...just don’t call me late for dinner!” Sorry, wrong tagline. But the statement does have a hint of the right message – at least show respect by inviting the person, a hungry person, to the meal.
Over the years, as college enrollment has grown and diversified, there have been attempts to identify the students who did not correspond to the traditional labels associated with the four years of a typical baccalaureate program: freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. These students often need some sort of preparation before being allowed to take credit-bearing, college courses. In the past two decades or so, the terms “at-risk,” “developmental,” non-traditional,” “remedial” and “basic” have been used to describe under-prepared, and perhaps, other students who do not fit into the standard, college freshman profile.
This table demonstrates how, over the past 3 decades, ways of describing students enrolled in pre-college courses have varied.
This data was generated by searching in ERIC for a term, such as “developmental,” and specifying that the educational level be “two year colleges.” Students who did fit the usual age or socio-economic standards might be referred to as “non-traditional,” and its usage in ERIC has been low over the past two decades. During the 1990s, the term “at-risk” was widely used, but its usage has declined sharply. “Remedial” and “developmental” have, at times, competed for acceptance, with “developmental” more frequently used in educational publications, and “remedial” more common in popular literature.
The Academic Search Premier of EBSCOhost allowed a word search of abstracts for newspapers, magazines, and academic journals for “developmental education” and “remedial education” since 1975. The results of the search are presented in the table below.
| Newspapers | Magazines | Academic journals | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developmental education | 1 | 22 | 147 |
| Remedial education | 29 | 88 | 59 |
Periodicals, such as newspapers and magazines, which are written for an audience not closely associated with education, avoided using “developmental education,” but instead opted for “remedial education.” “Remedial” is probably more easily understood by laypeople; whereas, “developmental” is a term which educators are more familiar with.
The term “basic” writers was used by Mina Shaughnessy, in the classic Errors & Expectations (1977). It is a neutral term. “College freshman” is descriptive, just indicating that a student is in the first year of college.
In order to check out what some Community College of Philadelphia students would call themselves, they were surveyed during the Fall 2006 semester. A list of 6 terms, “developmental student,” “remedial student,” “basic reader/writer,” “non-traditional student,” “at-risk student,” and “college freshman” were selected and respondents were asked to choose the term which they liked the best, and the term which they disliked the most. In order to lessen the impact of word order, the terms were printed in 6 different lists so that the same word did not always appear first. The 46 respondents attended the College Achievement Partnership and were enrolled in English 097/089 (CAP A), which indicates that if sufficient academic progress is made, they will be able to register for English 101, freshman composition, in an academic year. The students attended day and evening classes.
From the sample, most surveyed students enrolled in Community College of Philadelphia CAP A courses, designed to improve their reading and writing skills, would say, “Call me almost anything, but don’t call me 'at-risk'!” This term was the one judged most disliked by almost half (48%) of the respondents. When asked why they did not like this term, the students wrote that it means one “is likely to fail” or not going to achieve. “I dislike this term because it makes me feel I am not going to make it.” “Remedial” also rated high on the dislike scale, voted down by almost a quarter, 22%, of the respondents. Remedial gives “a person a bad title. Remedial students are usually student[s] who require special education or need a lot of help.” In the survey, the students were allowed to assign their own meanings for these words, and “remedial” seemed to be confused with “learning disabled.” One student wrote that “remedial is for people that don’t learn like other people.”
The term which was considered best by the largest percentage, 43%, was “developmental.” This is the term used at the College, and doubtless students have heard it. “Developmental” does not seem to carry the negative connotations of “remedial.” The students wrote that developmental means students are “still in progress (development) to learn more to be a better student.” “I like the term because it starts from the beginning.” A good percentage of the students, 37%, liked the term “college freshman” since it shows what one is, a person in the first year of college.
In the survey, the students were also asked to supply their own terms. Some of the suggested labels were “unique students,” “best kept secret student,” “honor student,” “advanced student,” “college bound,” and “achiever.” These labels are strongly positive and suggest a strong drive to succeed and, perhaps, a need to be recognized.
The CAP A students dislike for “at-risk” seems to be nationwide. The term had a brief period of acceptance in the 1990s, but probably fell out of favor since it carried so many negative connotations and predicted failure. The students seem comfortable with “developmental” and note positive hints in the adjective. Are they really “college freshman”? They have been admitted by a college and are attending classes on campus, taught by college faculty, but the courses they are taking do not count for graduation and are not transferable. While they have not graduated yet, they do enjoy a range of rights, privileges, and perquisites attached to higher education. Although some faculty would make a case that the CAP A students are not really college students since they are not taking “college” courses, they are progressing toward that goal
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Maintained by Jay Howard,Jan 2007