From the Arts & Humanities Department, General Studies Division, Wor-Wic Community College, Salisbury, Maryland.
Jenny L. McFadden, EdD – Corresponding Author
jmcfadden@worwic.edu
Students of color are frequently overrepresented in transitional (also referred to as developmental) coursework yet underrepresented in higher education. Our open-admissions community college is no exception when it comes to this systemic problem. At our rural institution, our predominantly white arts and humanities department (which houses our transitional and credit-level English courses) wanted to provide a platform for our much more racially diverse student population to share their perspectives on literacy and learning with us. Once we obtained IRB approval, a 6-person faculty research team consisting of credit and transitional educators was assembled. We used a multiple-case study design wherein students were given the opportunity to participate in 3 semi-structured interviews and a focus group as our means for data collection. Purposive sampling was employed to recruit 10 transitional students and recent completers, all of whom happened to be female. Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Multiracial races were represented. The research team embraced a writing-as-method data analysis technique to collaboratively explore the following research question: What do transitional students of color believe about their experiences in and beyond transitional English classes? A critical race theory lens was applied to give voice to counter stories debunking deficit narratives that too often surround transitional students, particularly students of color and other marginalized groups. This study offers insights into transitional students’ literacies, racial identities pertaining to learning, perseverance and strengths when faced with challenges, and desire for community and self-expression. Implications for increasing understanding, compassion, and support are considered, as are suggestions for further research.
As a Professor of Transitional English at Wor-Wic Community College, I, Jenny, principal investigator, have long been bothered by overrepresentation of students of color within my classes, a phenomenon that is, as fellow community college instructors are well aware, not unique to my institution (Ganga et al., 2018; Inman, 2023; Molloy et al., 2020; Preston, 2017). A few years after defending my dissertation, a study that employed writing-as-method and case studies featuring multiple semi-structured interviews, I sought to recruit interested colleagues and student participants to utilize similar methodology in grappling with the following research question: What do students of color on our campus believe about their experiences in and beyond transitional English classes? In Fall 2022, a team of faculty within Wor-Wic’s Arts & Humanities Department, which oversees the college’s English coursework, was granted approval from our campus’s institutional review board to conduct this qualitative research project.
My suspicion was that though our findings could not address the problem of overrepresentation, we would at least begin to gain insight into how to better support this population. Post-pandemic, beginning a college career is challenging for multitudes of students, as fellow educators have surely seen. The participants we sought to work with in this study maintain multiple identities that potentially add to challenges faced by all learners, as these students have been historically relegated to the margins of higher education based on at least 3 markers of identity: their status as transitional learners, their identification as students of color, and their entry into higher education through a community college. Because I spend so much of my career working with students who are marginalized by these and other factors, I designed a study that would allow faculty and the students we serve to collaboratively explore our experiences in and beyond classrooms with a goal of listening to students who are frequently not afforded voices in higher education.
The research context is a rural, open-admissions community college on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the demographics provided here reflect the makeup of our campus during Fall 2022 when data collection began. Wor-Wic Community College serves a tri-county area that includes one of the most economically challenged counties in our state. At the time of data collection, enrollment included over 2,400 credit students, with 83% of them enrolled on a part-time rather than a full-time basis. Sixty-nine percent of those students identified as female, and approximately 40% identified as non-White. We are located outside of a small city, Salisbury, (population about 33,000) in Wicomico County. When our study began, well over half of our credit students resided in Wicomico, with students coming from Salisbury as well as suburban and rural areas within the county. Our next largest population, about a quarter of our students, resided in Worcester County, a rural but wealthier area extending to the coast and including Ocean City, a major tourist destination. About 10% of our students were residents of Somerset County, where the U.S. Census Bureau (2024) reports a poverty level of over 20% (compared to an estimated 10% in Worcester and 15% in Wicomico). The remainder of our students come from neighboring counties and states, as we are located within a tri-state peninsula within thirty minutes driving time of our bordering states. Wor-Wic student ages range greatly, as we serve dually enrolled high school students, traditional college students, a great number of students returning to or beginning college later in life, and even senior citizens. The average student age at the time of this study was 24.
Several arts and humanities faculty, including the Directors of Developmental Education (that was the term we used before replacing “Developmental” with “Transitional”) and the Reading & Writing Center; Lynn, the co-author of this piece who teaches both credit-level and transitional English; and our department chair, agreed to join the research team, and all were involved by conducting interviews with a single student participant assigned to them over the course of the Fall ‘22 and Spring ‘23 semesters. Most faculty researchers also assisted with one or more of the following: Composing reflective analytic memos as part of our writing-as-method (Colyar, 2009; St. Pierre, 2015) data analysis approach, transcribing interview data, and/or serving as an interviewer in a focus group held toward the end of the Spring ‘23 semester. Because our research team was composed of predominantly White instructors, which mirrors our department’s demographics, this is another reason why we felt it was necessary to 1) conduct the research, and 2) embrace a collaborative approach with our participants. We wish to avoid speaking for them, but rather, aim to highlight their experiences and perspectives, and because our departmental faculty do not reflect the same level of racial diversity present in our student population, we view this research as one way of saying: We see you. We hear you. You belong here, and we want to know, as your instructors, what can we do to better serve you?
We will next disclose our positionalities as authors and researchers, as well as describe the demographic makeup of our research team. We will describe the context for conducting the research, our methods for data collection and analysis, and 4 key findings that emerged from our qualitative data. In our discussion of our findings, we will acknowledge limitations and consider pedagogical and institutional implications for those who teach or interact with transitional students of color, paying close attention to the literacy lives of the women who shared their stories with us.
