There are no human problems that cannot be solved by
  human ingenuity. The best solutions are those which create a
  brighter and better future than if the problem had never arisen in
 
  the first place. This is one such solution; a dynamic approach
  to the delivery of developmental studies that addresses critical
  pressures in the field and, simultaneously, sets the stage for a
 
new level, and a new kind, of student success.
 
 
 

The Transitional Initiative at Pellissippi

Revised June 2010 (Image by VEX3D.com)
 Overview

This document is intended to contextualize, articulate and promote the mission of

the recently redesigned Transitional Studies Department (TSD) of Pellissippi Community
College – the Transitional Initiative at Pellissippi - both within the College and abroad.
In particular it is hoped to familiarize our own faculty with the research, strategies
and philosophy underpinning the TSD structure, curriculum and approach. (What are we
really doing? Why are we doing it this way? And how do we know that it works?) And, it
is hoped, it will provide a starting point for the dialog and exchange of ideas that are at the
heart of the next phase of the Initiative.

  2  
 Table of Contents

Page No.

Overview/Introduction 2

Table of Contents 3

Part One: Articulating Change

The Shape of the Problem 4
How We Got Here 5
Then It All Changed 7
That Was Then. This Is Now 8
Meeting the Challenge 10
Mapping the Challenge 12
A Brief History of Our (Transitional) Times 13
Re-evaluating the Role of Remedial Studies 14
Education to Manage Change 15
It’s Not You, It’s Them 16
Why Success Does Not Always Succeed 17

Part Two: Designing the Change We Want

The Transitional Initiative Stage One,
From Developmental to Transitional Studies 20
Redesigning Delivery: An Integrated Department 21
A Curriculum for Transition 21
Stage Two, Redesigning Ourselves 24
Intended Outcomes 26
Aims and Objectives of the Transitional Initiative 27

Future Directions: Stage Three? 28

Works Cited 29

  3  
 Part One: Articulating Change

Confronting the Problem

A national, debt-fuelled recession has undermined every state’s funding of public

and social programs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Education
budgets, already stretched to their limits, will somehow have to stretch still further.
Concurrently, colleges and universities are experiencing significant yearly increases in
student matriculation. The highest demand is for community college places.

Developmental programs, in particular, are under pressure to accommodate a high

proportion of non-traditional students looking to better their prospects through higher
education and this trend will certainly continue.

Historically, community colleges have provided the only college access

available for students with low academic skills. As the number of students increases,
those students needing basic skill development will increase as well. College bound
populations with the least access to a high quality K-12 education – that is, minorities –
are most likely to feel the effects of this reality…(Roueche, Creative Community
College 11).
The ‘problem’ with which colleges are now wrestling, is how to square the circle of
increased demand, (for teachers, classrooms, resources, program improvements), and
decreasing budgets without sacrificing either the quality of the programs offered or the
availability of student places. Developmental programs, in particular, are already under
pressure to produce results in as little time, and with as little cost to the student, or grant
maker who pays for these non-credit courses, as possible. And the pressure can only
become greater. Success will require economic or operational contortions with a Houdini-
esque ability to overcome these constraints.

The Transitional Initiative at Pellissippi (TIP) is a ‘redesign’ of previous

developmental studies programs – but it is one that redefines both the practice and scope
of its predecessors. Its innovation lies in combining existing, tested and successful
educational strategies with the findings of its own, continuous, reflective practice to
produce a leading edge, integrated, holistic and highly responsive approach to the design
and delivery of developmental studies. This makes Pellissippi one of the few community
colleges, nationally, to implement the entire range of established best practices in
developmental education.

  4  
 In place only since 2008, it is already showing measurable successes. In 2009, for
example, the retention rates of developmental students exceeded those of non-
developmental students for the first time. This should be a matter of keen interest to
education boards, college administrators, department heads and faculty alike, since it may
well be that the long term success of any community college as a whole, as well as of the
wider community, will be dependent upon the success of its developmental studies
program. As startling as this claim may seem, it is the simple, and inescapable, outcome of
the demographic and economic shifts of the past half-century.

Colleges who place developmental education at the center of their mission

experience improved student retention… Developmental education has societal
benefits as well. Spann (2000) suggested that remedial education is in everyone’s best
interest. “If just one in three developmental students taking at least one remedial
course were to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, they would reciprocally generate
over $74 billion dollars in federal taxes as well as $13 billion in state and local taxes
(Roueche, Creative Community College 11).

How We Got Here – From a Certain Viewpoint.

"Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are
to be shaped and fashioned.... And it is the business of the school to build its
pupils according to the specifications laid down” (Ellwood P. Cubberley).

Our model of compulsory, school-to-workplace education has been tailored to and by

the demands of the marketplace, and specifically the labor market, since the industrial
revolution. Until the third quarter of the twentieth century, that market required a large,
and largely unskilled labor force to service the manufacturing and industrial bases of the
United States. Thus, for most of the 20th Century, the western model of education and
employment was industrial and predominantly feudal.

Addressing the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909, U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson expressed succinctly what would become the continuing policy of
successive administrations:

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much
larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education, and fit themselves to
perform specific difficult manual tasks”

  5  
 By political design, therefore, the largest - and economically essential - class of workers
was to be educated, generation after generation, for a lifetime of unskilled or semi-skilled
employment. Public schools would teach good citizenship, patriotism, basic numeracy and
literacy… and the ability and willingness to accept spoon-fed information without
question, to memorize and follow instructions and to tolerate the high boredom levels
associated with repetitive, drill-and skill based tasks.

This picture of ‘traditional’ public education, though unflattering, can be corroborated

by anyone who has experienced a public, grade school education. And familiar as it is, its
defining features are seldom identified for what they really are – the prerequisites for
preparing an entire class of people to “fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual
tasks.”

