towardculture, material systems of productionand power may be ignored in someanthropological studies. This has negativetheoretical and political consequences,particularly for those who suffer the mostwithin these very real material systems.Culture is not everything.

So too, the smaller scale focus ofanthropology may have negative moral andpolitical consequences. Although studies

involving interpersonal and interculturalmisinterpretation noted earlier presentan important contribution to the study ofsocial behavior, they may fall short ifnot combined with more large-scalesociological and historical research. Suchlarge-scale sociological and historicalcontexts are as, if not more, sociallysignificant than the study of localizedinteractions. Sure, these studies mighthelp us learn how to engineer more effectiveinterpersonal and intercultural relations,but to what end? Will more effectiveinterpersonal communication really leadto less intercultural and internationaldomination? What of our interactions withthe billions of people we never meet,including those who assemble our cars, sewour clothes, or pick our vegetables? Giventhat the readership of academic anthropologyis mainly middle to upper class White peoplein Europe and the United States, isn’tsuch knowledge concerning the other simplyenlightening and thus further empoweringthe powerful?

Furthermore, what good is smoothintercultural and interpersonalcommunication, if we are still part andparcel of a much larger social apparatusthat privileges most of us living in richnations? We often prosper at the expenseof millions whom we never meet (e.g., everytime we buy clothes, shoes, or electronicgoods mass produced in Third Worldsweatshops). Might we not simply mistakegood interpersonal relations for actualintercultural and international accord?In other words, the study of how peoplecommunicate across cultural boundaries inlocal and interpersonal contexts isimportant, but so is the study of thelarger class, race, and gender-basedsystems of economic exploitation we alltake part in, whether we realize we aredoing so or not. Just as society is madeup of much more than interpersonal communityinteraction, so too should our research domore than simply document the local livesof individual communities.

Sociologists have been better at studyinglarge-scale systems of exploitation.Sociologist Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) SavageInequalities, a critique of the educational


system, is a good example. Althoughanthropologists have been good at helpinga mainly Western readership understand thecultural lives of those in other societies,they have tended to do less in terms ofstudying social power and inequality inthe contemporary world. Therefore, althoughmy colleagues in anthropology would cringeif they read this, I would have to recommendsociology, in general, if you are interestedin issues of social power and inequality.As for sociology and anthropology atGeneral College, however, you are as likelyto study these issues in either course.

Which brings us to the problem ofcolonialism. Although it is becoming oneof the most diverse disciplines in academe,anthropology has traditionally beendominated by White men, like me (althoughthe rest of them tend to dress better).For this and other reasons, the disciplinehas been correctly criticized as“colonialist.” Vine Deloria’s (1969) CusterDied for Your Sins presents a brilliantand humorous critique of anthropologicalexploitation. I would recommend readingthat if you want to gain a critical viewof the history of anthropological researchin North America.

Public critiques like Custer Died for YourSins became fairly common in the 1960s, asactivist groups in the Third and FourthWorld (indigenous communities) began togain a public voice. Ethnographic researchbegan to be viewed as a form of culturalexploitation and appropriation (i.e.,borrowing from another culture for personalgain). Many anthropologists, such as GeraldBerreman (1981), began to publish suchcritiques from within the discipline itself.The participation of severalanthropologists in the Vietnam War andother questionable international programslikewise brought the issue ofanthropological ethics to the fore.

Unfortunately, the anthropological responsehas been less than adequate, in my opinion.Anthropologists have tended to modify theoryand rhetoric, but not their basic practices.Although India, Mexico, China, and manyother countries have strong anthropologicaltraditions, the field is still mainly

comprised of First World academics goingout to study Third World peoples. Evenwhen guided by a sense of empathy orpolitical solidarity, the basic socialstructure and practices of the disciplineremain largely unchanged. The sort ofcritical, inter-subjective research LauraNader (1972) called for in “Up TheAnthropologist” is still rarely enacted.The research “gaze” is still very muchtop-down. Anthropology is still aboutrelatively privileged people studyingrelatively oppressed people, although manyanthropologists have added White guilt totheir theoretical tool kit. Although ahandful of us have turned the ethnographicgaze on elites in our own ethnographicwork, those in power still remain largelyoutside the ethnographic gaze.

Yet, there is hope for anthropology. Icompare anthropology’s colonialistconundrum to Los Angeles’ pollution problem.Los Angeles releases about the same amountof pollutants per capita into the air asany other city in the United States. Yet,because Los Angeles is situated in amountainous coastal basin with prevailingwesterly winds, a great deal of itspollution hangs over the city, rather thanblowing off into the desert. Los Angelinosare forced to live in their own pollution.To bring the analogy home, anthropology isprobably no more colonialist than any otherWestern academic profession. All Westernacademic disciplines have a colonialisttradition, be it by omission (e.g.,historians, musicologists, sociologists,and others have tended to undervalue non-Western cultures) or commission, as is thecase with anthropology. However, becauseanthropology is dedicated to the holisticstudy of human diversity, the disciplinehas had to come to grips with the issueearlier than others. Anthropologists canignore the problem of colonialism no morethan Los Angeles can pretend it has noair-quality issues. Yet, given this legacyof colonialism, and continued vestiges ofintercultural domination within the field,does anthropology deserve to exist? I havebeen asking myself that question for 18years, and I am no more certain than whenI first posed the question.


Which brings us to the problem of culturalrelativism, the attempt to understand thecultural perspectives of others. WhereasI cited this concept as one of the positiveaspects of anthropology, it can also becomea negative. Cultural relativism certainlyhas its methodological place. After all,even if one is studying a heinous culturalpractice, it is useful to first understandits cultural context and intent. If onewere concerned about a ritual involvingnonconsensual and painful physicalmutilation, for example, the best way tostop such abuse might be to gain a clearerunderstanding of its cultural context andcauses.

The problem comes in, however, when culturalrelativism is mistaken for moral relativism.Some would believe that an outsider mustnever take a moral or political stand oncultural issues. Fortunately, mostanthropologists now make the distinctionbetween cultural and moral relativism.Although we use cultural relativism tostudy societies, both foreign and familiar,as human beings we must also take moraland political stands. In fact, theconsideration of difficult cultural andmoral dilemmas helps us to rethink thedifficult questions concerning who canreally be defined as “outsiders” or“insiders” in a globally integrated world,when we are all increasingly liminal (i.e.,in between) in terms of social practiceand cultural identity.

Furthermore, no person or culture iscompletely bounded. We are all members ofmultiple, overlapping and intersectingcultural “flows,” to borrow a term fromanthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996).There are, therefore, divergent views anddissenters in all societies. As people whohave studied cultural problems, we notonly have the right but also an obligationto take a position on cultural issues. ButI digress. The main point, George, is thatcultural relativism has had positiveresults when applied as a research method,and negative consequences when conflated(i.e., confused) with moral relativism.

Sorry about the earful. You only wanted toknow which course to take, and I now I

have presented a treatise on my discipline.Regardless, I hope that this will help youchoose which discipline best matches yourinterests. Thanks for sparking thisdialogue.

And, by the way, please call me Mark.

