Subject: Reprinted from the Journal of Developmental Education
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Reprinted from the Journal of Developmental
Education, Volume 16, Issue 1, Fall, 1992.

Ten
Recommendations from Research for Teaching High-Risk College
Students

by Norman A. Stahl, Michele L. Simpson, and
Christopher G. Hayes

ABSTRACT:  Finding practical ideas about college
reading that have been drawn from theory and research is difficult for most
veteran instructors, but it is even more difficult for the beginner unaware of
professional organizations and journals. This problem of dissemination is
exacerbated by the fact that there are very few formal university programs that
focus on the training of college reading specialists.  Consequently, the
authors of this article decided to generate a list of their own "best ideas"
that they have culled from their years of teaching college reading. These 10
ideas, though not comprehensive, represent a synthesis of research and
theory.  More importantly, they are ones that have made a difference in the
performance of the authors' students. In addition, the authors have purposely
cited many scholarly sources in order to provide an extensive bibliography for
colleagues new to the field.

Formal college reading and study programs have been with us since the early days
of the 20th century when schools such as Harvard (Moore, 1915), the University
of Chicago (National Society for the Study of Education [NSSE], 1920), and the
University of Illinois (Stone & Colvin, 1920) observed the need to promote
students' advanced reading and learning skills. Furthermore, over the past
century more than 600 texts and workbooks have been published for use by
instructors and students in college reading programs (Stahl, Hynd, & Brozo,
1990). Of equal importance, reports of research with college readers dating back
to the Victorian Era (Abell, 1894) can be found in the literature. Hence, the
profession has a time-honored history of program development, curriculum
innovation, and published research of which we can be proud.

On the other hand, the primary vehicles for
disseminating pertinent theory, research, and practical teaching ideas have been
rather diffuse and have changed routinely over the years.  Moreover, the
profession has yet to develop the same rigorous training requirements and
credentialing generally expected of our peers in elementary or secondary
education. Although recently several “generalist”-oriented degree programs
focusing on developmental education have evolved, formal training programs at
the level of the terminal degree are all but nonexistent for the college reading
and learning professional.

Indeed, many of us serving in the college
reading and learning field entered through a side door and developed expertise
through a self-help program based on personal reading, conference attendance,
peer interaction, etc. (see Mealey, 1991; Simpson, 1983; Stahl, Brozo, &
Gordon, 1984 for discussion). While we each may have a background in reading
pedagogy, in most cases the focus of our initial training was at the elementary
or secondary levels since credentialing programs typically ignore the special
needs of the college learner.

As an example of this assertion, recently one of the
authors was talking with a colleague new to teaching high-risk college students.
She had never heard of this journal, nor the other journals sponsored by
organizations such as the International Reading Association, the College Reading
Association, or the College Reading and Learning Association. Her experience
reminded us again that the first few years of teaching in a college reading and
learning program can be overwhelming. Practical ideas enmeshed with theory and
research are difficult to find for most veterans, but even more difficult for
the beginner who is unaware of professional organizations and journals. So we
decided to create our own "best ideas" for our new colleagues and for other
interested novices. Though not comprehensive, these 10 ideas have made a
difference in our teaching of college students. We present these ideas in an
order that moves from broader conceptualizations of pedagogy to the more
practical concerns of the educational program.

Adopt a Cognitive-Based Philosophy

Many
college programs either explicitly or implicitly emphasize a deficit model of
reading instruction drawn from the diagnostic-compensatory movement. In this
case, the short-term goal becomes teaching students specific skills that they
have not yet mastered (i.e., recognizing the main idea or the author's tone of a
selection). The long-term goal becomes student improvement on a standardized
reading test such as the ubiquitous Nelson Denny Reading Test or a state
mandated reading exam as used in Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, etc. Unfortunately,
many students can learn to excel on reading tests to the degree necessary to
exit a developmental program but still not fully function as independent
learners in the academic milieu of higher education. That is, the teaching of
discrete reading skills rarely transfers to students' immediate and real tasks
(i.e., the mastery of concepts and complex principles in their college courses).
More importantly, the deficit model can stigmatize and demoralize college
freshmen who are eager to leave the trappings of high school and begin
college-level work. The cognitive model has proven to be an effective
alternative to the deficit model.

Most
cognitive psychologists maintain that effective learning is more the result of
internal structures and processes than of external influences such as materials,
teachers, and instructional sequences (Resnick, 1981). The cognitive model
posits that college students are, or should be, active participants in control
of their learning; they are self-regulated, autonomous, and good strategy users
(Harri-Augstein, Smith, & Thomas, 1982; Pressley, 1986; Thomas & Rohwer,
1986; Zimmerman, 1986). Common to all these labels is the operational definition
of effective independent learners as those who plan, implement, and control the
study strategies that enhance learning. Since most college students are not
efficient and effective independent learners (Weinstein & Rogers, 1984), the
most logical goal for college reading and learning programs would be to teach
students a repertoire of strategies and tactics that will prepare them for the
tasks and texts they encounter in college.