It is a true feat of social engineering that, even today, so many educators and students
alike should view boredom, unconscious, mechanical repetition and the uncritical
acceptance of information and opinion, not simply as necessary evils but as an intrinsic
part of the reality of ‘getting an education’. Yet these are the very antithesis of what
education is about – indeed of the definition of the word itself. What they do characterize,
however, are the necessary qualities for the unskilled or semi-skilled worker, for a life on
the factory floor, in the assembly line or at the coalface.

A minority of students, on the other hand, either through inherited privilege or

exceptional aptitude, would receive, (and presumably continues to receive), the liberal
education that the many had to forego. A liberal education is designed, as the Latin
‘educare’, implies, to ‘draw out’ qualities of critical thinking, self-expression, ingenuity and
initiative, to challenge as well as to inform. The class of those thus liberally educated
would be self-selecting by virtue of being able to pay, or to obtain funding, for the
privilege. And from this self selecting class, would be drawn those who were to meet the -
proportionately tiny - social requirements for the highly skilled, the intellectual, the
analytical and the expert, the managerial, the directorial and the gubernatorial of society.

In other words, the large, unskilled and minimally educated majority would provide
the labor base that drove the economy while the wealthier, better educated and relatively
tiny minority directed the social, spiritual and commercial life of the nation.

  6  
 This was the educational model that served the economic life of the nation as a whole
and served it well, or at least effectively, until the end of the 20th century. But it also,
consistently and unremittingly failed the many students who were too bright, too
individual or too intellectually idiosyncratic, (different from the ‘norm’), to learn by rote
and repeat without understanding, to retain large numbers of facts or blocks of
information and to absorb, uncritically, whatever material might be presented to them.

Then It All Changed…

In 1956, the number of ‘white collar’ jobs for the first time exceeded the number of
‘blue collar’ jobs in the United States (Naisbitt J. Megatrends). The end of a two hundred
year era had arrived; the Industrial Age, along with its economic and social models, was
dying. Though computer based technologies were still in their infancy, manufacturing and
‘heavy’ industries had begun disappearing to be replaced by ‘soft’ or service industries.
The industrial age ‘pyramid’, with all of its hierarchical demands and endowments, had
begun to collapse.

At the time when the US Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, fully 90
percent of all employment in this country was in agriculture. The great majority of
people lived and worked on farms… At the end of World War II, the United States led
the world in its industrial manufacturing capabilities. In the years immediately after
this war, manufacturing industries grew so that well over half of all jobs were in the
manufacturing category. This is no longer the case… At the current time, only about
2% of the US workforce is directly engaged in agricultural jobs, and fewer than 16% of
the workforce hold industrial manufacturing jobs (Moursund, David).

In the 1980’s, computer technology finally ‘happened’ - a technology that had been
dawning since the 60s, when it filled the popular imagination with robots and space cars
and an increase of ‘leisure time’ in which workers would enjoy the reduced hours and
higher incomes of an automated work place. But instead of spreading the wealth and the
leisure, automation merely increased the numbers of the unemployed amongst the
unskilled, ‘laboring’ or ‘blue collar’ classes and drove down wages.
A new labor market, however, was beginning to take emerge and this new market
evolved so rapidly that within two decades, the former, pyramid-shaped social model was
completely reshaped.

  7  
That was then. This is now.

There have been dramatic changes in the structure of employment in many

countries in recent years. A key aspect of this has been the upskilling of the workforce
as employers have shifted their demand requirements to employ more workers
possessing higher educational qualifications and with higher skill levels. A by now
large academic literature has documented the changing demand for skills in many
countries and has looked at the key factors underpinning the observed changes…
Some of this work uses evocative phrases like ‘collapse in demand for the unskilled’,
‘the deteriorating position of low skill workers’ and ‘rapidly rising wage gaps between
the skilled and unskilled’, all of which are in line with the notion that very large shifts
have occurred…
What is… interesting, and by now well known, is that, despite their increased
numbers, the wages of more skilled workers have not fallen relative to the less skilled.
In fact the opposite has occurred and wage gaps between graduates and non-graduates
rose in both countries (UK and USA) albeit at a faster rate in the US (Machin,
Stephen).

In practical terms what this means is that the ‘good old days’, when a single wage from
one unskilled or semi skilled worker could comfortably support an entire family, have
been replaced by an era in which the ‘traditional’ - the unskilled or semi skilled - worker
faces uncertain employment, low wages, hardship and possible poverty while the new,
“upskilled” worker requires a higher level, and indeed a different kind of education from
that provided by grade school.

Going from high school to the workplace today simply isn’t a rewarding, long-term
option. As one Pellissippi student expressed it, “In today’s world, it’s either say hello to
college or else say, ‘Welcome to MacDonald’s’ ”.

For almost a century, the public education system has excelled at doing precisely what
it was designed for - educating workers for a specific role in the economy of the nation.
But, this role no longer meets the current, and pressing, national requirements. The
system, slow moving it is, cannot adapt quickly enough to the rapid and complete ‘about
face’ of its political mandate. Indeed, the present, widely advertised, ‘crisis’ in public

  8  
school education1 is the result, not of any longstanding failure of our schools to do what
was required of them, but of a sudden and dramatic change in the social imperative.

The almost universal misapprehension that all our school children received, (or,
indeed, were ever supposed to receive), the benefits of a liberal education now fuels the
outrage, in some sectors, at the revelation that schools have long been churning out
graduates who could barely read and write, let alone provide the skilled workforce that
our new world demands. But until the social imperative changed into one that actually
required educational excellence, perhaps only educators recognized, or were truly
perturbed at, the gap between the promise and the reality, between the ideals of education
and the policy of social engineering.

The cry that ‘schools have not been doing their jobs’ is both untrue and unfair. They
have done exactly what they were designed to do. What is true is that schools have not
been doing what we need them to do now - what we have been merely pretending that they
were supposed to do for the past one hundred years.