To: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: negatives of sociology

and anthropologyDate: June 17, 2000

George–

Once again, Mark has beaten me to thepunch with a richly nuanced answer to yourquestion! Mark gave you some more insightsinto sociology in addition to revealingnew information about anthropology. Hise-mail was a long one and you may still bedigesting it, so let me add just a briefnugget to piggyback on Mark’s point aboutmoral and cultural relativism. My advisorat Indiana University, Tom Gieryn (1994),wrote:

To be objective is not just to toler-ate another’s epistemic culture, butto engage in cross-the-border conver-sations, selectively borrowing whatworks for you, perhaps seeking to per-suade the other of the utility of yourknowledge for their projects (successat this can not be guaranteed), neverimposing your epistemic culture byforce of gun or pretensions of privi-lege (i.e., rationality, truth, moralpurity, standpoint), and using the en-counter to examine ceaselessly the foun-dations and implications of one’s ownknowledge-making practices. (p.325)

Basically what Tom is saying is thatthroughout life you will encounter peoplewith radically different perspectives fromyou, but your job is (a) to try to makesense of where they are coming from, and(b) to combine elements of bothperspectives to empower yourself, otherpeople, and the communities around youwhile rejecting elements that threaten this


project. College is a great place to learnand practice this process, and it is centralto both the anthropology and sociologycourses here in the General College.Although there are problems with the lessonsof both disciplines, we believe that onceyou’ve completed both courses you’ll be amore well-rounded person. We look forwardto working with you over the years…

–Walt


From: [email protected]: Is there a Socio-pology?Date: June 18, 2000

Dear Walt and Mark,

Thank you for the information and advice.I’d like to take both courses, but I wonderif I can fit them both into my schedule?Sounds like the perfect course for me wouldbe something that combines the strengthsof both sociology and anthropology. Toobad there isn’t a Socio-pology course orsomething like that!

To: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: Is there a Socio-pology?Date: June 19, 2000

Dear George,

Although this is coming from Walt’s e-mailaccount, we are both writing this to you.We are in Walt’s office, but Mark is doingmost of the typing.

There actually is a field of study dedicatedto the interdisciplinary study ofcontemporary culture. It is called “culturalstudies.” Cultural studies is aninterdisciplinary field that draws theoryand methodology from several disciplines,including anthropology and sociology. Waltmentioned it in his first e-mail; we’llexplain more about it here.

Although there are certainly problems withcultural studies as well, we both believecultural studies successfully integrates

the various strengths of our fields. Thisis not only the case for the study ofpopular culture, but for the study ofcontemporary societies in general. Whereasanthropology can be faulted for focusingoverwhelmingly on the study of Third Worldand rural cultures, sociology can be faultedfor its over-emphasis on social researchin Western societies. There has been muchtoo little critical, comparative, andcultural study of dominant institutionsin the contemporary world (e.g.,governmental organizations, corporations,mass media, new technologies).

Cultural studies has attempted to fillthat gap. Anthropology and sociology haveslowly begun to recognize their respectiveoversights, however. The sociology ofculture and the anthropology ofglobalization are just two of the areas inwhich such a growing synthesis is evident.The overly simplistic binary oppositionsupon which both fields were organized arerapidly falling apart. We can no longerspeak of Western versus Eastern cultures,First versus Third Worlds, society versusculture, or make many similar distinctionswithout obscuring much more than we clarify.For better or worse, the social and culturalworld is being reorganized and integratedin ways that challenge simplistic notionsof culture, society, and identity. Asthese trends continue, sociology andanthropology will undoubtedly continue tochange as well. We believe that culturalstudies will be a shared discussion pointas these sister disciplines continue theirdiscussion concerning the nature of socialreality in a globally integrated world.

Therefore, we are working on ways to makeour courses more interdisciplinary andrelevant as well. Cultural studies is oneof the ways we are trying to do this. Webelieve that this will not only strengthenour courses, in general, but thatinterdisciplinary social study will alsobe more useful to General College studentsas they move on to enter a diverse rangeof majors and career paths.Interdisciplinary courses also allow usto adapt course content to the desires andneeds of students, rather than disciplinethem from the outset of their college


experience. As has been true in othermultidisciplinary and interdisciplinarydepartments, cultural studies is emergingas one potential means for integrating adiverse curriculum at the General College,not only within the social sciences, butin the humanities as well.

The General College is the University ofMinnesota’s developmental education unit.Following recent discussion about thepurpose of developmental education toestablish a pluralistic and discursiveframework that builds on students’ existingknowledge and practices, instead of onethat focuses on standardized deficits andremediation (Lundell & Collins, 1999), webelieve that a cultural studies curriculumshould provide students with flexible toolsto understand and shape a rapidly evolvingworld. Michel de Certeau (1997) arguesthat “spectators are not the dupes of themedia theater, but they refuse to say so”(p. 31). Similarly, students in the GeneralCollege are not passive dupes of media (aswell as other social) theaters, but oftenwill not question their surroundings. Acultural studies perspective is powerfulin that it seeks to make interventions inexisting social conditions, at the levelin which students are living instead of inthe abstract, as in the case of moretraditional sociological andanthropological practices.

Eventually we’d like to eliminate“sociology” and “anthropology” designationsfrom our social science courses, renamingthem “cultural studies.” Further, we’d liketo experiment with the very nature of“course.” Rather than having 40 or morestudents meet with one instructor for 16weeks to broadly cover a single subjectarea, we will explore possibilities of amodular system in which students are withinstructors for shorter periods to studynarrower subjects in depth before movingon to other units taught by differentinstructors. We also hope to experimentwith a variety of classroom structures andpractices to optimize learningpossibilities.

We will begin work on this integrativecurriculum design during the 2000-2001

academic year, so it won’t appear untilthe 2001-2002 school year as the earliestpossibility. In the meantime, both of usincorporate cultural studies into ourcurrent sociology and anthropology courses.Cultural studies demands that individualpractices and products, like those ofpopular music, be examined from multipleperspectives. As discussed in his first e-mail, Mark uses multiple methods (e.g.,interviews, participation, observation,comparative analysis) to learn and teachMexican music in his Introduction toCultural Anthropology course. Walt’sfreshman seminar on “Living in theElectronic Information Age” is built aroundthe “circuit of culture,” (du Gay, Hall,Janes, Mackay & Negus, 1997) which saysthat examining a practice or product fromthe perspectives of production,consumption, representation, identities,and regulation provides individuals witha very rich tool kit to explorecontemporary life. Given our deploymentof strategies such as these, you will findour courses relevant to your interests inpopular culture and music. Check out ourweb pages for syllabi and otherinformation.

http://www.gen.umn.edu/faculty_staff/pedelty/

http://www.gen.umn.edu/faculty_staff/jacobs/

Have a good summer. We look forward toteaching and learning with you this fall!

Mark and Walt

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Basso, K. (1970). “To give up on words”: Silence inWestern Apache culture. Southwestern Journal ofAnthropology, 26, 213-230.

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91Cooperative Learning and Multiculturalism

Throughout the history of Ameri-can higher education, students, educators, and the pub-lic have wrestled with the question of college cur-ricula. Indeed, the changes in college curricula havebeen shaped by the historic forces of the time. Withthe end of the Civil War, the traditional curriculumwas criticized for having “little relevance to contem-porary life” (Brubacher & Rudy, 1997, p. 266). Thissame clamor for relevance and inclusiveness was heardduring the Vietnam War, culminating in the birth ofBlack Studies (Brubacher & Rudy, 1997). More re-cently, the debate on what we should teach in collegereached another heated peak in the 1980s when theawareness and demand for a multicultural curricu-lum swept the nation. In addition, the needs of di-verse learners have required us to examine not onlywhat we teach, but also how we teach. With attentionto the necessity to reexamine teaching methodology,this paper begins with a description and applicationof cooperative learning theory, and then focuses on

the effectiveness of cooperative techniques in classeswith multicultural curricula.