Students need to learn more than how to
develop and when to employ the strategies, however. They also need to learn how
to transfer specific strategies to the particular academic literacy demands of
each course. Indeed, without effective training for transfer, college reading
and learning courses face the very real danger of standing in isolation from the
academic disciplines and of remaining mired in the deficit model.

Use a
Course Model that Stresses Transfer

Strategy transfer occurs more naturally when
students have a chance to practice the newly learned strategies on their own
texts and with tasks perceived to be "real."  In many mandated reading
courses, such as developmental studies programs or bridge programs, typically
students are not enrolled concurrently in a credit-bearing, content-area course
that allows for this transfer. Hence, instructors should consider teaching
strategies through a simulations model (King, Stahl, & Brozo, 1984; Nist
& Hynd, 1985).

The goal
of such a model is to replicate the tasks and texts of a typical required, lower
division course (e.g., history, psychology). Because the transfer mandates close
simulation of the chosen course, students must purchase the course's textbook
and supplemental materials. Then throughout the simulation experience, they must
read and study the chapters as the instructor teaches the domain-specific study
strategies. Students can also receive practice in taking lecture notes with
appropriate videotaped lectures or guest lectures from professors who regularly
teach the targeted course. During the lecture presentations, the instructor
should model good notetaking strategies on an overhead projector. The end point
of the simulation experience is passing an examination like that encountered in
a regular course. When students exit the simulation course, they take with them
a physical product (annotated text, lecture notes), a cognitive product (greater
prior knowledge and experience), and several domain-specific and general study
strategies.

For students enrolled concurrently in
credit-bearing, content-area courses, the learning specialist should implement
an instructional model that permits each student to become a strategic learner
with the content and the materials encountered in a course of his or her own
selection. Throughout the term as each learner is introduced to and practices
with various strategies and tactics, he or she develops a portfolio of materials
(e.g., course notes, concept cards, graphic organizers, process guides, course
exams) demonstrating the mastery of the content course's goals and also the
development of the individual's successful repertoire of learning
strategies.

While at first glance it may appear that the
number of possible student choices for a target course might make this model
unwieldy, the realities of the undergraduate curriculum for the lower division
student greatly limit the breadth of courses in which one may enroll. Hence, our
experience suggests most students will elect to employ the strategies and
tactics you introduce to a handful of introductory, survey courses such as
Psychology 100, Sociology 100, Anthropology 100, U.S. History 100, etc. In fact,
we have discovered that the range of options is so limited that the instructor
may easily introduce forms of cooperative learning through the constitution of
content-specific cluster groups and learning triads or dyads.

A second model for promoting transfer of learning
strategies for students enrolled in content classes involves the development of
more formal ties between the academic program and reading/learning strategy
course.  Over the past decade this
model has been labeled either supplemental instruction (Martin, 1980), adjunct
or paired courses (Mallery & Bullock, 1985), the language study model
(Sartain et al., 1982), or the learning counseling model (Garfield & McHugh,
1978). Basic to all of these models is the premise that the content of the
reading or learning strategy instruction or mentoring is tied to a
credit-bearing course that freshmen or sophomores typically take (e.g., biology,
geography, or history). The instructor of the reading and learning strategies
does not teach the content of the content course nor supplant the role of the
professor in presenting the content.
Rather, the reading/learning specialist teaches processes and strategies
necessary to succeed in the targeted course in seminars or sessions held outside
of class. These specially arranged sessions may be voluntary or required,
depending upon the institution and the professor involved with the
program.

While the
new member of our profession may not be in a position to implement such a
program initially, there is value in being cognizant of the "paired course"
program (Bullock & Madden, 1986) that limits enrollment in a rather
traditional yet theme-oriented (e.g., psychology, sociology) study strategies
course to those students enrolled in the respective academic speciality. Since
all the students in a particular section are going through similar academic
experiences, study strategy training can be focused on specific tasks and thus
can improve the possibility of transfer. Regardless of which models of course
delivery are employed, the measures of success must focus on the transfer of
learning strategy training. Hence, we present our next idea or
recommendation.