Because this qualitative design relied on human decision-making during semi-structured interviews and subjective interpretations during data analysis, it is important to further describe the positionality of the research team as a whole and acknowledge the perspectives with which we the co-authors approached this work. As we mentioned, the majority of our research team identify as White, though one of us identifies as Latino. Four of us are female and 2 male. At the time of data collection, we were all in our mid-30s or older. We all have at least a Master’s degree and come from varying socioeconomic and political upbringings. Several of us are first-generation scholars. Two of us are multilingual.
I, Jenny, am one of the first-generation scholars in our group. I am White, but my marriage to my Black husband and my role as a mother to our biological children (who identify as either Multiracial or Black, or both, depending on the contexts) have heavily influenced my research interests. I primarily teach transitional English, and the diverse group of students we serve who are overrepresented in my classrooms, particularly learners of color and multilingual individuals, further contribute to the ways I view teaching and learning. I attended a 4-year college for my undergraduate degree in English, but I do have experience as a community college student from my time taking classes while dually enrolled in high school. I earned an MA in rhetoric and composition and an EdD in literacy in a program with a strong social justice focus.
I, Lynn, am also a first-generation college student. Having grown up in a working-class family with a mother who had a high school education and a father who earned a GED to join the Navy and fight in WWII, there were no expectations for any of our family’s 3 children to go to college. I remember helping my 50-somthing-year-old father with a technical writing course required for his job as a supervisor for a mass transit company where he had started as a mechanic. I worked to pay my own way through college, spending several years attending a community college part-time, full-time, and then taking a break. Nine years later, I earned my BA in English education, my MA in composition and rhetoric 10 years after that, and finally my EdD in educational leadership. As a middle and high school teacher, I worked with developmental through advanced placement students, and as a college professor I teach co-requisite transitional and credit English. Because of these experiences, I have an interest in student success and retention, especially for transitional and first-generation students.
The literature readily suggests that students of color are frequently marginalized in higher education contexts (Inman, 2023; Jehangir, 2002; Jones & Assalone, 2016; Preston, 2017). Transitional education, often known as developmental education in other campus contexts, is a contested requirement. Courses such as college reading that Jenny coordinates are often thought of as lesser; our work tends to be misunderstood and mislabeled by those outside of our classrooms. The debate about the effectiveness of transitional education rages on; recent works have critiqued the fetishizing of speeding students through developmental coursework (Brady, 2024), cautioned adopting acceleration models without fully considering local contexts (Serviss et al., 2024), and reflected upon how we must not allow basic writing programs to “become yet another system to fail” our most marginalized of learners (Inman, 2023, p. 52). According to VanOra, transitional or developmental students are those “college students lacking in basic reading, writing, and/or mathematics abilities. These students are generally required to complete a number of non-credit-bearing, basic skills courses before enrolling in freshman-level English” and other credit-level courses (2012, p. 22). Because the racial demographics of Wor-Wic’s transitional English and math courses across campus do not typically mirror those of our college as a whole when it comes to the proportions of students represented across races, our research team felt it was imperative to conduct this research.
When we began gathering data to demonstrate the need for our project, we found that in Fall 2019, over 77% of Black and 65% of Hispanic freshman on our campus required transitional coursework, compared to 56% of incoming White students. This is reflective of systemic and historical inequities nationwide, as scholarship indicates that overrepresentation of students of color is common at both 2- and 4-year institutions offering developmental/transitional education (Ganga et al., 2018; Jehangir, 2002; Jones & Assalone, 2016; Preston, 2017). The problem is particularly pronounced in community colleges, as a 2018 document entitled Developmental Education: An Introduction for Policymakers indicates that 68% of Asian, 75% of Hispanic, and 78% of Black community college students are placed in transitional education, compared to 64% of their White peers. The same report has even grimmer statistics concerning retention: for both Black and Hispanic groups, only 19% of those developmental students graduate within 6 years (Ganga et al., 2018, p. 3).
As instructors, we have little control over which students are placed in our courses. But there has never been a more opportune time to elevate and learn from the perspectives of students of color, and doing so in a transitional education context is imperative given the demographics of these classrooms across the country. Humanistic research designs allow powerful stories to be told, potentially reaching minds and hearts to suggest possibilities for change. As a field, transitional/developmental education is a ripe context for this type of research, which has typically taken a backseat to quantitative studies. “Unfortunately,” write Koch, Slate, and Moore, “little qualitative research has been conducted to examine student perceptions about their experiences in developmental programs” (2012, p. 63). Scholars in transitional education, such as Jones and Assalone, have noted this research gap, writing, “Qualitative methods can be especially helpful” in comprehending how students of color experience developmental education (2016, p. 27). Following Shaughnessy’s (1977) lead, for many decades now, numerous compositionists have analyzed the writing of developmental students (Bird, 2013; Bizzell, 1986; Gulley, 2012).
Yet, in reviewing the literature, we were unable to locate many qualitative studies focused on how transitional students of color perceive themselves as readers and writers, and even fewer that utilized multiple case studies. We believed our study could help us find ways to leverage our students’ literacy strengths to better meet their needs on our campus, while also revealing potential implications for transitional students of color elsewhere.
We decided a critical race theory (CRT) lens was the most appropriate way to frame our study because our research question is born out of a systemic, racialized problem. Our team applied CRT as “a framework for understanding the silenced voices” of students (Knaus, 2006, p. 13). In alignment with Knaus and other CRT researchers such as Ladson-Billings (1998), Patton (2016), and Martinez (2014), we maintain that Eurocentric schooling often privileges certain White students while it simultaneously denies the values and languages of many students of color. Though our college is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the research team recognizes that formal schooling from K-12 and beyond is too often a process during which “racism is reinforced, taught, and ultimately fostered through policies, practices, and… knowledge” (Knaus, 2006, p. 40).