The concept of cooperative learning is not new tothe world of academe, but certain forces are pushingit to the forefront for a variety of reasons. From a philo-sophic perspective, the need to recreate communitiesof learning stems from what Patrick Hill (1985) callsthe “fragmentation of the disciplines and departmentsand people” (p. 1) in higher education. As we observeour students in the classroom and reflect on our pro-fessional relationships, I have begun to questionwhether the competitive and isolated process of learn-ing has left us so focused on minutiae that we are miss-ing the big picture. Others like Parker Palmer (1991)concur that academia is undergoing a shift from the“atomistic and Darwinian” (Claxton, 1991, p. 22), toa model of reality that is more communal in nature.He argues that “there is a growing sense that teachingand learning don’t really happen unless there is some

Cooperative Learning in theMulticultural ClassroomRashné R. JehangirAssociate Counselor Advocate

This chapter addresses the connectedness between developmental and multicultural education and discussesthe role and application of cooperative learning in creating an inclusive, interactive classroom fordevelopmental learners. While examining the theoretical premise behind cooperative learning theories, thischapter highlights the specific worth of such methods in classrooms that involve multicultural curricula.Although paradigms of teaching have focused on instructional role and dissemination of knowledge, theparadigm of cooperative learning emphasizes the value of active learning, shared governance, groupaccountability, and student-generated construction of knowledge, as a means of creating a community oflearning in the classroom.

Tell me I forget

Show me I remember

Involve me I understand

—Ancient Chinese Proverb


kind of building of relationships—not only betweenteacher and students but between teachers, studentsand subject” (p. 23). Another reason for the growingacceptance of learning communities and cooperativelearning is “a changing philosophy of knowledge”(Cross, 1998, p. 4). Cross argues that unlike the tradi-tional view of knowledge, where the learner discov-ers external realities, the “nonfoundational view ofknowledge is built on the assumption of constructivismwhere knowledge is actively built by learners, work-ing together cooperatively and interdependently” (p.5).

It is this idea of producing learning rather thanthe distribution of knowledge in neatly wrapped par-cels that separates the Learning Paradigm from theInstruction Paradigm (Barr & Tagg, 1995). In theirarticle, “From Teaching to Learning,” Robert Barr andJohn Tagg argue that to truly reform education weneed to look outside the framework of traditional in-struction and lecture style teaching where students arepassive bystanders. Rather, we need to create “envi-ronments and experiences that bring students to dis-cover and construct knowledge for themselves, to makestudents members of communities of learners that makediscoveries and solve problems” (p. 15). It is to thisend that cooperative learning seeks to engage studentsin their own learning process.

What Is Cooperative Learning?

Roger and David Johnson have been working oncooperative learning since the early sixties. Togetherwith Karl Smith, they argue that cooperative learningtheory stems from three theoretical perspectives: cog-nitive development theory, behavioral learning theory,and the social interdependence theory. Each perspec-tive offers a different lens to examine cooperativelearning; they suggest that cooperative learning is moststrongly rooted in the work of the social interdepen-dence theory. The Johnsons and Smith (1998; Johnson& Johnson, 1997) have examined all three theoreticalpositions to demonstrate that each provides a differentperspective and dimension to the concept of coopera-tive learning.

From the standpoint of cognitive developmentaltheory, they reflect on the work of Piaget and Vygotsky( Johnson & Johnson, 1997; Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,1998) who believe that collaborative learning and

problem solving are critical to the construction ofknowledge. The work of Piaget is founded in the be-lief that when individuals interact with their environ-ment, some type of socio-cognitive conflict is likely tooccur. The efforts towards managing this cognitive dis-sonance “stimulate perspective taking ability and cog-nitive development” ( Johnson & Johnson, 1997, p. 97).Vygotsky (1962) posits that knowledge is socially con-structed from cooperative group efforts to compre-hend and collectively solve problems. Thus, both theo-rists focus on the cognitive aspects of processing con-flict, the result of which is newfound knowledge.

The Johnsons’ and Smith’s (1998; Johnson &Johnson 1997) examination of the work of behavioraltheorists such as Skinner, Bandura, Thibaut, and Kellysuggests that cooperative learning is “designed to pro-vide incentives for members of a group to participatein the group’s efforts” ( Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, p.29). More specifically, Skinner focuses on the impor-tance of conditioning and reinforcement in determin-ing behavior. Skinner suggests that behavior modifi-cation individually and in groups is based on positivereinforcement of desirable overt behavior (Schultz &Schultz, 1992). His position on verbal behavior is alsorelevant to cooperative learning in that he suggeststhat “speech is a behavior and thus is subject to thecontingencies of reinforcement and prediction andcontrol, just like any other behavior” (Schultz & Schultz,p. 359). Like Skinner, Bandura has a behaviorist ap-proach, but his theory has a cognitive component aswell. Although he agrees with Skinner’s notion of re-inforcement as a motivation for changes in humanbehavior, he also posits

All kinds of behavior can be learned in the ab-sence of directly experienced reinforcement.We do not always have to experience rein-forcement ourselves; we can learn through vi-carious reinforcement, by observing the behav-iors of other people and the consequences ofthose behaviors. (Schultz & Schultz, p. 366)

Thus, modeling plays a role in learned behaviorbased on observing and emulating the behavior of oth-ers. From the perspective of behavioral modificationand concrete learning, one can see the connection be-tween effective modeling and reinforcement of posi-tive behavior in shared governance, open communi-cation, and cooperation in the classroom. Yet, the be-


havioral perspective does not examine the introspec-tive aspects of individual and group motivation towardscommon goals.

Although the aforementioned theoretical orienta-tions have their supporters, social interdependencetheory has been the strongest theoretical basis for theexamination of cooperation and competition. Thistheory has a long history, one that began in the early1900s when Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka suggestedthat groups were dynamic wholes, and its membersdepended on each other to varying degrees ( Johnson& Johnson, 1997). Koffka’s colleague Kurt Lewin(1935) further developed this concept of group inter-dependence by suggesting that the nature of this dy-namic relationship is dependent on two factors. First,the essence of the group is the extent to which themembers of the group are interdependent on eachother in their pursuit of common goals. The pursuit ofthese shared goals creates a dynamic whole such thata change in the “state of any member or sub groupchanges the state of any other member or sub group”( Johnson & Johnson, p. 97). Second, the inherent ten-sion among group members pushes them towardachieving their common goals. Thus, the push and pullof cooperation and conflict within groups, and themanner in which this shapes the achievement of col-lective goals, was borne from Lewin’s theory and re-search on interdependence.

One of Lewin’s graduate students Morton Deutsch(1949) expanded the ideology of social interdepen-dence to develop a theory on cooperation and compe-tition. His theory was based on two principles. The firstprinciple related to the type of interdependence thatexisted among people in a given group, and the sec-ond principle related to “the types of actions taken bypeople involved” ( Johnson & Johnson, 1997). Theseprinciples illustrate that the way we are connectedshapes the types of outcomes that will result from ourinteractions. “Positive interdependence (cooperation)results in promotive interactions as individuals encour-age each other’s efforts to learn. Negative interdepen-dence (competition) typically results in oppositionalinteraction as individuals thwart each other’s abilityto succeed” ( Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998, p. 29).

David Johnson was one of Deutsch’s graduate stu-dents, and along with Roger Johnson and Karl Smith,he has continued the work of cooperative learning

theory. Although there are differences between thethree theoretical perspectives, each provides a valu-able dimension to developing and sustaining classroomdynamics that result in student centered learning. Atthe heart of cooperative learning is the concept of in-terdependence between members of a group that re-sults in enhanced problem solving and the birth ofnew ideas. Yet, one should not simplify the concept ofcooperative learning into group work. Simply throw-ing students into groups does not result in the devel-opment of community, nor does it dissolve the com-petitive, individualistic behavior that many studentsthink is expected of them. Simply declaring that thegroup will be a community is like declaring that therewill be world peace. It doesn’t work. To create com-munity requires facilitating, teaching, and familiariz-ing students with what it means to work together.

The unfortunate reality is that most of our studentshave been accustomed to simply receiving pellets ofknowledge from teachers and then regurgitating thismaterial back to us in the form of tests and papers.Hence the questions “Will it be on the test?” Or, “Isthis important?” I can hardly blame students for thisapproach; it is simply what they are used to. To showstudents that they can be engaged and active partici-pants in their own learning requires specific steps andcriteria.