If we are unable to substantially close the existing skill gaps among

racial/ethnic groups and substantially boost the literacy levels of the population
as a whole, demographic forces will result in a U.S. population in 2030 with tens
of millions of adults unable to meet the requirements of the new economy
(Kirsch, Braun, Yamamoto & Sunu 24).

History, it seems, is not without a sense of irony, for the future of the nation now
depends on providing that very class once denied a liberal education with precisely the
kind of education it was ‘required to forego’. And in the dawning light of this new
paradigm, at least one naked emperor stands revealed. This is the absolute, mutual
incompatibility between the qualities essential for unskilled workers and those that
represent the ideals of a liberal education.

Habituation to boredom, drill and skill memorization, subordinated and uncritical

thought cannot coexist with creative, reflective, critical, independent and original thinking.
Training in either will inhibit or destroy the other. Of course, in the manual labor
dependent, industrialized, manufacturing world, that incompatibility was an important
factor in the design of educational programs. After all, what employer wants a distracted
                                                                                                               
1  Citing  figures  in  support  of  this  crisis  is  considered  unnecessary  at  this  point  as  there  already  exists  a  large  and  

well-­‐known  body  of  evidence.  

  9  
and day dreaming poet operating dangerous machinery, or a lunch-time philosopher who
can identify and describe social injustice organizing a union?

The incompatibility between education and habituation should be as obvious as that of

fire and water and yet, while we extol the ideals of liberal education, (apparently assuming
that our own ideals will sanctify the educational process), educational practice in grade
schools continues to ‘drill and kill’ the capacity for real thought.

In post secondary education the need to articulate this incongruity is pressing, since it
speaks to a situation now faced in community college classes across the nation. The college
students today who fume with silent hostility, who demand in outrage that we simply tell
them which book and which page to go to, to learn the ‘right’ answers’, who want to be
shown step by step, the process that you, their teacher, use to arrive at the answer (your –
the teacher’s - answer for there is not and never has been such a thing as ‘their’ answer),
who want to know what to write so that they can write ‘what you want’, these students are
crippled thinkers. They have been crippled systematically, in the same way and for much
the same reason that farm birds have their wings clipped.

...the greatest danger to the survival of civilization today is not atomic warfare, not environmental pollution,
not the population explosion, not the depletion of natural resources, and not any of the other contemporary
crises, but the underlying cause of them all--the accelerating obsolescence of man (sic)... The only hope now
seems to be a crash program to retool the present generation of adults with the competencies required to
function adequately in a condition of perpetual change. This is the deep need--the awesome challenge--
presented to the adult educator by modern society (Knowles, Androgogy Versus Pedagogy).

Meeting the Challenge – Who Can and Why.

What all this means is that we face a remediation project of massive proportions. It is
no less than the task of instituting, nationally, real programs of education, whose
aspirations are truly those of scholarship and academic achievement, for the first time in
our own history. Where it must and will begin, is within post-secondary education because
it cannot begin anywhere else with speed and efficacy.

Public school systems are by nature, and probably by design, conservative, with a
small ‘c’. Without ‘top down’, government imposed program changes2, it can take more
than a decade before social or academic change is reflected in school policy or in the
curriculum.
                                                                                                               
2And  these  often  owe  more  to  political  posturing  than  the  needs  of  either  students  or  teachers.  
  10  
 It has been known, for instance, for schools to continue to teach abandoned scientific
or historical theories until the generation of teachers who learned those precepts during
their own college - or high school - days is replaced by a generation who learned, and so
teach, more current theory.

Moreover, any widespread recognition of the shape and impact of social change, will
always take time. History tells us that it is after the fact, when change is already reshaping
our world, (and very often when it is too late to take the appropriate action), that we
recognize what a shifting paradigm means for our lives and our social structures. We do
not anticipate change; we react to it and then only after we have recognized its
implications. The new landscape of employment in the USA is only now being widely and
definitively recognized and described. We are, as a nation, still in transition from the old
paradigms to the new.

In other words, in the face of a revolution in the 20th century labor market, (and thus a
fundamental alteration in the social and functional role of education), the conservatism
inherent in the public education system is compounded by an inevitable ‘lag time’ between
significant social change and general recognition of that change. The inherently
conservative, massive public school system was not designed to change and adapt faster
than the general consciousness of the nation it serves. And it is not positioned to do what
our economic revolution requires – produce a completely different kind of worker and do
it fast.

Colleges and universities, by comparison, operate at the other end of the spectrum.
They are up to date with current theory and practice because they are engaged with the
communities in whose fields they teach. Often radical in their thinking, and certainly more
inclined to be experimental in their practice, most have already embraced and become part
of the technological transformation of the workplace.

Community colleges in particular have been positioning themselves for decades to

meet the massive demand for re-education which, it could be reasonably foreseen by the
1970s, would follow the shift from manufacturing to service industry, from heavy industry
to technology based industry and from unskilled to skilled labor. By doing so they have
placed themselves in a pivotal position within a transitional society. They have shaped

  11  
themselves to the role which grade schools once fulfilled, educating for the labor market –
a new, skill hungry, initiative seeking and ingenuity greedy labor-market. 3

High school graduates have been realizing this in massive numbers, as have
workers in low paid or low prospect jobs without the competitive skills to seek promotion
or better employment. And college enrollment figures reflect that fact; they are
skyrocketing.

Mapping the Challenge - Dimensions of the Learning Gap.

The ‘realpolitik’ presently faced by community colleges, and particularly by their

departments of ‘developmental studies’, then, looks like this. Where public schools,
conservative with a small ‘c’, have continued to educate in the traditional manner, (drill
and skill), for the traditional model, (a labor pyramid with that large unskilled workforce
at its base), a high percentage of students still complete high school without the skills or
intellectual training necessary for either college or the professional job market.