In October 2022 we received IRB approval to begin recruitment for our study, which occurred via purposive sampling. Students responded to calls for participants as the study was advertised by flyers, email, and within transitional and credit-level English classes campuswide. When initial recruitment slowed, some of the final participants received direct invitations, as they had existing relationships with Jenny.
We budgeted to recruit 20 participants as we were supported by our campus’s Office of Student Engagement, who supplied us with $20 gift cards for students upon completion of each interview. These incentives helped retain participants through the multiple-interview process, though, as we will discuss later, retention and even initial participation efforts were a challenge with our student population. We ultimately recruited 10 participants who completed at least 1 interview, and our data collection consisted of 23 total interviews conducted between October 2022 and April 2023, as well as 1 focus group comprised of 5 of the 10 participants.
Data analysis using writing-as-method to search for common themes across cases is a technique employed by prominent qualitative researchers including St. Pierre (2015) and Colyar (2009). This approach centers “how researchers construct knowledge about people, themselves, and the world by writing” (St. Pierre, 2015, p. 5304); writing-as-method inquiries posit that writing is synonymous with thinking and analysis. We began this analysis as soon as the earliest data was transcribed, though due to demanding schedules, our team of researchers were less collaboratively involved than we originally envisioned. Jenny interviewed 5 of the 10 participants, and the other 5 members of the research team were each assigned 1 participant to interview throughout the 2 semesters. It is important to note that this research was undertaken without the benefits offered by research institutions, such as course releases or monetary compensation, for the significant time researchers invested in this project. Most of the 6 researchers were teaching at least 15 credits during data collection, our standard teaching load per semester, and 2 researchers who taught less had significant duties in other areas (serving as Department Chair and Reading & Writing Center Director). Thus, though transcribing began immediately, it did not conclude until September 2023.
As participant interviews were transcribed, those members of the research team who opted to participate in writing-as-method data analysis listened to interviews and/or read transcripts and added commentary to a running document focused on our research question: What do students of color believe about their experiences in and beyond transitional English classes? We organized the document by listing participants’ pseudonyms alphabetically in bold, followed by demographic information (age, major, and racial background in her own words), and a profile noting possible emerging themes in the data written by either Jenny or the participant’s assigned interviewer.
The interviews were semi-structured in nature. For example, the first interview script was:
Interviewers were free to insert questions or to skip around the protocol depending on directions conversations took. We also used scripts for interviews 2 and 3, which included questions like “Since we last spoke, has anything happened that led to you thinking more about who you are as a student of color or as a person of color? As a transitional student? As a community college student? As a writer?” and “Is there anything you think your transitional or other English teacher could do differently to improve learning for you and your classmates?” Jenny and the faculty member assigned to the participant (when they were not the same person) both listened to and/or read transcriptions of earlier interviews to generate additional follow-up questions for subsequent interviews.
Of our 10 participants, just 5 were available to complete all 3 interviews. Table 1 shows a breakdown of our participants’ demographics, as listed by pseudonym, and indicates level of involvement in terms of number of interviews completed and focus group contribution.
| Table 1. Participant Demographics and Study Completion Rates. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Racial/Ethnic Background in Participant’s Words | Major | Age | Interviews Completed | Focus Group Completed | Courses* |
| Bethany | Hispanic, Mexican | Nursing | 25 | 3 | Yes | ENG 095 |
| Rochelle | African-American (“Mostly,” noted Cherokee heritage, too) | Special education / Early childhood education | 41 | 2 | No | ENG 086, ENG 095, ENG 096 (passed 086 but failed the other courses more than a decade before data collection) ENG 095 |
| Adriana | African-American | Chemical dependency counseling | 52 | 2 | Yes | ENG 097 |
| Tiana | African-American | Nursing | 32 | 1 | No | ENG 096 (Failed multiple times more than a decade before data collection) ENG 095 |
| Rose | Black / African-American | Nursing | 24 | 2 | No | ENG 095 |
| Nia | African-American | Early childhood education | 41 | 3 | Yes | ENG 095 |
| Darlene | Puerto Rican, half Black | Criminal justice | 19 | 3 | No | ENG 097 (Passed one year before data collection) |
| Love | Haitian Creole, Hispanic | General studies / Nursing | 19 | 2 | No | ENG 095 |
| Jessie | Asian, Pakistani | Nursing | 21 | 3 | Yes | ENG 095 (Passed during a second attempt one year before data collection) ENG 096 |
| Aurora | South Asian, Pakistani | Biology | 18 | 3 | Yes | ENG 095 |
| *This column indicates transitional English coursework attempted or completed before, or enrolled in during data collection. When only 1 course is listed, that is the course the student was enrolled in during data collection. If more than 1 course is listed, notes about progress are provided, and the bold course indicates the course the student was enrolled in during data collection. Abbreviations: ENG 086 = introduction to writing; ENG 095 = college reading; ENG 096 = basic writing; ENG 097 = college literacy (a combined course that fulfills requirements for both ENG 095 and ENG 096). | ||||||
Despite intentional efforts to recruit men and women, our sample was entirely female. We had anticipated a diverse sample in terms of racial backgrounds, ages, monolingual/multilingual learners, and majors. While representation was reflected in these categories, gender was one variable in which we were unable to adequately depict the demographics of our classrooms through our sample. We had approached the research knowing the likelihood of fairly representing all subgroups of students who met criteria for participation would not be guaranteed; according to one research memo, we planned to address this as follows: We anticipate and welcome diversity amongst the sample in terms of gender, age, monolingual/multilingual students, race, and other characteristics but will not deny participation to any individual who meets selection criteria. If we see our cohort is becoming heavily made up of one gender or any other demographic variable described above, we will pursue more direct invitations to attempt to achieve a well-balanced sample.