Roger and David Johnson together with other edu-cators ( Johnson & Johnson, 1991, 1995, 1997; Johnson,Johnson, & Holubec, 1990; Johnson, Johnson, & Smith,1991) have written numerous books on facilitating co-operative groups and describe some basic factors thatmust be set in place to create positive interdependence.First there must be a way to link classroom activities orassignments so that group members need each other’sinput in order to be successful. Second, there must bea means of capturing individual accountability withinthe group process. Third, students must be encour-aged to help each other and provide feedback to theirgroup members about individual and collective work.This step requires that we as instructors have the abil-ity to model and develop an environment of trust andrespectful communication. Finally, because all thesepieces rarely fall into place immediately, groups needto have time to reflect and identify ways to improvetheir collective process of learning ( Johnson & Johnson,1995; Johnson, Johnson & Smith, 1998).


Constructive Controversy:Can We Disagree?

It is also important to note that although coopera-tive learning encourages accountability and sharedlearning, it does not require that members of the learn-ing community engage in agreeable group think. Quitethe opposite is true. In fact, Johnson, Johnson, and Smith(2000) have introduced the concept of constructivecontroversy to engage students in discussion and de-bate in the classroom. They suggest that constructivecontroversy exists when there is dissonance betweenthe beliefs, information, and conclusions of two or morestudents around a given topic. This dissonance resultsin a process in which both put forth cooperation andconflict in an effort to reach a resolution. “Controver-sies are resolved by engaging in what Aristotle called‘deliberate discourse’ (that is, the discussion of the ad-vantages and disadvantages of proposed actions) aimedat achieving novel solutions (that is, ‘creative problemsolving’)” (p. 2).

Although controversy is not uncommon in class-rooms, the way in which instructors facilitate contro-versy and the level at which student groups are work-ing effectively together will determine whether dis-agreement results in new knowledge and synthesizedarguments or pointless yelling matches. To develop anenvironment that fosters creative conflict, instructorsneed to examine the role of the questions they areasking students to answer. Do the questions invite de-bate and synthesis of knowledge, or are they limitedto responses that demonstrate mastery of facts? Do thequestions open the door to new inquiry and collectiveproblem solving? This takes us back to the notion ofsetting a standard of cooperation in the class. Researchcomparing constructive controversy with concurrenceseeking and individualistic learning suggests that con-troversy in a cooperative context “induces more com-plete and accurate understanding of the opponent’sposition (and feelings) and greater utilization of oth-ers’ information” ( Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2000,p. 7). In addition, constructive controversy promotes“greater liking among participants than concurrenceseeking (avoiding disagreement to reach a compro-mise) and individualistic efforts” ( Johnson, Johnson,& Smith, p. 7).

These findings are particularly relevant to creat-ing community and creative conflict in classrooms that

focus on multicultural curricula. Why? For starters, asmany colleges have incorporated cultural diversity re-quirements into their curriculum, students who maynot have opted to enroll in a “diversity” class are re-quired to take one. Second, even students who chooseto participate in such courses are surprised and fear-ful of the broad range of ideological differences thatexist between them and their peers.

As we examine racism, classism, homophobia, sex-ism, and ableism, classroom reaction can range fromstrong resistance to complete shutdown. If there is en-gagement, it often translates into angry outbursts,blame, and the inability of two parties to listen to eachother. How do we help our students cross the chasmbetween resigned resistance and misdirected anger toa place of “creative” conflict? How do we help themcreate a space where their ideas and diverse experi-ences become the impetus for a paradigm shift allow-ing them to see the world from many different per-spectives? Cooperative learning and constructive con-troversy theories provide a powerful template for cre-ating community and trust in the developmentalmulticultural classroom.

The Relationship BetweenDevelopmental Education and

Multicultural Education

Spann and McCrimmon (1998) argue that threeterms, “remedial,” “compensatory,” and “developmen-tal,” have emerged to define the educational experi-ence of students who are “underprepared.” The termremedial implies a deficiency in the student and there-fore a push to fix or remedy the issue. The use of theterm compensatory began in the 1960s, as part ofLyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, when the goal ofeducation was “the lessening or removal of environ-mental induced deficits” (Spann & McCrimmon, p.41). Although the former term focuses on remedyingthe deficit, the latter acknowledges that the deficit isnot innate but a result of external factors. Both termshowever, smack of negativity and tend to label theirreferents. Hence, in the 1970s faculty working withat-risk students chose to remove the negative conno-tations by referring to their work as developmental.This term focuses on the students’ “potential ratherthan the deficits” (Spann & McCrimmon, p. 41). Byrefocusing on potential, developmental educators ar-


gue that they also take a holistic approach to their stu-dents—focusing on academic transition and personaldevelopment beyond the limited realm of academicskills alone (Higbee, 1996; Spann & McCrimmon,1998).

In an effort to further articulate the differencebetween what is considered remedial education andthe work of developmental educators and students,Higbee (1996) writes:

Among the meanings of “develop” are “toevolve the possibilities of…to promote thegrowth of” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictio-nary, 1981, p. 308). “Development” is definedas “the act, process, or result of developing”(p. 308). “Remedy,” meanwhile refers to “amedicine, application, or treatment that re-lieves or cures a disease…something that cor-rects or counteracts an evil” (Webster’s NewCollegiate Dictionary, p. 970). To remedy is “toprovide or serve as a remedy for” (p. 970).Pardon me if I bristle every time I hear some-one refer to what I do as remedial…My stu-dents are not sick, and they do not need to becured. They are evolving, and the possibilitiesare limitless. (pp. 63-66)

This argument further illuminates the fact that aca-demically underprepared students are not the only onesserved by developmental education. Rather, the ide-ology of promoting intellectual and holistic growthserves the needs of “the learning disabled, the visualand hearing impaired, those with mobility impair-ments, the English as a Second Language student, thestudent-athlete, the returning adult student, and thefirst generation college student” (Spann &McCrimmon, 1998, p. 41).

The same themes of deficiency and lack have beenchallenged by multicultural educators in their battleto incorporate cultural pluralism into the educationalprocess. Multicultural educators face those who as-sign a deficiency orientation to students who are “so-cially or culturally deprived” (Sleeter & Grant, 1988,p. 38). These terms are code for students of color,multilingual students, students with disabilities, andlow-income students. Much like developmental edu-cators, multicultural educators have challenged thismodel by creating their own paradigms of teaching.There are numerous approaches to multicultural edu-

cation that honor difference and illustrate the valuethat diversity brings to the learning experience. Twoapproaches that I will highlight include the humanrelations approach and the multicultural educationapproach.

Human Relations Approach

The theoretical background for the human rela-tions approach comes from general psychology andsocial psychology (Sleeter & Grant, 1988). Like coop-erative learning, this approach is also referred to asintergroup education, and focuses on “helping stu-dents communicate with, accept, and get along withpeople who are different from themselves” (Sleeter &Grant, p. 77). This movement towards reaching andteaching students at an affective level began duringWorld War II and continued after the war in an effortto eliminate discrimination, not only abroad but alsoat home in the United States. Human relations advo-cates argue that to use this approach effectively it mustbe infused in the curriculum and actively involve stu-dents in the process of learning. They also suggest in-corporating real life scenarios into the understandingof intergroup hostilities and most importantly, creat-ing a classroom environment in which a student’s abilityto be successful is not dependent on the failure of oth-ers in the class (Sleeter & Grant). These premisesclearly reflect social interdependence as discussed withrespect to cooperative learning and support the ideol-ogy of an environment that facilitates sharing of knowl-edge, resources and problems.

