What’s Been Keeping Me Awake at Night: The Future(?) of “The Field”

ABSTRACT

This essay integrates pieces and parts of three recent talks given at three separate professional conferences, all with a common goal of commenting on the future of the field. “The Field” is offered as a placeholder to allow individual members of the community to make connections to their own professional identities. Community wisdom (what “Dev Ed’rs know) is celebrated, “reform” efforts are questioned and critiqued, and recommendations are offered for looking ahead to the future of “The Field.”

KEYWORDS:

• College reading
• developmental education
• literacy
• reform

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge and own my utter failure to illuminate anything in this manuscript or in any of those aforementioned query responses. I hope just saying “out loud” (on paper) what a lot of us are struggling with will be of some use on some level.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. These responses I’m drawing from were initially verbal exchanges, so in capturing them here in a written mode I will surely maintain some of the informality of that language and style. My calling attention to that shouldn’t be interpreted as an apology, however, as my register here is an intentional decision, and is meant to reflect my authentic voice, in which lists are privileged above all other genres and in which snark and self-doubt chaotically co-exist.

2. From a different, but similar discussion related to naming the field: “In short, college reading might be more accurately phrased as ‘college literacy, reading, learning, and study strategies instruction and student support’ and would encompass not only literacy within and across the college years, but also the transition to postsecondary literacies. In the past, many have opted for using the more inclusive, though still truncated, frame of ‘college reading and study strategies’ (see, for instance, the most notable handbook in the field, Stahl & King, 2009, 2018); we also often adopt such a phrasing, though for most of this manuscript, we opt for the shortened version of ‘college reading’ with the understanding that this is simply a shortened phrasing, not a lessening of the expansive scope of responsibilities shared by those in the field” (Stahl & Armstrong, 2018, p. 48). For clarity and transparency, when I refer to “college reading” in the present essay, I intend this as the shortened version of the longer definition cited in this quotation.

3. Prince reference fully intended.

4. So to clarify, I am hoping that someone who holds simultaneous professional identities of Dev Ed’r and math educator, or college writing educator and researcher who does not hold a Dev Ed’r perspective, or even learning assistance professional and Dev Ed’r will all be able to see themselves in parts of what is being discussed, even if not all layers of our professional identities overlap.

5. Reference to Tyrion Lannister’s comment, “That’s what I do. I drink and I know things,” from Game of Thrones totally intended here. And, shout out to the amazing group of doctoral students who forced me, one summer not that long ago, to finally invest the time in unpacking a wealth of pop-culture references only accessible by having watched the television version of that series.

6. For the record, it was the foreword to Dana Lundell and Jeanne Higbee’s monograph the Histories of Developmental Education. The foreword was written by Terrence Collins at the University of Minnesota’s now-closed Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy.

7. As an aside, following two of the three talks I gave in fall 2019 when I commented on how frustrating this was that experts in “The Field” were not being cited or acknowledged, I was told that I need to just get over it, stop focusing on the past, and move on. For the record, I find that perspective troubling in any educational research context because the implication is that ethical attribution of others’ work and thorough reviews of the extant literature are no longer valued.

8. This last part is something I take full responsibility for—I have on multiple occasions allowed my emotions to get the best of me and walked away from possible conversations with those I view as outside “The Field.”

9. Well, maybe a little bit???

10. Or rather those who will remain in “The Field,” as it cannot be ignored that our friends and colleagues are being forced to move to contexts outside higher education, other departments within their institutions, or into a life beyond higher education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonya L. Armstrong

Sonya L. Armstrong is the current President-Elect of the College Reading and Learning Association. She is a Professor in and the Director of the Doctoral Program in Developmental Education at Texas State University. Dr. Armstrong is a practitioner-researcher, and her scholarly endeavors are guided by over 20 years of designing and teaching developmental reading, composition, and learning strategies courses in community colleges and universities. Her research focuses on improving postsecondary literacy and learning pedagogy and practice to more effectively facilitate students’ college literacy transitions, thereby increasing access and potential for success for all within higher education.