INNOVATION IN DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION: THE LANDSCAPE AND THE LOCUS OF CHANGE

Community colleges are full of innovation in developmental education, and some of these have the promise of changing the “remedial pedagogy” that can be so ineffective. In this working paper we review six kinds of innovations: (1) the efforts of individual practitioners, which can be found in many colleges but which reach very few students; (2) the developments in limited numbers of departments that have come together, under particular conditions, to create their own alternative pedagogies; (3) departments that have developed a coherent approach to developmental education that incorporates many faculty; (4) learning communities and linked courses, unfortunately less common than we had hoped; (5) reforms following K-12 initiatives, specifically Reading Apprenticeship and the writing process methods of the National Writing Project; (6) the formation of Faculty Inquiry Groups to stimulate faculty discussions that might in turn lead to reforms.