Multicultural Education Approach

Although multicultural education has now becomethe catch phrase for much of the work involving race,class, gender, homophobia, and disability issues, themulticultural education approach grew out of the1960s when the potency of the civil rights movementpushed for a reassessment of the deficiency orienta-tion. Sleeter and Grant’s (1988) review of the litera-ture demonstrated five primary goals of themulticultural education approach: “(a) Promoting thestrength and value of cultural diversity; (b) promotinghuman rights and respect for those who are differentfrom oneself; (c) promoting alternate life choices forpeople; (d) promoting social justice and equal oppor-tunity for all people; (e) promoting equity in the dis-tribution of power among all people” (Gollnick, 1980,


as cited in Sleeter & Grant, p. 137). Thus, themulticultural education approach celebrates the ide-ology of cultural pluralism and is not limited to issuesof race but examines the similarities of racism, sex-ism, homophobia, classism, and ableism as systems ofoppression.

Why is this important to developmental educa-tion? In my view, developmental education seeks tomeet students at their level of proficiency and workwith them to unearth their potential. This involves theteaching of discipline related skills, critical thinking,and college expectations, but it also involves the holis-tic development of the person. The understanding ofwho we are as individuals is deeply tied to our abilityto reach our full potential.

Secondly, developmental students are a diversegroup of learners. This not only demands that we havea greater understanding of their diversity, but that weas educators use this rich tapestry of difference to al-low students to teach each other. In addition, it is in-teresting to note that students taking developmentalcourses are “more likely than those not receiving [de-velopmental] help, to have a family income of less than$20,000 annually, to have been born outside the UnitedStates, to speak a language other than English at home,and to be people of color” (Burd, 1996). This suggeststhat many of our students have experienced the sys-temic effects of marginalization in multiple avenuesof their lives and identities. To acknowledge this isimportant, and to allow students to learn how to beself-advocates is part of the developmental process.Given these realities and themes, I believe there is apowerful connection between the work of develop-mental and multicultural educators, and that coop-erative learning provides a vehicle by which we servethe needs and target the potential of our students.

Applying Cooperative Learning tothe Multicultural Classroom

There are some distinct connections between thephilosophy of developmental education, cooperativelearning theory, and multiculturalism. Each perspec-tive acknowledges the role and needs of the individual,the give and take between student and teacher, andthe powerful role of peer relationships in the class-room. Yet, the issue of resistance is one that many ofus face in the classroom.

How do we reach a level of honest dialogue andintellectual exchange around multicultural issues whenstudents are deeply fearful about venturing into thisdangerous territory? Given this dilemma, the conceptof creating a classroom that is a “safe space” is criticaland yet difficult to attain. Simply requiring a coop-erative spirit does little to create it. Hence, the idea ofcooperative learning involves an active process inwhich students are invited to define the very spacethey want to inhabit. Allowing students to own andbelong to the process of developing trust is one way tobegin.

Early advocates of multicultural education arguethat “the ideology of multicultural education is one ofsocial change—not simply integrating those who havebeen left out in society, but changing the fabric ofsociety” (Sleeter & Grant, 1988, p. 139). With thisconcept of change comes fear, acted out as active orpassive resistance (Chan & Tracy, 1996). This resis-tance is further aggravated because students in a givenclassroom are at different levels of their own identitydevelopment (Tatum, 1996). Thus, creating a sense ofownership in the classroom process is integral to de-veloping trust and dissolving resistance.

A first step is to let the students define what theyunderstand by the word community. Working in smallgroups to collectively define the meaning of commu-nity allows students to initiate ownership and account-ability of the classroom experience. One group in myMulticultural Relations seminar generated the follow-ing definition of community: “community is a groupof people of different races, colors, cultures and gen-der who come together to learn, teach, communicateto become stronger, develop friendships and under-stand one another’s problems.” Rather than perpetu-ating individualistic competition, having students ar-ticulate what they hope for in terms of peer interac-tion creates a “personal transaction among studentsand between faculty and students” ( Johnson, Johnson,& Smith, 1991, p. 10).

Tied to defining community is the necessity to stipu-late rules by which the community can thrive. Althoughrules are sometimes associated with a teaching para-digm that seeks to control student engagement, rulescan also serve as positive guidelines that provide thestructure needed for trust and safety in themulticultural classroom. Again, it is the students who


must take responsibility for developing these rules. Thereality is that this task may be daunting for first yeardevelopmental students. One option is to provide eachsmall group with a template of rules allowing them toadd, subtract, and revise the template. Groups can thenbe invited to share their final result while articulatingtheir reasoning behind each rule. As students begin todevelop the rules, it is often their definitions of com-munity that guide the creation of rules. Working incooperative groups within the first week of the se-mester, students in my Multicultural Relations semi-nar created the following stipulations for their class-room community: “Each person has an equal voice.We will create a safe environment and protect oneanother and our surroundings. We will work togetherfor common goals. Each person will contribute by do-ing their share.”

As the semester moves on, the instructor can modeland facilitate appropriate use of the rules establishedby the students themselves. In addition, the process ofdeveloping collective rules gives students an early ex-perience in constructing and articulating their ownideas and addressing the importance of individual ac-countability within the group.

Embedded in the model of cooperative learning isthe use of classroom space. There are two pieces tothe concept of classroom space. The first is the actualphysical space. Is it accessible? Can students who arerequired to participate in cooperative groups physi-cally look at each other? “Face to face promotive in-teraction” ( Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991, p. 19) iscritical to the process of sharing opinions, working onshared tasks, and engaging in creative conflict. If ourclassroom set-up does not allow students to look at eachother, know each others’ names and hear each others’stories, then the depth of the interaction is already lim-ited. When students struggle to define their experi-ences with racism, or to share deep ideological differ-ences around women’s roles, their ability to engage inauthentic conversation is already reduced if they can-not see each others’ faces, emotions, and most impor-tantly each others’ humanity.

Although the effective use of physical space is vi-tal, metaphoric space is also important. Parker Palmer(as quoted in Claxton, 1991) discusses the paradoxesthat are inherent in creating a safe classroom space.He suggests that although it is important to create aliberating space, this openness must be tempered with

some boundaries. For example, as students gain trustand begin to articulate their opinions and prejudices,this can only happen effectively if there is some as-surance that the discussion will not turn into an expe-rience resembling daytime television talk shows. It ishere that the modeling of classroom rules becomesimportant for the instructor. In addition, as we pushstudents to examine systemic institutionalized oppres-sion, there must be space to allow students to applythe abstract to the lived experience. For example, whenspeaking of social construction of race, students canbe invited to discuss how this relates to their own iden-tity. One multiracial student in my Multicultural Rela-tions seminar said “I have found that society forcesyou to be in one box or another, the boxes I am refer-ring to are the Black and White boxes. It is crazy howbeing just what you are is not good enough.” Thus, theclassroom space must allow for “the little stories of theindividual and the big stories of the disciplines”(Palmer, 1998, p. 76).

With the establishment of trust comes the oppor-tunity for creative conflict. This, too, involves prac-ticed efforts. Inherent in the idea of engaging in con-structive controversy is the capacity to listen. Most ofour students, and indeed many of us, are so involvedin expressing our own ideas that we do not fully hearthe ideas of our peers. Group exercises that push stu-dents to fully hear and digest the thoughts of theirpeers are integral to developing their capacity to en-gage in meaningful dialogue with one another.

Given that the notion of creative conflict is new tomany students, there is a necessity to provide themwith structured means of engaging in the process ofdisagreement. By providing students with case studiesor mock scenarios around multicultural issues, we givethem a vehicle to engage in constructive conflict andcreate a forum within which they can weave theirown voices into the context of theory. This format alsoprovides them with a safe and somewhat structuredenvironment in which to air difference, share per-spective, and apply what they have learned to the livedexperience. Once trust is established, students arelikely to engage in creative conflict without the safetynet of case studies or debates. Rather than enhancingtension, constructive controversy has been found to“promote greater liking among participants than ei-ther concurrence seeking or individualistic efforts”( Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2000, p. 6).


