Education

The Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy

Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy General College, University of Minnesota

or at least six decades (Arendale, 2002), developmental education programs and services in the U.S. have provided means to create access and enhance retention for populations of students that traditionally have been underrepresented in higher education (Hardin, 1988, 1998). Yet multiculturalism has seldom been addressed explicitly in our research and publications. Four years ago Pat Bruch and I conducted an exhaustive literature review on intersections between multiculturalism and developmental education in preparation for conducting an exploratory study within our own developmental education unit (Bruch & Higbee, 2002). When our electronic search yielded no results, we faulted the search engine and went directly to the source. Issue by issue, we examined the tables of contents for four of the primary journals in the field for the past 10 years. What we found were a smattering of articles related to serving students with a variety of disabilities, a few articles discussing English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, and an occasional mention of diverse learners or “minority” students, but virtually nothing related to multicultural learning and teaching. Meanwhile, the literature published by some other professional organizations with somewhat overlapping missions and goals (e.g., the Journal of College Student Development, a publication of the American College Personnel Association) is rich with articles addressing issues of race, religion, ethnicity, social class, gender, home language, age, sexual orientation, and disability as they pertain to higher education. Let me make it clear that it is not our professional association’s journals or their editorial staffs that are to be faulted for this dearth of multicultural articles. Those of us working in developmental education who have... [continues]

Read full essay