Few of these students would have considered either thirty years ago. Many are
doing so today. When they arrive in our college classrooms they bring with them, born of
their public schoolroom experience, expectations about the process of learning and what
constitutes intellectual and academic proficiency that fall far short of the reality of college
level education.

The difficulties they will face in college are not only reflective of the different kinds
of intelligence, (learning styles), nor of the cultural diversity common in developmental
classrooms. Frequently, they reflect a history of failure or a habit of antipathy or resistance
to a system of education by which they have felt tyrannized. Whatever the causes, for very
many of these students the result is a deeply seated, academic deficit.

We are seeing them in ever increasing numbers: students who are often bright and
able but without the foundation skills required to undertake associate level courses, and
                                                                                                               
3  There have always been those who rejected education as social. (See, Illich, Gatto et al.) One teacher told me, “I stole a
real education for my high school students”. For them, asserting any relationship between marketplace and academia
may seem abhorrent, endorsing that same violation of true academic purpose and freedom that has characterized
America’s public school programs. Self evidently, however, schools and colleges will obtain better funding and support
by demonstrating that they do meet the needs of the economy. So it requires to be said that, while the needs of the
economy coincide with the objectives of a real education, we no longer need to “steal” that education”. We need only
explain its benefits in terms that the business community can understand - and we owe it to our students to do so.  

  12  
unprepared even for a pre-university, pre-vocational, college curriculum.4 These are
developmental students. They begin at a massive disadvantage, sometimes as successful
‘test takers’ with a high GPA and a commensurate indignation at being labeled
‘developmental’, but always with the expectation that we can and will prepare them for
success in obtaining either a university degree or professional, vocational training.

They present the community colleges with one of its greatest challenges - that of
transforming large numbers of unprepared, non-traditional, high school graduates into
college candidates with the appropriate skill-sets, including strategies for self motivated
learning and practice in critical and creative thinking. They must do this within the
confines of extremely limited budgets and time frames, and while the numbers of such
students continue to rise exponentially.

A Brief History of Our Transitional Times.

The National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) definition and

goals statement adopted in 1995 states that developmental education “promotes the
cognitive and affective growth of all postsecondary learners, at all levels of the
learning continuum… Traditionally perceived as programs and services for students
who are provisionally admitted to institutions of higher education or considered
academically at risk, developmental education has emerged as a field that endeavors
to meet the diverse academic needs of all students seeking to educate themselves
beyond the high school level (Higbee Jeanne L. and Dwinell Patricia L. The
Expanding Role of Developmental Education). (Emphasis added.)

‘Remedial Studies’ once simply ‘finessed’ the lacking components, for instance, in an
English student’s math skills – or vice versa. As ‘non traditional’ students began to enroll
in increasing numbers, it was felt that the term ‘remedial studies’ carried unfortunate
connotations, connotations that there were deficiencies in the students themselves that
required to be ‘remedied’. Remedial studies gave way to developmental studies which
brought with it a well supported curriculum for ‘developing’ essential academic skills and
for closing the gap between the educational profile of many high school graduates,

                                                                                                               
4  In terms of mindset, self-reliance, and creative and critical thinking skills, this picture is just as descriptive of
the non-developmental student as it is of the ‘remedial’ student.

 
  13  
returning adults, ethnic minorities and that which is required for a college, entry-level
student. But the emergence of developmental programs was, and to some extent remains,
controversial.

The stereotypical criticisms run something like this: Why should states pay for
school education programs and then pay again for colleges to provide the same
instruction? Instead of funding developmental programs, why not invest in improving the
schools? Aren’t these programs just another way for colleges to grab much needed
education funding away from schools? What do they teach anyway? Why aren’t they
sticking to the ‘3 R’s’?

In reality, these are questions that the speed of change ought to have left behind.
They have become anachronisms as the map of the world’s knowledge, skills and skill
requirements has changed out of all recognition and at a speed that no one could have
predicted. But, though it has done all this in plain sight, the shape, scope and implications
of the change remain unrecognized by many, including some traditional ‘educators’. Thus
the old, familiar map of the known world continues to chart the ‘proper’ course of what is
‘tried and true’, trusted and good’ in education - through a terrain which no longer exists.
And the questions continue to be asked. However,

...Work in developmental education has matured intellectually to the point where

we must be overt in theorizing our enterprise so that our research and curriculum
studies can compete with each other for credibility in full view of the assumptions that
are their intellectual foundation;
...Attacks on developmental education are very easy to mount when the grounds
for discussion are subject to redefinition at the whim of every legislator or academic
vice-president who questions the value of our practice. That is, we need to know why
we do what we do, and we need to say these things aloud (Higbee and Dwinell, The
Expanding Role of Developmental Eucation).”

Education to Manage Change

“The idea of worldwide competition for jobs is not entirely new, but it has certainly
grown in the past few decades and is continuing to grow. This raises the issue of what
constitutes a ‘good’ education for today's students. This is a difficult question. A good
answer might include ideas such as:

1. Education in people skills, preparing a person to interact comfortably

with and work with people from throughout the world. This includes
learning a second or third language and culture.

  14  
 2. Education in making effective use of Information and Communication
Technology tools and ideas to solve problems and carry out tasks. Often
this will include being a member of a team—perhaps with other team
members disbursed throughout the world.
3. Education in learning to learn and in being an independent, intrinsically
motivated, lifelong learner who deals effectively with change.
4. Education to understand and to contribute to efforts to solve long-term
problems such as global warming and sustainability. (Moursund,
David)”

These learning outcomes may sound like airy ideals. They are not. They are the
sine qua non of the skilled professional demanded by the new global market and of the
citizen required by our global community.

We live in a world in which social and business transactions are international;

technology is the currency of social and economic interchange and we are as involved in
global events and relationships as we are in those that are ‘local’. The economic and social
requirement is for participants capable of innovative thinking and problem solving within
the new paradigms of our ‘global village’.