Although cooperative learning strategies enhancethe development of community and constructive con-flict, the reality is that resistance is inherent to anytype of learning that requires a paradigm shift. Thus,it is quite normal that expressions of student resistancerange from dissonance and confusion to frustrationand even anger. One way to address this is simply toacknowledge the reality of resistance. If the instruc-tor can bring the idea of resistance into the collectiveconsciousness early in the game, students have the op-portunity to engage in self-reflection and can exam-ine the source of their fear. Allowing students to ex-press their feelings in writing via e-mail or in-classresponses provides an outlet for this resistance.

As instructors we can bring various issues into theclassroom by allowing students time to self-reflect andthen summarizing these themes in the classroom. Onestudent in my Multicultural Relations class wrote viae-mail: “This white [sic] privilege thing has thrownme for a loop. A teacher in high school touched on itfor a day but wouldn’t discuss it. How that it is beingthrown in my face to look at and acknowledge, I don’twant to. Almost that I don’t want to accept it is true.”

Given that this was not a lone response, I was ableto readdress the issue of White privilege by askingstudents to describe their feelings around the concept.This resulted in a productive discussion that could nothave occurred without engaging students in individualself-reflection.

Finally and most importantly, our own identity asinstructors and our level of comfort with the learningparadigm will shape the classroom experience. ParkerPalmer (1998) wrote that “good teaching cannot bereduced to technique, good teaching comes from theidentity and integrity of the teacher” (p. 10). Thus, aswe ask our students to develop as change agents, wemust continually examine our own ability to take risksand model cooperative learning.

References

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Burd, S. (1996, April). Colleges fear that lawmakerswill cut funds for remedial students. The Chronicleof Higher Education, 42, A38-A42.

Chan, C. S., & Tracy, M. J. (1996). Resistance inmulticultural courses. American BehavioralScientist, 40 (2), 212-312.

Claxton, C. (1991). Teaching, learning and community:An interview with Parker Palmer. Journal ofDevelopmental Education, 15 (2), 22-25, 33.

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Deutsch, M. (1949). A theory of cooperation andcompetition. Human Relations, 2, 152-199.

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Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (2000).Constructive controversy: The educative power ofintellectual conflict. Change Magazine, 32 (1), 28-38.

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Tatum, B. (1996). Talking about race, learning aboutracism: The application of racial identitydevelopment theory in the classroom. In C. Turner,M. Garcia, A. Nora, & L. Réndon (Eds.), Racial &ethnic diversity in higher education (pp.150-169).ASHE Reader Series. Needham Heights, MA: Simonand Schuster.

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101Constructivist Perspective

This chapter describes the compat-ibility of constructivist learning theory with classroomsimulations as a teaching method in a developmentaleducation context. First, the theoretical basis, principleconcepts, and educational implications of utilizing aconstructivist approach are explained and examined.Secondly, parallels and correlations are drawn betweenconstructivism and developmental education. Finally,classroom simulations are discussed as an effectiveteaching method for implementing constructivist learn-ing theory with developmental students. The simula-tion examples provided were created and designedby the author for use in history classes in the GeneralCollege at the University of Minnesota. The GeneralCollege provides developmental education by integrat-ing academic skill development into freshman levelcontent courses.

Classroom simulations are active learning activi-ties that place students in the role of decision makersassessing the various options available in a particularsituation. Students discuss the options, negotiate withothers, and ultimately reach consensus or majoritydecisions concerning the issues under consideration.These activities can generate multiple outcomes pro-viding the opportunity to compare and contrast thevarious results and reach a deeper understanding ofthe concepts involved. The emphasis is on understand-ing why something happens and not on memorizing

how it happens. Short (e.g., 20 to 40 minute) class-room simulations are efficient in the use of class time,adaptable to a variety of teaching objectives, and en-joyable for the students. They can be designed to fos-ter cooperation, collaboration, information exchange,consensus building, individual competition, group com-petition, or a mixture of these at different levels orstages in the simulation. Activities can have studentsworking individually, in pairs, triads, small groups,medium sized groups, or as a whole class.

Constructivism

Constructivism is founded on scientists’ best un-derstanding of the brain’s natural cognitive processesand growth: new information or concepts are inte-grated with old knowledge to derive new insights(Feldman, 1994). The Association for Supervision andCurriculum Development has defined constructivismas “an approach to teaching based on research abouthow people learn. . . . each individual ‘constructs’knowledge instead of receiving it from others”(Scherer, 1999, p. 5). According to Caine and Caine(1994), “The brain needs to create its own meanings.Meaningful learning is built on creativity and is thesource of much joy that students can experience ineducation” (p. 105). “Inquisitiveness is whatdrives…learning, and constructivism is the theory thatcognitive scientists have devised to explain how an in-

Constructivist Perspective and ClassroomSimulations in Developmental EducationDavid L. Ghere, Associate ProfessorHistory

Constructivism and developmental education both conceive of education in the broadest terms, are focused onstudent needs and abilities, and demand instructor creativity and flexibility. The theoretical foundations forconstructivism are very compatible with developmental education, and constructivist methods are effectivewith developmental students. Simulations provide an effective method for implementing constructivistprinciples into developmental classrooms. Classroom simulations are versatile, active learning activities,which can be designed to foster cooperation, collaboration, information exchange, consensus building, andindividual or group competition. Simulations also stimulate student interest and involvement in the course,and promote long term retention of content material.


dividual progresses from inquisitiveness to new knowl-edge” (Abbott & Ryan, 1999, p. 66).

Student experiences generally run counter to thisperception of the learner playing the crucial, deter-mining role in his or her education. The traditionalclassroom is focused on the teacher as the provider ofcontent knowledge, perspective, and analysis. Thesecomponents are conveyed by the instructor through alecture format, in structured activities, or in an ex-change of probing questions and student responses.The student role is primarily passive and limited tolistening, reading, and working through routine ex-ercises. Evaluation consists of students repeating re-cently received factual information in the form ofpapers or responses to test questions (Brooks & Brooks,1993).

Constructivist theory posits a much more balancedinteraction with knowledge passing from teacher tostudent, from student to student, and from student toteacher. Likewise, students as well as teachers can bethe sources of perspective and analysis. Constructivistteachers assist students in processing, transforming, andinternalizing new information. Although there aremany commonly used evaluation methods for the imi-tative behavior required in the traditional classroomsuch as multiple choice tests or essay exams, assessingthe deeper individual understanding achieved throughconstructivist methods is considerably more difficult.Teachers must develop methods and strategies to as-sess this student-constructed knowledge (Brooks &Brooks, 1993).

Smith (1977) assessed critical thinking in collegeclassrooms, focusing on four activities: instructor en-couragement, questioning procedures, cognitive levelof participation, and interaction with peers. Activeinvolvement in the class resulted in higher criticalthinking scores than for students with minimal involve-ment. Teachers developing and implementing instruc-tion based on constructivist theory employ methodsand activities that promote “active, hands-on learningduring which students are encouraged to think andexplain their reasoning” (Scherer, 1999, p. 5). Thus,in a constructivist classroom, student experiences andperspectives are valued and teachers specifically de-velop lessons to elicit and challenge student supposi-tions.

