Whose Expertise Matters? Uncovering the Unvoicing of Developmental Education Through a Critical Citation Transitivity Analysis

• In Event: Rethinking and Reimagining Inclusive Practices in Community Colleges and Development Education

Abstract

The field of developmental education (DE) encompasses teaching and research of postsecondary access, but scholars external to the field have negatively described DE in several highly cited publications. We examined one of the most influential of these, Bailey et al. (2010), through a two-pronged analysis to understand how texts serve as power-language events by unvoicing an entire professional field. We report how within this text, DE expertise was erased at the macro-level through the inclusion of only one in-field citation and at the micro-level through the passivation of DE educators and deficit descriptions of DE students. These findings illuminate how authors can produce a double unvoicing, erasing a field's scholarship and professionals, suggesting the importance of including in-field practitioner expertise.

Authors

• Candice P. Oelschlegel, Texas State University

• Emily Suh, Texas State University

• Agustín J. García, Texas State University

• Sonya L Armstrong, Texas State University