Remidial Instructors' Experience in a Community College: A Case Study

The number of incoming community college students, including recent high school graduates as well as nontraditional students, requiring remediation has increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, community colleges are mandated by the state to implement developmental programs to address the diverse academic needs of their students. Studies have investigated the cost and effectiveness of these remedial programs. As such, instructors of remediation are faced with the responsibility of implementing appropriate approaches to enable students to master basic skills and to prepare them for college-level courses. This qualitative case study describes the experiences of twelve instructors of remediation at a large urban community college in New York City as they applied approaches to enable students to master basic skills and to prepare for college-level courses. The data revealed that a majority of the instructors described their experiences as positive; only one participant viewed his experience as negative. Hand coding techniques were used to cull and organize the data.