Date of Award

12-2019

Document Type

Dissertation - Campus Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Discipline

Philosophy

Abstract

This study examined the instructional strategies and approaches used to engage Non-College Ready (NCR) Integrated Reading and Writing (IRW) students enrolled in developmental education at an HBCU in a southern state. The goal for developmental education programs is to increase students’ knowledge and skills to be able to matriculate successfully through college-level courses. A shift in developmental education currently reflects programs that focus on allowing students to matriculate through the required courses thereby increasing competition and graduation rates. This change involves offering paired classes that allow students to accelerate through the courses enrolled in developmental education courses and college credit courses.

Lubienski (2007) explained that developmental instructors must continue to learn new teaching strategies needed to teach developmental students. (Datray, Saxon, & Martirosyan, 2014) concluded, it is essential for faculty to gain knowledge and learn new strategies for disseminating information to students; they must have access to new effective techniques. Bailey et al. (2016) recommends that developmental instructors are equipped with quality resources, trainings, and materials they need to effectively provide quality lessons to the students they teach.

Despite the differences, one constant in the research indicates that developmental programs that employ a foundation of organizational and teaching strategies have a correlation to higher passing and completion rates in courses, better grades, and improved rates of retention (Boylan, Bonham, & White, 1999, p. 94). To that end, the questions that guided this study were:

Research question 1 What type of teaching methods do HBCU instructors at a four-year college employ to address developmental learners?

Research question 2 What strategies are the HBCU instructors at a four-year college employing to engage developmental learners?

Research question 3 What professional development resources are used by HBCU developmental instructors to improve their professional knowledge, competence, skill, and effectiveness?

Research question 4 How has the IRW instructor’s professional preparation influenced instructional techniques and strategies in the developmental co-requisite course ENGL 0111 at a four HBCU?

Summary

The phenomenological qualitative research was examined by the researcher revealing the lived experiences of the five Integrated Reading and Writing Instructors at a HBCU. The participants’ perspectives provided the researcher with data that was used to determine significant central themes. The data derived from the questionnaire, face-to-face interviews, notes, member checking, and documentation of demographic data, lead the researcher to identify four central themes which included: (1) Teaching to Different Learning Styles, (2) Engagement, (3) Enhance Instructional Effectiveness and (4) Adaptability. The participants’ responses revealed the needs of the students are a dominant factor for determining the most effective teaching strategies and best practices to impact student success.

Keywords: Integrated reading and writing, persistence, co-requisite

Committee Chair/Advisor

Pamela Barber-Freeman

Committee Member

Arthur L. Petterway

Committee Member

Angela Branch-Vital

Committee Member

Carl Gardiner

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

11/20/2024

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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