Re-evaluating the Role of Transitional Studies.

Thus, it can argued that Transitional Studies stand at the cliff edge of the
U.S. economic disaster predicted if we cannot close the gap between the need for qualified
professionals and the number of those candidates available. It is also obvious that our
‘global’ village requires a new kind of citizen; the international and environmental
problems and challenges we face today, will require as much human ingenuity and
creativity as we can, collectively, summon up. Critical reflection, self awareness,
imagination, ingenuity, adaptability and self-reliance, these attributes - incompatible with
the designed outcome of our public education/social engineering system - demand to be
developed, and quickly.

Of course they ought, always, to have been at the foundation of education. Now
they must be developed in the teeth of twelve or thirteen years of grade school training in
the passive absorption and repetition of the predigested thought, and thought processes, of
others.

  15  
 Hence, the task faced by all developmental programs is much more than
remediating our students’ missing language and mathematical skills. The imperative is to
prepare them, not only for the next set of college courses, but for a place in the world
entirely different from the one for which they were educated... the place that no longer
exists.

It is not surprising that a heightened interest in the possibilities of success and the
consequences of failure with at-risk students is driving unprecedented investigation into the
way colleges embrace remedial education; it is surprising that it has taken so long to occur.
It is clear that if community colleges do not better address remedial education, this country
will suffer enormous consequences (Roueche and Roueche).

It’s Not You, It’s Them: Perceptions of Developmental and Transitional Students.

In the 1990s, a Japanese doctoral student, (now a professor of my acquaintance),

undertook to teach developmental math classes in an American community college. He
hoped and believed that he could do “some good” for the 60% of students who routinely
failed these courses. But at the end of his first teaching semester, he found that under his
tutelage even fewer than the expected 40% had passed.

Deeply distressed, he went to the Chair of the department and offered his apologies
as well as a promise to do better in the future. “Don’t worry about it,” he was told.
“Things will get better.” In the meantime, this senior academic urged the young instructor
not to blame himself. The failure was not his. “It’s not you”, said the Chair. “It’s them.”

‘Remedial’ students face particular learning challenges5. One of those challenges,

and not the least important, may be a pre-existing self-fulfilling, (self-perpetuating),
prophecy (SFP) as to their intrinsic ability – or lack of ability - to succeed academically.
Expectation, as we now know, is inextricably bound to outcome (Rosenthal R. and
Jabson L, in Pygmalion in the Classroom). Developmental students usually arrive with their
own, pedominantly poor, SFPs already in place. But the real question here is, “What are
our expectations of developmental students?” And the answer is crucially important.

                                                                                                               
5  It  is  assumed  that  readers  are  familiar  with  the  different  ‘profiles’  of  the  remedial  student  and  they  need  not  be  iterated  

here.  

  16  
 Perhaps, more explicitly we need to ask, “What blueprints for success or failure do
our unconscious expectations embed in the teaching of developmental students?” The
difficult truth contained in the anecdote about the young math instructor, is that the
unspoken ‘story’ (or set of unexamined assumptions), within the educational world often
labels developmental students lazy, uncooperative, slow, stupid, or even un-teachable. It
has usually done so long before they arrive in college. And our developmental students are
well aware of it.

Here is another difficult truth; while any stereotype persists, the attempt to identify
it as such will be met with rejection, hostility, defensiveness and anger. Thus the
persistence of a stereotype, most easily viewed with hindsight, is notoriously difficult to
identify while that stereotype is still ‘under siege’.

It was, for example, extremely difficult and took several decades to bring an entire
educational establishment to the understanding that dyslexia has nothing whatever to do
with intelligence or the lack of it. The stereotype of the stupid, recalcitrant or lazy (in
reality dyslexic) student, which dismissed the potential and blighted the lives of so many,
is now very largely demolished. It may take a similar crusade to convince the same
establishment that resentment, disinterest, ‘laziness’ and a complete absence of either the
self motivation or the critical faculty essential for students pursuing a higher education, are
more reflective of the failure of a nineteenth century, Germanic education system than of
widespread intellectual or moral defects in the students themselves.

Historically, of course, a few decades and the overthrow of one more stereotype
later, the memory of an old, blind prejudice stirs no more than a baffled shake of the head.
But we do not have a few decades and the siege has a very long way to go.

The TIP, both in theory and practice, assumes that the stereotype of the
developmental student is not fact based. Put another way, the Initiative challenges the
traditional ‘story’ about developmental students. It is predicated on the idea that students
who have previously failed academically may succeed where different and more
appropriate teaching methods and approaches are adopted. And it is meeting with
measurable success.

  17  
Why Success Does Not Always Succeed.

The greater the success of this approach, the stronger the argument becomes that,
at least in part, the responsibility for student failure lies elsewhere than with the students.
And human nature being what it is, perhaps it’s too much to expect a universal
endorsement of outcomes that speak to the unrecognized failures of our past.

It is not really surprising, therefore, that the markers of success recorded by the
Transitional Studies Department at Pellissippi, have appeared, at times, to be as
unwelcome as the andragogy it employs.

What is unwelcome is rarely investigated. And whether for this reason, or another,
while the architects of the T.I.P. have been identifying, applying and building on
discoveries about developmental teaching and learning, the evidence-based research
behind their approach remains unknown to a high proportion of college faculty.

It is interesting to note that although this body of knowledge has been available, it has not
been widely used by practitioners. The authors’ observations from statewide studies of remedial
education in Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas suggest that fewer than half
of the faculty teaching remedial courses are trained to do so or use the literature of the field to
guide their practice. Providing effective remediation is not a mysterious proposition. We know
how to do it. We simply do not use what we know. (Boylan, ‘What Works in Remediation’).

