The extent to which critical pedagogy disrupts the relations of dominance inside postsecondary classrooms, or empowers students to take socially just action beyond the classroom has been debated and challenged for decades. Through the use of métissage, an interpretive inquiry method that affords collaborative interrogation of individual autoethnographic writings, we five participants in the same critical pedagogy course conducted a post-course inquiry project in order to explore what we had learned through the course. Through this inquiry project, we have come to a deeper understanding of critical pedagogy praxis. Ultimately, what we learned through the use of this inquiry method maintains important implications for postsecondary educators.
Poor completion outcomes in community colleges’ developmental education programs have spurred reforms in developmental education policies and practices in order to increase students’ chances of success. In the case of developmental math, the focus of this article, such changes include revisions to testing and placement policies, amendments to the intended curriculum, and restructuring of the format and sequencing of courses. However, the measures that have highlighted the inadequacies of developmental math are, in themselves, insufficient for assessing the effectiveness of reforms to developmental math. Drawing on interview data from a classroom-level study of a community college’s pilot reform initiative in developmental math, we explore the learning goals articulated by the instructors and a sample of students across four pre-algebra classrooms. Through our analysis of their goals, as well as the extent to which students reported accomplishing those goals, our research underscores the important distinction between course completion and learning. This study highlights the need to assess the effectiveness of developmental math coursework in ways that extend beyond completion rates.