Theoretical Foundations

Constructivism has a rich theoretical foundation.John Dewey (1936) advocated experiential learningthrough field studies and immersion activities, argu-ing that “isolation of subject matter from a social con-text is the chief obstruction in current practice to se-curing a general training of the mind” (p. 79). JeanPiaget (1970) believed that mental structures devel-oped gradually as learning was constructed throughthe organization and integration of new informationand experiences. His concept of discovery learninghad students manipulating objects and content infor-mation, analyzing what they observed, and reachingconclusions based on this evidence. He theorized that,in the process of assimilating this knowledge, studentswill think differently about a concept as a result oftheir experience and interaction with other learners.Lev Vygotsky (1978) claimed that individual learningwas primarily the result of a social process. He arguedthat “human learning presupposes a specific socialnature and a process by which children grow into theintellectual life of those around them” (p. 88). Mean-ingful social interaction allows the student to constructa group meaning of a complex idea and then inter-nalize this idea with a deeper individual understand-ing.

Human intelligence is much more complex andvaried than our traditional narrow definitions of it(Armstrong, 1994; Gardner, 1983, 1993; Lazear,1993). Gardner (1983) recognized intelligence as thehuman capability to solve problems and identifiedmultiple intelligences consisting of verbal, logical, spa-tial, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal,and naturalist. This multidimensional concept of in-telligence has implications for the ways students learn,the application of effective teaching methods, and theneed for a variety of assessment methods. Each stu-dent has available a variety of different sensory mecha-nisms to support integration of new information withexisting knowledge. To facilitate this process, the in-structor utilizes a wide array of teaching methods thatenable the students to construct their own understand-ing and knowledge of the topic.

Brooks and Brooks (1993) have identified five cen-tral tenets of the constructivist teacher’s role in theclassroom. First, the students’ points of view are val-ued and sought by the teacher, who then designs and


modifies instruction based on that knowledge. Sec-ond, students’ suppositions based on their life experi-ence are challenged through class activities or discus-sion. Students are afforded the opportunity to reassesstheir suppositions and either confirm, recant, or modifythem. Third, constructivist teachers convey the rel-evance of classroom activities and knowledge to thestudents’ lives. Fourth, lessons address major conceptspromoting a deeper understanding of the whole ratherthan the memorization of small factual data. Fifth, as-sessment of student knowledge and understanding isconducted in the context of daily classroom activities,not as a scheduled paper-and-pencil test at the end ofa unit of study.

In the application of constructivist theory, thebroader student role is subdivided into three specificroles: the active learner, the social learner, and thecreative learner. Students are cast in an active rolewhere they discuss, organize and analyze informa-tion, observe activity, and then hypothesize and reachconclusions. Knowledge and understanding are notconstructed individually but in dialogue with others,and facts are only “true” in that social context. Thus,historical truths depend upon the social perspectivesof the original observer and the later interpreters, whilescientific truths rest upon social assumptions and aredetermined through a social critical process that be-lies their supposed objectivity. Constructivists believethat the learner creates or recreates knowledge andunderstanding, and the teacher’s role is to facilitatethe student’s creativity by providing class activities thatallow the student to discover theories and perspec-tives leading to a deeper understanding of the knowl-edge (Phillips, 1995).

Creating a constructivist classroom requires imagi-nation, persistence, and dedication. “It is easy to imag-ine [classrooms] in which ideas are explored ratherthan answers to teachers’ test questions provided andevaluated. . . . Easy to imagine, but not easy to do”(Cazden, 1988, p. 54). Some learners will not wel-come the high levels of cognitive reasoning requiredfor constructivist learning, preferring to be told thecontent information. Some students have developedsuccessful strategies for the traditional classroom andmay perceive the constructivist techniques deceptive,manipulative, and time consuming (Perkins, 1992).For the teacher, lecturing, asking questions, and field-ing answers is much simpler and more controlled than

creating the activities that allow students to constructtheir own understanding. Testing recall of knowledgeprovided by the instructor is much easier than assess-ing the understanding and knowledge constructed byeach individual student.

A variety of outside pressures exist that tend toinhibit the use of constructivist theory. At the second-ary level, the recent widespread efforts by state gov-ernments to increase accountability and establish statewide standards and evaluations emphasize the factualrecall tests to the detriment of constructivist teachingmethods (Brooks & Brooks, 1999). At the collegiatelevel, large class sizes, common exams for multiplesections, prerequisite requirements, serial courses, andtransfer comparability all tend to place the emphasison the coverage and delivery of content rather thanon the facilitation of individual students to constructtheir own knowledge and understanding. Unfortu-nately, the comprehension of learning theory is lim-ited among political leaders and the media, and theytend to utilize those evaluation methods that are themost readily available and easiest to understand. As aresult, teachers at all levels may find it safer to usetraditional methods because they can clearly docu-ment content coverage and focus on the recall knowl-edge needed for the test.

Constructivism andDevelopmental Education

The contrast between traditional instruction andconstructivist learning is comparable to the shift in ter-minology and philosophy for the education of at-riskstudents from remedial education to developmentaleducation. Remedial education focuses on the reitera-tion of missed content so that past academic failurescan be rectified, while developmental education rec-ognizes the student as a work in progress and fostersboth cognitive and affective growth. Remedial modelsseek to “fix” students, while developmental modelsrecognize the array of strengths and weaknesses thateach student brings to the class and seeks to developthe whole student (Boylan, 1995; Higbee, 1993).Within this frame of reference, traditional instructionaligns well with remedial education, whileconstructivist activities are very compatible with de-velopmental education.


Constructivism and developmental education havebroad intersections. Both conceive education in thebroadest terms, are student-centered, and display ul-timate respect for student capabilities and contribu-tions. Both focus on enhancing student skills and po-tential; fostering creative, flexible, and diverse teach-ing methods; and elevating the intellectual discussionin the classroom. Constructivism recognizes that theoutcome of the constructive process is different foreach student, while developmental education recog-nizes the mixture of strengths and vulnerabilities thateach student exhibits.

Developmental students have had limited successwith traditional forms of instruction and evaluationand should not only benefit from constructivist meth-ods, but should welcome the change. “Rather than fo-cus on intense, encyclopedic recall, constructivistlearning leads to deep understanding, sense-making,and the potential for creativity and enterprise” (Abbott& Ryan, 1999, p. 68). Many developmental studentsbring life experiences or cultural perspectives thatwould not be expressed in a traditional class but couldbe elicited by a constructivist instructor for the ben-efit of the entire class. Developmental students haveaffective needs as well as cognitive needs, and somemeasures of those affective needs are more accuratein predicting success in college than achievement testsor high school grades (Higbee & Dwinell, 1990;Higbee, Dwinell, McAdams, GoldbergBelle, & Tardola,1991). The most successful programs for poorly pre-pared students “also deal with the affective side ofbeing a student: poor self-concept, passivity, lack ofconfidence, fear of failure, lack of interest in subjectmatter, and so forth” (Astin, 1984, p. 11).

Historical Simulationsin the Classroom

In a historical simulation, students are given therole of historical decision makers, provided with suf-ficient background information to evaluate the vari-ous decision options, and then asked to render a deci-sion in the historical situation. Simulation design andstudent groupings vary depending on the historicalmaterial and the desired learning outcomes.

Simulations are effective in stimulating lively classdiscussion and promoting critical thinking. They canprompt students to reconsider prevailing assumptions

and adopt new perspectives as well as serve as a stimulusfor a number of individual student or group researchprojects. These research projects could include inves-tigating the historical background of the situation, iden-tifying the factors that promote or inhibit a resolution,contrasting the simulation with actual decisions, or as-sessing the influence of particular individuals orgroups in the final outcome.