While we did issue more direct invitations to men once we saw the unbalanced influx of interest, our attempts did not result in any male participants. We advertised that the study was open first-come, first-served, and we did not wish to deny participation to any eligible student. We quickly received 20 respondents during the recruitment phase, but only 2 identified as male. One did not meet the selection criteria we had established, because although he had enrolled in a transitional math course, we were interested in students’ literacy experiences, particularly as they pertained to racial identity, and we had determined that students must be either currently enrolled in transitional English or have taken such a class during the past year. Since this student did not require transitional English, he was not eligible to participate. The other male signed a consent form and was assigned an interviewer to begin data collection, but he never completed his first interview. He was not the only participant to cease involvement before data collection began, and because we wanted to give students with consent forms on file a fair chance at participating, and we were also working under tight time constraints, attempts to follow up with some potential participants prevented us from recruiting additional students.
As we worked to transcribe interviews and begin writing-as-method analysis for each participant’s case, we established a second running document where we proposed tentative findings across cases. We placed the research question at the top of our document and collaboratively identified themes that were surfacing across multiple cases and in focus group data by reviewing previous writing-as-method memos, rereading and relistening to data, and encouraging all interested interviewers to add their insights to this running document. We felt that this approach allowed flexibility in rich data interpretation, while still holding us accountable for carefully reviewing data and considering how our own positionalities impacted the way we were interpreting findings. In applying a CRT lens to data analysis as we proposed emergent findings, we sought to highlight the counterstories found within participants’ experiences. According to Martinez, “As a narrative form, counterstory functions as a method for marginalized people to intervene in... master narratives based on ignorance and on assumptions about minoritized people” (2014, p. 33). Though our research team is made up of colleagues who embrace varying political ideologies, a phenomenon applying to the participants we interviewed as well, we agreed that counterstorying was a useful approach to highlight and amplify student experiences that challenge misconceptions about who our students are and what they are capable of.
Scholars have established the importance of not viewing transitional learners through a deficit lens (Foster-Irizarry, 2023; Holschuh and Paulson, 2013; Marbley et al., 2013), yet even the most well-intentioned professors might suspect that students who are placed in transitional English coursework may not be engaging regularly in the types of literacy practices valued in traditional college classrooms. However, data from our study suggested that participants have rich literacy lives. For example, Aurora, an 18-year-old biology major, shares, “So for 2022, I read 19 out of 20 books and I started in June. And then my goal this year is 25 books. I’m already one book ahead of schedule.” Aurora is also multilingual, acquiring her linguistic diversity through self-teaching as she grew up in a home that stressed proficiency in English. “[I speak] Urdu and Punjabi. I didn’t learn that growing up. I learned English [as a first language]. But I wanted to learn about it, so I taught myself how to learn it… As for translating [for my parents], I mostly do that.”
Jessie, a second Pakistani participant, also takes on translating duties in her family. The 21-year-old nursing student who came to the U.S. from Pakistan as a young teen explains, “I’m the translator [for my mother]. So yeah, I take to her doctors’ appointments, and everything, and then tell them she can’t speak, but she understand you… I always go with her in case she needs translator with me.” Just as they both have impressive linguistic backgrounds, Jessie shares Aurora’s passion for reading, stating, “I love it. All the books. I love it.”
Finding joy in reading is echoed by most participants, including Rose, a 24-year-old African-American nursing student who enjoys Harry Potter, and Love, a 19-year-old Haitian Creole/Hispanic general studies major, who notes, “Actually, reading is kind of my favorite thing. It’s my hobby. It’s like when I’m not doing something, I’m usually reading.”
The participants not only express a love for reading, but many of them mention enthusiasm for writing, too. Rose speaks of writing poetry and even speculates on perhaps authoring a book one day. Darlene, a 19-year-old Puerto Rican/Black criminal justice major, describes an interest in writing song lyrics, which then progressed into some poetry writing of her own. And Tiana, 32, an African-American nursing major who was recognized as an accomplished writer in high school, reflects, “They used to have this thing in high school called poetry.com. I used to write on there all the time… I got a couple of awards and everything.”
And even amidst their busy lives, when participants are balancing school, work, and family obligations, they still make time for embracing literacies beyond those required by their coursework. Bethany, a 25-year-old Hispanic nursing major, explains how as a mother, she and her partner have established an annual tradition wherein they use writing to record pivotal moments in their son’s life: “[My wife and I] write [our son] a whole letter of how last year he did this, but this year he’s doing this now... I’m saving them for when he’s older.” Says Nia, 41, an African-American early childhood education major, “I’ll read anything. But see I came up with my grandma; we had to read the newspaper; she’s reading it…” The intellectual curiosity her grandmother instilled in her when she was growing up continues to drive her, as she adds, “I need to learn something new every day.”
Even if our sample had not contained such racial diversity, we would not have expected to find uniform views on race and culture. No group is a monolith. In our participants, the diversity in age, race, ethnicity, multilingualism, and other elements of the women’s identities further contribute to the likelihood that perspectives on race differ.
Right away, we observed contrasting views when it came to how participants felt about race in the classroom. Love speaks affirmatively when reflecting on a time when race came up in her English class: “I felt like, kind of happy about it because I feel like this is something that we need to talk more about, because it really is like, don’t speak about it, and nothing is done about it. And we should talk more about what’s going on in the world every day.”
On the other hand, Darlene is far more trepidant, stating bluntly, “I think it’s safer to leave race out of the classroom.” In a subsequent interview, she elaborates, “People don’t have filters sometimes.” It seemed that she was afraid acknowledging race in the classroom may open opportunities for others to voice discriminatory/prejudiced views.