In the meantime, the debate over appropriate methods of developmental teaching

is, in many respects, becoming redundant as success rates confirm some strategies and
discredit others. Yet it continues fiercely in the space between the results of the research
and knowledge of them. The classroom lecture as primary teaching mode, for instance, has
already proved ineffective for transitional students and while a weight of research exists to
showing what does work for these vulnerable students.

Students in remedial courses have been lectured to in the past without much effect. If
traditional teaching methods had worked for these students, they would not be taking
remedial courses. Consequently, Roueche and his colleagues argued for the use of a wide
variety of teaching techniques featuring class discussions, group projects, and various
types of mediated learning.

Again, these early findings have also been validated through later research…

Perhaps one reason why this finding has appeared consistently in the literature has to
do with the learning styles of remedial students. The body of research suggesting that
remedial students learn in ways not accommodated by traditional instruction has been
growing. Canfield (1976), for instance, found that students enrolled in community college

  18  
 remedial courses were much more likely to be either iconic (visual) or hands on learners
than other students. Using a modified version of the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory,
McCarthy (1982) found that weaker college students tended to be more visually oriented
or more inclined to learn through direct experience than other learners. Lamire (1998)
cited half a dozen studies of community college students indicating that a dominant
learning style among them was visual followed by what he referred to as haptic or learning
by doing. Apparently the use of a variety of instructional methods, particularly those using
visual or hands on approaches to learning were more likely to appeal to the learning styles
of students typically enrolled in remedial courses.

…Another early finding from the work of Roueche and his colleagues was that
remedial courses were most effective when they are based on sound cognitive theory
(Roueche, 1973; Roueche & Wheeler, 1973; Roueche & Kirk, 1974). Citing the work of
Bruner (1966) and a variety of other instructional theorists, Roueche (1973) argued that
remedial instruction should be systematic and clearly based on what we know about
how people learn (Boylan). (Emphasis added.)

Clearly, re-employing teaching tools that have already failed for developmental
students, (even with extra assistance to enable students to adapt to and benefit from
them), is an exercise in futility. And no college department, least of all TS, can afford the
luxury of continuing to use teaching models which have already and demonstrably, failed
their students. To do so is to refuse to recognize or be willing to heal the damage that
thirteen years of indoctrinary ‘education’ may have done. It is to continue to insist that the
students fit themselves to the molds of others – rather like the old schoolroom practice of
insisting that a left-handed student become right-handed. This would be not only morally
reprehensible, but also economically imprudent since our students are, in fact, clients.
Upon them the existence of our department, our college and every faculty job within it,
depends.

Thus within the TSD, the development of effective teaching ‘labs’ and educational
communities with multiple modes of learning, is an ongoing process. Continuing this
development of successful models is imperative. Doing so effectively, however, will
require a department united in its commitment to the mission of the department and of the
T.I.P., and consistent in its application.

  19  
 Part Two: Designing the Change We Want.

The Transitional Initiative Stage One: From Developmental To Transitional Studies.

If colleges are totally committed to being successful with at-risk students, they must be prepared
to think holistically. At-risk students come to college with such diverse needs that stand-alone
services or classes — no matter how successful in helping at-risk students — will not achieve a
college’s larger goal of retaining these students and helping them achieve their own goals of
improved performance and academic success. A successful learning lab, a strong reading
program, or an excellent mathematics program, if offered as a stand-alone instructional service
or class, falls far short of the broader institutional commitment that colleges must make
(Roueche and Roueche, ‘High Stakes, High Performance’.)

  20  
1. Redesigning Delivery: An Integrated Department.

Students participating in centralized remedial programs were found to be more likely to

pass their remedial courses and more likely to be retained for longer periods of time
than students participating in decentralized programs. (Boylan, R., ‘What Works in
Remediation’)

In 1999, a study commissioned by the American Association of Community

Colleges (Rouche) found that the success of developmental studies programs depended on
integration, the interconnection of all developmental courses within a complete and
holistic program. The method of delivery was not the crucial factor; that was the
interconnection - the coordination and communication that create a united and integrated
program out of the disparate developmental courses. This could be achieved most easily,
of course, through centralizing the developmental program, and all of the associated
courses, within a single department.

2008 saw the creation of the Department of Transitional Studies at Pellissippi State
Community College in what can considered the first stage of the Transitional Initiative at
Pellissippi. The new Department replaced the previous, developmental studies programs
in which the various courses fell under the auspices of various and separate academic
departments. In the new department, ‘developmental’ math, English reading, writing and
college success courses, operate together and there is ongoing investigation into methods
of increasing the degree of inter-relationship between the courses.

2. A Curriculum for Transition

The integration of developmental programs was accompanied by a redesign of

classrooms and curricula to reflect the mission implied in the title, ‘Transitional Studies’.
These are curricula designed for students transitioning from one mindset, outlook and set
of expectations to another, a program for the development of critical thinking, self-
expression, observation, reflection analysis et alia. In practical terms the Transitional
Studies Department has recognized a single, fundamental truth; remediation’ of math or
language skills alone, is the treatment of a symptom, not a cause. Unless we can teach our
students how to learn and how to embrace their own learning process, they will struggle
with any academic or vocational course on which they embark.

  21  
 It can never again be a matter of simply teaching formula calculation to a poor
math student. Along with competency in quadratic equations, for example, the course
syllabus is designed to deliver the lesson that comprehension is the province of each
student, that the failure to comprehend is the responsibility of that student rather than of
the teacher and that the remedy for lack of comprehension lies in seeking out explanations
and resources wherever they may be, rather than in waiting for a teacher to ensure that
the student has ‘understood the lesson’. In other words, the syllabus and its delivery aim to
instill the foundation of independent thought, the realization that learning must be active,
something we do, instead of something done to or for us.

This shift in emphasis from content specific to process based outcomes has
necessitated a corresponding shift in the Traditional Studies Department syllabi which, in
turn, has altered the relationship between the TSD and other College Departments - most
notably those departments of which it was, until recently, a part and which its programs
once served exclusively.