A series of research studies into the educationaleffectiveness of classroom simulations and games hasdetermined three general benefits when compared totraditional instruction. First, the use of simulations ininstruction greatly enhances the retention of contentinformation over longer periods. Second, simulationspromote student interest in the particular topic of thesimulation and in related class content and assignments.Moreover, students assume a more favorable attitudetoward the subject area, in general, and are more mo-tivated to do well in the course. Third, simulationsprompt increased student interaction and a greaterwillingness of students to communicate and contrib-ute in small group discussions. All of these attributeswould be very beneficial to developmental studentsand enhance educational outcomes (Bredemeier &Greenblat, 1981; Druckerman, 1995; Randel, Mor-ris, Welzel, & Whitehall, 1992).

Simulations involve some level of role playing bythe students, but these roles can be very specific, as anhistorical individual; more general, as a representa-tive of a country, region, or state; or very generic, asin a decision maker assessing the historical options. Anexample of a generic role playing simulation wouldbe Recent World Crises in which groups of four orfive students simulate a United Nations commissionseeking a political resolution to one of the followingworld crises: Northern Ireland, West Bank, Bosnia, orKosovo. Students receive ethnic and religious data forthe region in dispute and the two countries contend-ing for the region, but all labels and names are ficti-tious so the students cannot determine which crisis theyare considering. Subsequent discussion can contrastthe decisions of the student groups, compare aspectsof the four crises, or focus on any discomfort or shiftin position when the identities in the crisis are revealed.

Maps may be employed in some simulations to con-vey information to the students, to designate variousterritorial options, and to ultimately visually display


student decisions. Map simulations are particularlyappropriate when focusing on diplomatic conventions,trade agreements, explorations, and colonization. Anexample of a map simulation would be the Treaty ofVersailles that requires student triads to determine theboundaries of the new countries in Eastern Europe fol-lowing World War I. Each triad receives one map de-picting the location of ethnic groups, a second mapindicating the areas that contained religious majori-ties, and a transparency map to superimpose over theothers. In the process of determining boundaries, stu-dents discuss various aspects of nationalism and therelative importance of religious and ethnic identitiesas well as recognize a variety of boundary disputesthat have plagued the region throughout the twentiethcentury.

A reward system may be incorporated in the simu-lation that creates a competitive situation betweengroups while fostering cooperation within each group.These game simulations are particularly useful whensimulating political disputes where groups of studentsseek their own rewards, but must also negotiate andcompromise to reach a consensus or political bargainthat achieves their goals. An example of a game simu-lation would be Sectional Politics, in which studentsconsider six political issues and negotiate resolutionsacting as the U. S. Senate between 1830 and 1850.Each six-student senate has one pair of students rep-resenting the Northeast, one pair the Southeast, andone pair the West. Each pair argues for their region’spositions and receives points for decisions favorable totheir region.

The competition inherent in the game simulationspromotes learning because long-term memory is en-hanced by activities or ideas that elicit emotion. Oneof Caine and Caine’s (1994) twelve principles of brain-based learning states that “emotions and cognition can-not be separated and the conjunction of the two is atthe heart of learning” (p. 104). The game pointsachieved in the simulation have no effect on studentgrades or evaluation and are meaningless outside ofthe simulation. Yet, winning and losing in the simula-tion generates emotions in the students. In the Sec-tionalism simulation, the negotiations sometimes re-sult in one region consistently being left out of the po-litical bargaining, resulting in student frustration andeven anger. This provides a teaching moment becausethe students can consider the emotion of northerners

who feared that “Slave Power” controlled the govern-ment, or of southerners who perceived that the otherregions of the country were “ganging up on them.”

Johnson and Johnson (1979), renowned for theirwork in cooperative learning, claim that conflict inthe classroom can be positive or negative dependingon its management. Conflicts provide “valuable op-portunities to increase student motivation, creative in-sight, cognitive development, and learning” (p. 51).Disagreements within the group result in increasedinterest and creativity, a reassessment of assumptionsleading to conceptual conflicts, and higher levels ofreasoning and problem solving. Creating controversyin the classroom promotes learning and intellectualdevelopment because the purpose of controversy“within a cooperative group is to arrive at the highestquality solution or decision that is possible” (p. 56).

Constructivism andClassroom Simulations

Classroom simulations provide a method for imple-menting constructivist principles into developmentalclassrooms. “The central problem that constructivisteducators face is not a guiding theory, but concretestrategies and tools for institutionalizing these theo-retical and practical understandings into more inclu-sive classrooms” (Hyerle, 1996, p. 15). The simulationexperience provides a variety of possible interactions,sequences of events, and alternate resolutions. Studentsconstruct meaning based on their interpretation of thesimulation experience and the knowledge acquiredin the process.

Simulations seem well suited for a constructivistapproach to developmental education. They promotestudent interest in the simulation topic and related sub-ject matter while encouraging participation in a sociallearning process that exposes students to new conceptsand ideas (Druckman, 1995). Lack of motivation is acharacteristic often attributed to developmental stu-dents and often suggested as the explanation for theirprevious lack of success in traditional classrooms(Lowery & Young, 1992). Also, “for decades, develop-mental educators have argued informally that manyof their students bring to the classroom a certain, of-ten indefinable, savvy about the world and how itworks that escapes detection on standard diagnosticand placement tests” (Payne & Lyman, 1996, p. 14).


Simulations provide students with a variety of oppor-tunities to display their array of talents and abilities.

In their article, “Constructing knowledge, recon-structing schooling,” Abbot and Ryan (1999) write,

In constructivist learning, each individualstructures his or her own knowledge of theworld into a unique pattern, connecting eachnew fact, experience, or understanding in asubjective way that binds the individual intorational and meaningful relationships to thewider world. (p. 67)

Classroom simulations provide an experience thateach student can interpret, analyze, and place into hisor her own context. Role playing activities involve pre-paring students to participate in active learning situa-tions that teach both content and specific skills (Glenn,Gregg, & Tipple, 1982). This experiential learning ofsocial or political interactions may be more importantto the developmental student than the factual knowl-edge conveyed by the simulation.

The social learning process of students is promotedby their interactions in these activities. Simulations “ex-pose students to teamwork activities” and are “effec-tive as vehicles for team-building” (Druckman, 1995,p. 184). Sharan (1980) found that team learning meth-ods fostered relationships with group members, en-hanced individual student involvement, and improvedattitudes toward learning, while increasing cognitivelearning and promoting the construction of meaning.The student who would score well on paper-and-pen-cil tests due to an extensive factual knowledge, mightalso have an advantage in simulation negotiations. How-ever, success in the simulation would also require theexchange of information, negotiations, and bargain-ing over positions, and ultimately, the determinationof group decisions.

Instructors employ a variety of small group ac-tivities and techniques in the conduct of classroomsimulations as well as in the assignments that are asso-ciated with the simulations. Helen McMillon (1994)conducted a study to evaluate the effects of small groupmethods on the academic performance ofunderprepared minority college students. She foundthat “they developed a strong cohesive and collabora-tive system for working together as a group, enhanc-ing their individual cognitive and affective skills: ana-

lytical thinking, comprehension, decision making,problem solving, communication, assertiveness andmotivation” (p. 76).

Conclusion

The theoretical foundations and basic concepts ofconstructivism are very compatible with the goals ofdevelopmental education. Both are student-centered,showing respect for student capabilities and contribu-tions while focusing on enhancing student skills andpotential. Both require diverse, creative teaching meth-ods and innovative systems of evaluation that elevatethe intellectual discussion in the classroom. Simula-tions provide very versatile active learning situationsfor implementing constructivist principles into devel-opmental classrooms. Utilizing a variety of formats,they can be designed to foster cooperation, collabora-tion, information exchange, consensus building, andindividual or group competition. Simulations providealternate decision options and a variety of possible re-sults, allowing students to construct meaning based ontheir interpretation of the simulation experience andthe knowledge acquired in the process. These activi-ties increase student interaction, foster class discus-sion and provide various opportunities for related as-signments in the course. Simulations also stimulate stu-dent interest in the subject and promote long term re-tention of content material.

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