This finding is likely an important one for instructors, particularly White teachers, to reflect upon because several of our participants did speak of lived encounters with racism. Rose relays a tale of shopping with her sister: “The first thing I get is the look…when you see it, it’s terrible.” She went on to narrate a classic tale of the phenomenon known as Shopping While Black, explaining that the judgmental looks she and her sister experienced led to increased anxiety and uneasiness, which culminated when Rose accidentally dropped and broke a bottle containing hair product. “Why did they just keep staring at us?” Rose questions. “If they see we had a handful of stuff, why not help us?”
Bethany voices 2 other examples of discrimination, both pertaining to working with the public. In one incident, a woman she was assisting with a healthcare appointment unfairly blamed her own difficulties with a computerized self-check-in on Bethany’s ability to speak English. (While some may perceive Bethany as speaking with a slight accent, she’s extremely fluent in English). In describing a similar incident with a previous employment situation, Bethany confided that a woman in a retail setting was price haggling, and Bethany replied “I don't know, I can't, I'm not authorized to give you that for the price, so then, so I called my manager, they told her no. But [the customer] told me that if I spoke better English, I would understand her. And, um, so this is all through the holiday season. So, I was like, you know, I was stressed out, and I was like, whoa. Like, that was the first time that has happened to you. Like, I had to leave the register. Like, I'm like, crying, you know, because that has never happened to me.”
And in one more blatant example of racism, Rochelle, 41, an African-American special education/early childhood education major, shares that when she had arrived to pick up her son from an event at his school, they were subjected to a fellow student’s use of an egregious racial slur directed toward Rochelle’s son and one of his friends.
While multiple participants described navigating difficult racial realities beyond Wor-Wic, we were glad to note that our campus was overwhelmingly described as inclusive and welcoming. Rose and Nia, for instance, both speak about diversity within classrooms and hallways, with Rose mentioning “positive vibes” and Nia commenting, “I feel welcome anywhere I go.” There were, however, times when participants did seem to feel underrepresented. For example, Aurora observes “I haven’t seen any other Pakistani person on campus yet.” She was surprised to find out that not only were there other Pakistani students at Wor-Wic, but there was a second Pakistani woman participating in our focus group! During that group conversation, Bethany reflects that she sees mostly White professionals comprising not only Wor-Wic faculty, but also scientific and scholarly communities in general, and though she noted that it seems like strides are being made with representation among some races rising, she laments, “as Hispanic, I don’t see, you know, Latinos…”
Our participants face and overcome a variety of challenges. Many are first generation college students and, therefore, do not have parents who understand what college is like, or even display parental support for their college endeavors. Darlene had difficulty with a stutter and reading early in her education which caused anxiety. She was in pull-out classes in K-5 and that helped. In her freshman and sophomore years of high school, she had a 0.03 GPA due to not taking classes seriously, hanging out with the wrong people, and physically fighting others. COVID gave her time to reflect, make better choices, and mature. At the time of the first interview, after completing her first year of college and her transitional English sequence, Darlene had earned a 4.0 cumulative GPA.
Bethany received an IEP for ADHD around 4th grade in Texas, where instruction was mostly Spanish, until her family moved north, and she was then placed in ESOL classes. She “did not finish high school. [She] got to 10th grade.” As the oldest child of a single parent, she was frequently a “second parent” for her 5 siblings. Other participants were starting college after being out of high school for as many as 23 years and felt challenged because so much had changed in school since then. Adrianna, a stroke survivor, was concerned about overtaxing herself like she had before her stroke, so she was going to take college slowly. Unfortunately, her mother passed away in the middle of our study, so she needed to take the spring semester off.
A common challenge for our study population is learning how to be a college student and navigate independent learning. The older participants report struggling with technology: typing ability, having an old computer, and learning how to use PowerPoint. The focus group cites Blackboard, our college’s learning management system, as an issue largely due to instructors organizing their Blackboard pages differently from one another, making it difficult for students to locate materials, content, and assignments. Lack of awareness about college resources such as the reading and writing center, peer tutoring, US Federal TRIO Programs, and the media center also surfaced. Once they became aware of these resources, students began using them. In addition to these challenges, our participants tend to struggle with academic writing in general, adding details to their paragraphs, incorporating outside sources, adhering to MLA guidelines, and managing grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
Being a college student requires students to manage their time and find a rhythm that works for them individually. Most of the participants are employed and/or have family responsibilities, so adding college courses to their lives brings other challenges like stress, anxiety, and/or depression. All focus group participants work and agree, “we have families we have to care for…we have to make a living.” Coordinating a work schedule with a school schedule, Nia mentions having night class and working during the day one semester and vice versa the next. She feels fortunate her employer is willing to work with her. Rose works 2 jobs, one part-time and one full-time, has a family, and is taking courses. She says it is important to get “into those habits that will set you up for success” and she is “trying to learn the rhythm of juggling 3 tough classes” and work.
Perhaps a symptom of their overwhelming schedules, the focus group notes procrastination as an issue. One participant says she will “take care of everyone else in the household first instead of studying or doing schoolwork.” Another says she cleans when she has “to study for a test or something.” Grappling with time management over 2 semesters, several participants learned how many classes they could handle at a time and be successful. Darlene could handle 3, Jessie 2, and Adriana 1. Participants also note that taking a break and doing something fun was needed to relieve stress, which they identified as an important part of finding a rhythm.
Even though our participants experienced learning curves and challenges, they persevered at their own individual paces. The focus group says that transitional classes helped prepare them for what college credit courses would be like. When asked if they thought they would still be in college if they went directly into a credit English course, many said no. Also, when asked if they felt their high school English was similar to what they did in college English, they said, “No. It’s totally different.” Several participants are experiencing success as they work hard to earn good grades, pass classes, graduate, and ultimately, transfer to 4-year colleges and/or start their careers.