Traditionally, developmental courses prepared students specifically to tackle the

college-level reading and writing assignments of ENGL1010, and MATH1010. They were
designed to ‘teach to’ the syllabi of those courses. While the standard for TSD course
completion remains the preparedness of the student to enter college-level math and
English courses, the TSD syllabi and their delivery modes must now function as more
than adjuncts to the College entry level, 1010 courses.
They must be bridges for their students to the whole of academia, capable of
closing the gap between the fundamentally opposing demands of secondary and post
secondary education. (And welcome or not, the fact is that the greater the demand for
original, creative thinkers in our nation, the more TSD will be required to fulfill that
function for all post secondary students, not just those with academic deficits.)
So it has become increasingly important to the success of the TSD curriculum to
extend the horizontal, collective interface beyond the boundaries of TSD faculty, to the
faculty of the college as a whole. In this way we can better inform a curriculum designed
to prepare students for the range of intellectual challenges at college level. This approach
is all the more persuasive in light of the fact that students will encounter math, reading,
and writing assignments within the curricula of practically every department on campus.

  22  
 A TSD writing class, for example, while still teaching the English 1010 objectives,
might include assignments drawn from the Liberal Arts, Business, Psychology or Biology
departments. This ties the syllabus to the student’s next college steps and, potentially, to a
chosen career path both preparing the student for future courses and providing an element
of personal relevance within the writing course. And personal relevance has been shown to
increase both student engagement, (with improved learning outcomes), and retention.
Thus the TSD curriculum, delivery methods and strategies reflect a careful
implementation of current best practice in developmental education. They are already
consciously and deliberately responding to the changed and changing requirements of our
students, their ambitions for themselves and the hope that they may offer to our world.

The next stage of the Initiative will involve the creation of a dynamic within TSD
capable of unifying the department, instilling a department-wide mode of reflective
practice and consistently identifying and building on the best of developmental teaching
theory and practice.

  23  
 The Transitional Initiative - Stage Two:

Redesigning Ourselves.

Watching a flock of dozens or even hundreds of birds can be amazing

because the separate birds often move as if they possess a single mind. What's
more amazing, bird flocks often move harmoniously without any sort of leader or
external cue, especially when they are traveling over short distances. Studying bird
flocks may seem to be the exclusive domain of ornithologists. But physicists too
have become captivated by the remarkable ability of birds - and many other living
creatures - to move flawlessly as an organized group… Studying the incredible feat
of how hundreds of birds can move as a single unit, physicists have devised a
detailed theory of the flocking process. Their theory can potentially be extended
to... any collection of independently moving animals, including humans, which rely on
each other's cues to move as a group. (Birds Of A Feather: The Physics Of Flocks, from the
American Institute of Physics).

  24  
 Given the pace of change, the department must also construct itself so as to be able
to adapt to rapid change, change in the student body and change in the demands that are
made of it. In practice this will mean the implementation of several strategies, each
informing the other. In stage two, it is proposed to combine the highly successful and now
widely adopted strategies of reflective teaching, action research and collaborative teaching
within a formal, departmental ‘interface’. The plan is to create a dynamic that gives the
entire department access to the sum of contributions that may be made by individual
faculty.

Two important principles underpin the creation of this departmental interface:

first, that collaborative learning is as powerfully effective within the teaching community
as it is in the classroom; second that human experience, insight and ingenuity will always
represent our most important and potentially transformative resource. It follows that our
own faculty, (including the large body of adjunct faculty), represents a huge and largely
untapped resource.

For example, the ability of the department as an entity to cross reference the sum of
its experience and to articulate and assess that experience as a body may inform the
experience and advance the practice of all involved as well as allowing senior faculty to
design, deliver or modify policy, content and strategy quickly and effectively.

The simple mechanism at the core of the model can be described as a ‘feedback loop’.
It is anticipated that this will be implemented through a number of networking structures
(including an online forum), and through practices such as co-teaching and mentoring as
well as real time faculty meetings. It entails shared observation, (difficulty, success, failure,
inspiration and even intuition), over the department, with verified feedback being
reflected in departmental policy – i.e. responsive practice - which can then be refined
again by the observations of faculty.

The ‘loop’ thus represents a dynamic and fluid, self-sustaining and generative
process. It is a system that is horizontal – i.e. collective and collaborative - as well as
hierarchical, that is organic as well as structured. In a flock of birds, or a school of fish,
this type of modus operandi is called ‘convergence’, a process by which each member of a
group operates both individually and in consonance with the larger body.

  25  
 Intended Outcomes.

1. Rapid ‘identification’ and implement exponential improvements in policy,

method and practice across the transitional studies program.

2. Organic and responsive, rather than reactive strategies. It will ensure, for
instance, that marked changes in student demographics or educational
preparedness are identified quickly so that appropriate adjustments in policy or
practice can be designed and implemented before problems arise rather than as
a reaction to them. (This is what we mean by responsive policy rather than
reactive policy.)

3. A coherent and self-renewing resource. The collective abilities, experiences and

creativity of the entire department will be quickly and easily accessible to senior
staff through a manageable, structured medium.

4. Collegiality As all faculty feedback will help to shape departmental program, it

will be easier for the entire department to understand and to feel involved in
departmental policies.

5. This will inevitably create a sense of unity and, it is hoped, a sense of being
stakeholders in the program with a direct impact on, (and responsibility for), its
success or failure. Thus it will help to increase the personal motivation of each
faculty member which, in turn, is liable to improve the success of the courses
overall.

6. We will see a departmental sense of ‘collegiality’ in place of the isolation,

described by one math teacher as “the teaching bubble”, experienced by many
faculty members. Individual faculty will be validated and supported by the
departmental community, encouraging a culture in which the exchange of
ideas, reflective practice and collaboration can flourish.

