A Critical Discourse Analysis of Developmental Educators’ Roles in Postsecondary Education

Location

DeSantis Room 1049

Format Type

Plenary

Format Type

Paper

Start Date

15-1-2020 2:15 PM

End Date

15-1-2020 2:35 PM

Abstract

We employed critical discourse analyses to interview, focus group, and survey data from 191 higher education professionals within the field of developmental education, including learning support, literacy, and developmental mathematics. Specifically, we examined deixis, nominalization, passivization, and semantic micro-to-macrostructures. Our findings uncovered large-scale normative patterns of ambiguity concerning (1) developmental education as a unified profession, as well as, (2) who should be responsible for transformations in higher education. While participants keenly understood their everyday subjective developmental education professional roles, they made ambiguous and fragmented identity claims about developmental education’s normative role within higher education. Ultimately, we found that participants’ discourses invoked a “nebulous we” to enact specifically-stated goals intended to respond to a myriad of undefined “nebulous they” recipients. Our study added to the research literature in higher education by uncovering how practitioners’ positive intents for higher education equity and access transformation can stall when dependent upon unnamed “nebulous we” actors to enact postsecondary educational reforms.

Keywords

postsecondary, higher education, critical discourse, professional identity, qualitative research, developmental education

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Jan 15th, 2:15 PM Jan 15th, 2:35 PM

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Developmental Educators’ Roles in Postsecondary Education

DeSantis Room 1049

We employed critical discourse analyses to interview, focus group, and survey data from 191 higher education professionals within the field of developmental education, including learning support, literacy, and developmental mathematics. Specifically, we examined deixis, nominalization, passivization, and semantic micro-to-macrostructures. Our findings uncovered large-scale normative patterns of ambiguity concerning (1) developmental education as a unified profession, as well as, (2) who should be responsible for transformations in higher education. While participants keenly understood their everyday subjective developmental education professional roles, they made ambiguous and fragmented identity claims about developmental education’s normative role within higher education. Ultimately, we found that participants’ discourses invoked a “nebulous we” to enact specifically-stated goals intended to respond to a myriad of undefined “nebulous they” recipients. Our study added to the research literature in higher education by uncovering how practitioners’ positive intents for higher education equity and access transformation can stall when dependent upon unnamed “nebulous we” actors to enact postsecondary educational reforms.