Despite the challenges our students face in college, they have a desire for connection and community; they want to feel like they fit in and belong. Just entering a college classroom makes many students anxious because they do not know anyone nor know what to expect. Class discussions were difficult at first as students “were all very shy…. But after we opened up, we got to know each other…and used to each other,” explains Love. Darlene shares “straight out of high school… to college, I was nervous at first… I ended up meeting great students [who] were also, you know, new to college. So, we kind of stuck around together just for a little bit, just till we got the hang of college, then we went our separate ways.”
Rose and Nia were among participants who shared that after the initial discomfort, they began to interact more and develop class-centric friendships and study groups. However, this is not every participant’s experience for several reasons. Aurora, a very shy student, says, “I don’t really have friends.” She does have one connection whom she knew prior to her time at Wor-Wic. Aurora describes interacting with this friend in terms of practically her sole social life on campus, which could have impeded the development of relationships with other students. Also, living a significant distance from the college and working 12-hour hospital shifts as a CNA limits her time on campus. Another participant, Darlene, feels a large portion of students in one class were consistently behaving immaturely. As a result, she says, “I kind of don’t like speaking a lot to my classmates, so I’ll go in, pay attention to the lesson, and I’ll do my assignments.” Being busy may also preclude a student’s ability to connect with others. For example, Darlene is “on campus for work and class, and that’s it.” Finally, the word friend meant something more to one student. Jessie says, “I think it’s hard for me to make friends… Because friendship is a… very big commitment, which I don’t think I can fulfill.” Cultural or personal experiences appear to impact students’ building of relationships.
Even though making friends varies among the participants, having a connection with their instructors is important across the board. They feel the college is a friendly place, and they feel welcome. Relational instructors who get to know their students and offer them assistance make an impact. Adriana says, “I find that the teachers are more caring.” She also notes that professors are “not obligated to do more than they supposed to do, what they required to do…so when they extend that extra help, they don’t know how important that it makes the student feel, you know, that they really matter, that they really, really trying to accomplish something.” Students can tell when the offer is “not genuine;” yet Adriana encourages students who “need the help [to]… still go.” A few one-to-one moments explaining something again or differently can add to a student’s understanding and success.
Additionally, participants mention opportunities and desire to participate more in the college community. Nia shares that “there’s a lot of activities. If you check your student email and get involved.” Darlene also highlights this when she talks about the college being “a friendly place” as evidenced by the college’s website and social media where students can see what other students they know are doing. When offering possible future endeavors to the focus group, they express interest in being part of group activities such as book clubs, field trips to local and Washington, D.C. sites, and various workshops. One that especially catches their attention is an autoethnography workshop. Group responses include, “oooohhhh,” “interesting!” and “some of us have hard stories that we wanna release.”
This study has implications for application, practice, and research. In recognizing that students do have many out-of-school literacy strengths, that they crave community and connection with each other and professors, and that they sometimes feel underrepresented, we created a learning community that is open to any student on campus. Wor-Wic Community College’s Club Literacy (Club “Lit”) was established in the Fall of 2024 after we pursued club status and obtained student signatures from both research participants and the wider student population. Our mission statement is:
Club Lit offers opportunities for students and faculty to gather to share their passions for literacies that they’ve developed outside of academia while also continuing to develop literacy skills that will equip them for success in college classrooms. We seek to build community together as those who are interested in using reading and writing to both enhance our own lives and to improve the world around us, as we view literacy through a social justice lens.
We the authors serve as Club Lit co-advisors, and our first president and vice president were both student participants from our original research. At our launch party, special events, and recruitment efforts, we share our “origin story,” highlighting our research roots, and emphasize that we exist to empower students of all ability levels and that we value all literacy interests. Though we are a newer organization on campus, we are enjoying success so far, including one of the more impressive club turn-outs as far as attendees with our annual “Blind Date” book parties that allow students, faculty, and staff to RSVP with a favorite genre or author in mind. We use club funds to shop for books for all attendees, write “dating profile” descriptions we attach to each purchase, and wrap the books. Each participant chooses one book when we spin a wheel to decide the order of participant selections after they have browsed “dates,” networked, and enjoyed lite fare. Attendees excitedly share their “blind date’s” identities during the unwrapping as other party goers observe and converse.
Another great accomplishment in helping student voices to be heard is that our proposal, Moving Students from the Margins: How One Campus is using Qualitative, Collaborative Research to Create Community, Leverage Literacies, & Support Success, which featured both of us and our first club president, student Wajhia Fatima, as panelist speakers, was selected for presentation at the Two-Year College English Association 2025 National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. Wajhia truly enjoyed her first academic conference, so even though she plans to pursue nursing, she loved seeing a glimpse of what her teachers were doing behind the scenes. Those who attended the panel were impressed with her poise as she shared her thoughts on the importance of literacy and her journey as a transitional community college student nearing graduation.
This study’s findings raise awareness for instructors of both strengths and struggles marginalized students may have, and we hope they may inform teaching methodology changes, and/or inspire instructors to find ways to encourage students’ strengths, to create community in the classroom, and to scaffold assignments. Furthermore, we hope to inspire colleagues to cultivate authentic relationships with students and assist students in developing those relationships with one another, as well. We have offered professional development on our campus to share our participants’ insights with faculty and administration. As far moving forward and further embracing students’ literacy strengths here at Wor-Wic, when several students disclosed creative writing habits, we encouraged them to submit work to our college’s literary magazine, Echoes and Visions (https://www.worwic.edu/services-support/student-activities/echoes-visions/). An award-winning publication in its 38th year, the magazine eagerly anticipates diverse student submissions, but when the demands of the semester are raging, students enrolled in transitional classes might need a gentle reminder that they are just as capable as other peers when it comes to submitting work for consideration. Personal encouragement from faculty may be much more meaningful than the emailed invitation that is likely to get buried (or remain unread) in an inbox.