7. Because the ‘loop’ will enable the exchange of useful strategies, it should lead to
the obsolescence of the almost universal, extremely wasteful need for each
instructor to have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ as he or she deals with problems and
challenges in isolation and invents solutions that other faculty have previously
discovered and implemented.

  26  
 Aims and Objectives of the Transitional Initiative at Pellissippi.

• To develop and provide teaching strategies that will transition students from the
condition of passive subjects of a process required for specific academic progression, to
active and engaged owners of their own, dynamic learning process;

• To create dimensions of success greater than those measured by test and exam results
alone such as: increased educational engagement, (including improved retention),
increased reflection and critical awareness, self-empowerment, lifelong learning,
confident, and original thinking, leadership, creativity, self motivation;

• To implement the best of the proven and effective models current in developmental
teaching and, through the operational design of the T.I.P., develop others that will help
to establish best practice in transitional education;

• To encourage faculty to become familiar with best practice in the field of

developmental teaching and to implement effective models in their own classrooms;

• To encourage faculty to assist in acquiring new and deeper insights into the process of
developmental teaching and in developing tools and strategies in the field through their
own practice;

• To unite faculty in a common sense of purpose, of participation and 'stake-holding' in

the Initiative;

• To serve these goals by creating a departmental dynamic which:

is inclusive, operating across the entire department;
is self-informing and self-sustaining;
is responsive rather than reactive;
generates natural, rapid responses to the challenges of transitional studies and
provides continuous and reliable feedback on all processes and strategies;

• To create a sense of community throughout the department by provision of:

an online platform where every voice can be heard,
a formal 'feedback' mechanism by which all faculty influence policy
and a mechanism of 'real-time' support and activities;

• To assist all college faculty, and the larger educational community, in meeting the
changing demands of a large and rapidly increasing student population as it makes the
transition from one set of learning expectations and outcomes, to another.

• To share with that community the discoveries and strategies of this program that have
proven effective for the development of active learners and critical thinkers.

  27  
Future Directions: Stage Three?

Recommendations: Examine the essential characteristics and components of other institutions’

successful remedial courses and programs, not necessarily in the interest of adopting their strategies,
but perhaps of adapting them. No plans are as appealing to implement or as successful as those that
carry the “made here” stamp; however, there are no reasons good enough and no time to reinvent the
wheel...

Employ a more collaborative effort to learn from each other. There is no reason to hang, separately or
together. Over the past few years, researchers have identified colleges with successful remedial
programs or program components. We believe that there are other successes that will remain
unknown because college leaders and remediation professionals either do not disseminate
information or do not disseminate it widely and effectively, (Roueche, High Stakes).

Establishing formal ties with other pioneering developmental studies departments

in other community colleges, especially those similar to the TSD, can extend and amplify
many of the benefits of the TSD ‘loop’. We cannot afford the wastefulness of ‘reinventing
the wheel’ – or of denying other colleges the benefits of discoveries made in our own
department.

In the long term, an expanded relationship with public schools will be increasingly
important. The TSD will be in a unique position to use the feedback gained from our own
faculty to evaluate the primary academic deficits and strengths of recent high school
graduates. The next step will involve feeding this information, along with successful
teaching strategies, back to the high schools so as to foster a pedagogy for active learning
and thinking in our grade schools.

To meet the ever increasing needs for the next millennium, developmental education
must expand by joining elementary and secondary education to improve teaching and
learning at all levels; by forming partnerships with business and industry; by ensuring
that no American be denied an opportunity for a college education because of financial
aid; by increasing the number and diversity of Americans completing training and
educational programs; by insisting that students be responsible for their learning and be
accountable for the quality of their academic programs and the assessment of their
learning; by improving the productivity, the cost effectiveness, and the accountability of
developmental education; and by embracing whole- heartedly distance learning that will
provide opportunities for a quality and affordable higher education for all Americans (T.
Clifford Bibb in, The Expanding Role of Developmental Education).

The ultimate success of this initiative, would be an education system in which it

was no longer necessary to transition high school graduates to college readiness. But that
goal is, at least for the present, a distant one.

  28  
 Works Cited

Boylan, Hunter R. & Saxon, Patrick D, ‘What Works in Remediation: Lessons from
Thirty Years of Research.’ (1999) National Center for Developmental Education.
Cubberley, Ellwood P. Public School Administration, (1922)
Gatto, John Taylor, Against School September 2003, Harper’s Magazine, New York.
Higbee, Jeanne L. and Dwinell Patricia L. (Ed). ‘The Expanding Role of
Developmental Education’, 1990, Georgia, National Association for Developmental
Education
Illich Ivan, Deschooling Society, 1971, London: Calder & Boyers
Moursund, David ‘Information Age.’ IAE-Pedia Jan. 2009. Dec. 2009
<http://iae-pedia.org>

Kirsch, Braun, Yamamoto & Sunu, 2007, cited in The Creative Community College.p10

Knowles, Malcolm S., 1970 The Modern Practice of Adult Education: Andragogy Versus
Pedagogy, Houston, TX: Gulf
Knowles, Malcolm S. 1978.The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species. Houston, TX: Gulf

Machin, Stephen. ‘The Changing Nature of Labour Demand in the New Economy and
Skill Biased Technology Change’. Jan. 2002 London School of Economics (Revised).
Naisbitt, J. Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, 1982, New
York: Warner Books.
Rosenthal, Robert & Jacobson, Lenore Pygmalion in the classroom (Expanded
Edition), 1992, New York: Irvington
Roueche, John E. and Roueche, Susanne D. High Stakes, High Performance: Making
Remedial Education Work, 1999, Washington DC: Community College Press
Roueche, John E. and Roueche, Susanne D. The Creative Community College: Leading
Change Through Innovation, 2008, Washington DC: American Association of
Community Colleges

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