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E d i t o r ’ s I n t r o d u c t i o n 269

> Holly Hassel

Creating Equitable Two-Year College English Programs

I am very excited about the feature articles in this issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College because of the research and theory—on issues of critical importance

to two-year college teachers—they offer to support the mission of equity, access, and fairness that are central to two-year colleges. I believe they respond to some of the most pressing issues that face us in our work, including placement, assessment, acceleration, developmental education, equitable and just writing programs, and undergraduate research.

Jamila Kareem’s “A Critical Race Analysis of Transition-Level Writing Cur-riculum to Support the Racially Diverse Two-Year College” identifies what she calls “the absent presence of race consciousness and orientation toward whiteness in [a typical university’s] writing curriculum,” and her analysis shows “why designs in curriculum similar to this at many institutions promote interest convergence when acclimating racially marginalized students to college-level writing practices.” She also offers an alternative framework for building programs that reflect linguistic diversity and cultural competence, as well as reflect the values of CCCC’s “Students Right to Their Own Language” statement. As the most linguistically and ethni-cally diverse institutions of higher education, two-year college English programs can grapple with creating classrooms, instructional methods, and assessments that seem increasingly called to answer to ever-expanding types of accounting—course or program-level exit examinations, transfer destinations of students, legislative or system-level mandates, and so forth. Kareem’s article offers readers a way to examine “the racist implications of writing curriculum outcomes and to develop antiracist curricula that support the academic, professional, and civic success of the majority of their students.”

The second feature article, Genie Giaimo’s “Where Theory and Praxis Collide: Supporting Student-Led Writing Center Research at Two-Year Colleges” reports on her study of undergraduate research at a two-year college writing center. The article reports on “positive outcomes of collaborating with students on writing center research, such as increased persistence, increased interest in peer tutoring, and transfer of learning regarding research methods and key tutoring concepts,” and includes direction for readers on how they might implement a similar under-graduate experience in their local setting. Recognizing that undergraduate research

edItor’s IntroductIon

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projects are demonstrated to be particularly high impact for underrepresented and marginalized students, Giaimo’s project includes insights from student participants.

The research study by Jane Nazzal, Carol B. Olson, and Huy Q. Chung reported in “Writing Proficiency and Student Placement in Community College Composition Courses” comes from Nazzal’s background working in an education graduate program and as a two-year college writing faculty member. Building on previous work that looks at standardized tests for placing students into writing and support courses, and comparing these data with analytical writing that students produced, the study offers useful information to community college faculty who are either leading or responding to legislative and perhaps state college system-level pressures to eliminate developmental education or to change the ways they assess students at the point of placement. Situated within their own state of California, where recent legislation has imposed rather sweeping and directive policies about how students can be placed into and required to take specific types of learning support or nondegree credit coursework, Nazzal et al. describe the results of their research. The intent of the study is to examine the relationship between students’ placement assessments and their success in composition coursework (in a four-course sequence). As many of us are faced with making program decisions about which students most benefit from acceleration to degree-credit composition (and to critically engage with the methods used to make such determinations), this study provides some empirical evidence to support informed decision making. In essence, the study helps show both that “more students can experience success if placed directly into the college-level (CL) composition course, which can save up to a year of required coursework and increase the students’ overall chances of college success” and that “this policy, overextended to include students in the lowest level [precollegiate level 1] course (and possibly, to an extent, the next level [precol-legiate level 2 course] may be disadvantageous for some students.”’ These findings should be valuable to instructors who are working with colleagues to adjust to the changing landscape of developmental and writing curriculum at our campuses and in our home states.

A shorter, classroom-focused Instructional Note in this issue addresses the use of nonfiction creative writing in composition classes. Jennifer Young’s “Hermit Crabs to the Rescue: Using Creative Nonfiction as a Bridge to Academic Prose” introduces readers to the “hermit crab” essay, or adapting “an already existing form . . . as the container for the writing at hand, such as the essay in the form of a ‘to-do’ list, or a field guide, or a recipe.” Young’s article gives readers details (with clever and engaging examples from students) for a strategy that invites students to “remediate” genres in ways that prepare them to move from personal to academic writing tasks.

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