Creating community in the classroom and building relationships with students may come easily to some instructors and students, but it also may be an opportunity for professional development for instructors and growth for some students. Wor-Wic Community College President, Dr. Deb Casey, strives to maintain a culture of belonging, drawing on the work of Curtis Ray Hill. Hill traveled to our campus to present diversity, equity, and inclusion principles as strategic initiatives during the all staff meeting of Fall 2023. Many of us across campus have joined his online Culture of Belonging network, where we can access resources on how to move people from “feeling” to “knowing” that they belong (https://cultureofbelonging.org/; California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2025).
Another campus initiative, designing 7-week courses, brought professional development to a small group of instructors and introduced us to Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s (2010) motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching. This framework leads instructors to cultivate “respect and connectedness” in the classroom to grow “a community of learners who feel respected and connected to one another.” Offering 7-week courses has the potential to aid in transitional student retention and allow students to graduate faster (Jenkins et. al, 2022; Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2010). Students can attempt the number of credits they are comfortable with and potentially double the number of classes they take during a traditional semester. The shortened term limits the amount of time a student’s course may be disrupted by unforeseen external events. Even though a 7-week course requires a greater time commitment during the term, reaching the halfway mark provides a boost to students to cross the finish line. Moveover, rather than cramming the same 14 weeks of instruction into 7 weeks, as some of us feared, we are reimagining coursework to achieve the same learning objectives in a condensed timeframe. Dr. Margery Ginsberg began leading us in this exciting work, and we are utilizing the motivational framework that she and Wlodkowski (2010) advocate for, which contains a component that aligns beautifully with Hill’s work on Culture of Belonging. Since we have begun the initiative to scale up our 7-week offerings, we have both piloted versions of transitional English (Jenny) and credit English (Lynn) in this modality, and Lynn is leading training for additional instructors to further expand offerings. Jenny’s transitional English course pass rates have seen an increase of about 10%, helping transitional English students fulfill their reading requirement with more success in half the time. The revamped 7-week transitional course is boasting a pass rate of 83% in its inaugural year; credit English students are doing even better in this new format, with 93% of students passing 7-week face-to-face courses.
Lynn has also used the framework in 14-week courses to include more activities for students to get to know each other during the first week of classes, to build interpersonal connections, and to incorporate and to leverage small groups into the class routines and activities (Ertwine, 2023). As soon as groups are formed, each group creates a contract or agreement for how they will communicate, deal with conflict, and support and encourage one another. This provides additional in-class and out-of-class support for students as sometimes asking a classmate a question or for help is easier for students than asking the instructor. Although, when the instructor participates in the get-to-know-you activities and engages in conversations regularly with students, then learners feel more comfortable with the instructor as well. The members of a group often become accountability partners and friends, demonstrating an evolution of a sense of belonging. Offering professional development opportunities on this topic could be helpful to other instructors.
Additionally, encouraging instructors to scaffold complex activities and/or long-term projects may be met with resistance because some may view this as decreasing rigor and increasing teacher workload by differentiating for a handful of students, but it is important to reframe this mindset. Scaffolding will likely benefit the class as a whole, and if done well, rigor will not be decreased; the activities and assignments should simply be clearer and more manageable. For example, breaking the parts of a 3-week-long assignment into shorter parts with feedback and a few low-stakes grades may elicit a better final product, thus increasing student success without compromising standards. Transitional students benefit from seeing how the professor allocated blocks of time for different parts of the assignment and may consider doing this on their own for future assignments in which more independent time management is expected.
In terms of implications for assisting with student success, the Club Lit learning community has been a huge win for us in terms of an actionable response. Another measure we have already implemented at Wor-Wic is an updated version of our learning management system, BlackBoard Ultra. When the update was planned, online and in-person professional development as well as guidelines for organization of courses’ landing pages, content, and assignments were provided. This streamlining of course appearances across content areas was intentional to minimize students’ difficulties navigating BlackBoard pages when taking multiple courses with different instructors.
Additionally, our college continues to emphasize utilizing a student alert system that instructors use to inform advisors when students are struggling academically or otherwise, or to give kudos when students are improving or have achieved success. Advising sends reminders to instructors at key times throughout the semester to send alerts. The advisors, upon receiving alerts, reach out to the students to check on them, offer resources, and/or share positive feedback. Furthermore, many instructors personally send out messages to their students with words of encouragement, suggestions of campus resources, and quick check-ins when student attendance drops.
The Wor-Wic Community College Foundation, which exists to support educational activities and provide financial assistance to students, has now established a Student Success Fund to address challenges students face in and out of classrooms by removing obstacles impeding students’ progress towards graduation. Both this fund and the more flexible scheduling model we are adopting will empower students who are often crippled by unexpected transportation challenges, family needs, or life events, increasing their odds of finishing a class before or as unexpected barriers arise during the middle of a traditional semester.
One challenge our study faced was our difficulty retaining participants; however, this reflects the endemic problem with this particular population and the issues they encounter. Transitional students tend to be more likely to come from impoverished backgrounds than not. One recent figure reports that 40% of transitional students at 4-year institutions and 68% of such students at 2-year colleges are Pell-eligible (Preston, 2017), so when unexpected difficulties arise, they often create a ripple effect of additional financial hardships. As was mentioned previously, Adriana’s mother tragically passed away, but we didn’t know this until after multiple attempts to contact her throughout the second semester of our research. Another participant, Tiana, lost her transportation after her first and only interview, and eventually had to stop attending classes because of this new obstacle. (Jenny did spot her back on campus during the Spring of ‘25!). Half of the potential participants never even got started. Though they indicated interest and, in many cases, even signed consent forms and scheduled interviews, various life events prevented them from showing up. Some of those events were communicated to us; we presume others occurred that were not. As researchers noted in memos and conversations with one another, if a student is unable to attend 3 interviews across 2 semesters for several monetary incentives, how much more do we see that problem magnified when they are expected to attend class multiple times a week for 14 weeks at a time?
Additionally, our findings suggest the need for further research with assisting and retaining transitional students of color. And though it is beyond our control as faculty members, we believe our data warrants a reexamination of how community colleges measure rates of completion. The majority of our participants were attending part-time, yet current measures of colleges’ completion rates presume that to be “successful,” students will matriculate within a number of years which would simply not be feasible given the rate at which many of our participants were attempting credits, particularly when understanding that even 1 or 2 required transitional courses may add on another semester to the time needed to complete a degree if attending part-time. Students who do graduate, but not during the 6-year timeline dictated by the state, are not counted as successes in the data, but there is so much more to the story here than numbers. Transitional education sometimes seems to be blamed for the lack of success marginalized students experience (Bailey, 2009; Hu et al., 2014), but let’s not forget that our focus group students felt they would have had no success in credit English without first taking transitional reading and/or writing coursework.
I, Jenny, hold a doctorate in education and teach over 15 credits of English coursework per semester, but after listening to data from the first round of interviews, I noted quite frankly that there was more literacy going on in participants’ lives and homes than in my own. And though I subscribe to abandoning deficit models of transitional students, even I was surprised by the depth of literacies the student participants in this study were eager to share with our research team. Thus, we felt it vital to share our findings with the broader scholarly community, particularly with instructors still influenced by deficit mindsets. As several cases demonstrated, much of the richness of transitional students’ literacy lives can be observed through language practices when students speak 2 or more languages. Thinking, writing, and speaking in multiple languages are impressive qualities that demonstrate the intelligence and versatility of many students who are sometimes unfairly judged when instructors and learners encounter linguistic barriers. The literacy strengths these students possess may be able to be tapped into to positively impact instruction. For example, in Jenny’s college reading class, she requires students to keep vocabulary notebooks. One element of the notebook is to include pictures or other memory tricks to assist students with grappling with new vocabulary. Jenny has observed and will sometimes recommend to her classes that multilingual students may choose to list the translated equivalent for a new English word in their home language in the “memory trick” portion of their notebooks. This suggestion may be easier to implement in some content areas than in other disciplines, but one strategy all college instructors can adapt is ensuring that language on assessment items is presented as clearly as possible. Sometimes multilingual students will possess the needed knowledge for demonstrating understanding, but when questions are phrased using overly complicated sentence structures and/or advanced vocabulary choices unrelated to course content, students who speak English as a second language are penalized as they are less likely to be able to ascertain what a question is asking.
It is also important for White instructors to note that students of color still frequently navigate racial prejudice and discrimination, and that these lived experiences impact students. According to Brazas and McGeehan (2020), “we all live in the same society of racism and white supremacy. We know White educators have the privilege to ignore these conditions and often do.” But we must recognize that many of our students do not have this same privilege, and that those students arrive at our classroom doors carrying burdens they may never choose to share with us.
This qualitative study has limitations. We believe repeating the study with our male transitional students of color would be a worthwhile endeavor, since that perspective is missing from our data. Perhaps, if we were to attempt to replicate the research with male transitional students, we could recruit active members from student organizations on campus, or ask for referrals from professors who have already built strong relationships with students who fall in the demographic category we hope to recruit from. Given the potentially sensitive nature of disclosing information pertaining to one’s racial, linguistic, and cultural identities, recruitment efforts might be more successful if future research follows leads that suggest trust and belonging have already been established with individuals in positions of power on campus. Trying to assign male participants with male researchers might also accelerate rapport.
We recognize that our small sample size may not have accurately captured all the major themes that could emerge if we were to interview more female students of color. Furthermore, we feel we did much to build rapport, and we believe we succeeded in cultivating genuine relationships with our participants, but we do wonder, if we had more faculty members of color serving as interviewers, would students have felt more comfortable? Would they have divulged more freely? Our findings are obviously not generalizable, but we maintain that they are important, nonetheless.
In conclusion, this research shows that in our sample transitional students of color do possess a rich range of literacy strengths and interests despite their placement in basic English courses. And though we were glad to learn that students viewed our campus as diverse, inclusive, and welcoming, we recognize that students may struggle with feeling underrepresented in local and broader scholarly communities, and that they are likely to have various aspects of their identities challenged throughout and beyond school. It is perhaps worth noting that our institution has taken steps to continue to diversify our faculty and staff, and that many departments on campus do include more faculty members of color than are currently teaching in the arts and humanities. Creating supportive environments for transitional students to succeed is imperative, as is understanding that students will pursue coursework at a pace that works for them. We hope this study inspires opportunities for faculty to better reach out to this population group, as the best way to ensure equitable representation in all areas of scholarship is to do what we can to support our most diverse learners in their professional goals.
We want to thank the members of our research team, who along with us, worked tirelessly interviewing participants, transcribing interviews, and analyzing data: Professor Chuck Porter, Department Chair of the Arts & Humanities Department; Suzi McKeen, Former Director of the Reading & Writing Center; Dr. Sheila Blosveren, Professor of Transitional English and Former Director of Developmental Education; and Dr. David Mongor-Lizarrabengoa, Professor of Spanish. We are also thankful to Dr. Beth Jones, Director of Assessment, for encouraging our research and assisting with IRB approvals. Thanks go out to Professor Camesha Handy, who at the time of our research, was in charge of student engagement. She assisted us with publicizing our study and compensating student participants for their time. Further, we want to thank the anonymous peer reviewers whose thoughtful comments resulted in revisions that strengthened this manuscript. Most of all, we are grateful to our participants for sharing their perspectives and experiences with us. You are the reason for this research. We see you, we hear you, and we hope this work and our daily efforts in your classrooms show you that you matter to us!