Use Reliable, Process-Oriented Assessment Procedures

Many
college reading programs rely on standardized reading tests to place students in
programs and to assess their strengths and weaknesses after placement (Simpson
& Nist, 1992). In addition, these tests are often used to evaluate the
success of a program by determining whether the students significantly improve
their reading level or their comprehension and vocabulary scores. In some
situations, the standardized test may even determine whether students can exit
the mandated program. Rather than an over-reliance upon standardized measures
that are typically product orientated, instructors should consider the use of
assessment procedures that reflect the reading/learning tasks students will be
required to undertake in lower division courses. One way such process-oriented
assessment can be accomplished is through simulation of a typical learning
process.

In undertaking this
simulation, the instructor might distribute to students an introductory chapter
from a sociology text on a Monday with the assignment to prepare for an
objective and essay examination over the material on Friday. Then on exam day
the instructor would collect the chapter and materials the student used for
study, ask the students to summarize briefly how they studied and for how long,
and then administer the examination under normal exam conditions. Before handing
in the examination, students could report what grade or percentage they think
they will receive on the exam (Sartain et al., 1982). Thus, the instructor has
collected a variety of process information from the students: (a) copies of
their chapters, which may reveal any markings; (b) tangible products of their
self-selected strategies such as maps, outlines, jot lists, etc.; (c)
self-reports on their method(s) of study; and (d) measures of their
metacognitive awareness of performance.

To
evaluate the students' processes of study, instructors can use checklists
enumerating the attributes of effective text marking and study strategies (i.e.,
mapping, charting). For instance, Simpson and Nist (1990a) have developed one
checklist for text annotation that allows the instructor to determine whether
the students use text structure to identify and organize superordinate and
subordinate ideas and whether they translate information into their own words.
Similarly, Stahl, King, and Henk (1991) have developed a checklist for
evaluating lecture notes. These checklists, based on cognitive theory and
research, allow the instructor to quickly evaluate student-generated materials
and thus to see strengths, needs,
and patterns in an organized manner.

To evaluate the products of study, instructors can score
the objective and essay questions, noting differences in scores between the two
measures. In addition, a holistic evaluation of the essay could provide an
additional measure of students' abilities to articulate a clear understanding of
content and relationships among superordinate and subordinate ideas. The results
of these process and product assessments can then be shared with students in
small groups or in individual conferences.

However,
if after mastering successful studying processes the students still earn low
test scores, the problem may not be ability to implement strategic learning or
to draw upon metacognitive awareness, but rather weak background knowledge of
the subject being tested. Such is not an unusual situation with developmental
learners who underwent a secondary school experience that left them
underprepared or misprepared for the academic literacy demands of postsecondary
learning. Naturally, then, the learning specialist must think of ways to help
students develop a broadened worldview supportive of college success.

Broaden
Conceptual Background Knowledge

Most
students required to take a college reading course can read but are not
efficient and effective independent learners. Because these students are often
aliterate and suffer wide gaps in their prior knowledge, they are not generally
prepared to read regularly, widely, or critically. Furthermore, many of these
students have not been required to undertake higher level reading/learning tasks
while in the secondary school (Alvermann & Moore, 1991). Hence, the
instructor must meet the needs of students who have both deficiencies in content
knowledge and misconceptions about the learning process. Moreover, as recent
research has demonstrated in a college freshman level history course (Simpson
& Nist, 1990b), students may even have misconceptions about specific content
areas.

Obviously, such problems cannot be overcome in one
course, but instructors can intervene by promoting the habit of reading
extensively through the creative use of periodicals such as Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, or
Time during the weekly classroom
routine. In addition to discussing selected articles, instructors or students
could select general vocabulary words such as ameliorate and exacerbate or any of the regularly used
idioms, allusions, and foreign terms identified and presented by Boese (1986)
for study.

As
another alternative, instructors can provide higher level background experiences
while teaching students to learn about a specific theme (e.g., “coming of age,”
“the American experience,” “personal courage”) or concept by using or adapting
Bartholomae and Petrosky's (1986) "basic reading/basic writing" model. In such a
model, basic readers undertake extensive reading of five to six texts with a
similar unifying issue. Furthermore, since each text builds upon the previously
read book, the student's conceptual understanding of the theme and his or her
relationship to it grows in progressive degrees of sophistication. In addition,
greater facility with various forms of discourse is promoted as the student
moves from the more comfortable narrative forms of text to the expository forms
generally encountered in lower division courses. Along with the extensive
readings, the learner is expected to undertake carefully integrated writing
assignments, in both formal and expressive modes.

Such a program is indeed time consuming for
all involved-both student and instructor. Still, the age-old adage is
true:  One becomes a better reader by reading extensively. Unfortunately,
many of the students enrolling in developmental course work report to us that
they simply were not required to read in high school. Hence, it is not
surprising that the reading load encountered in college or the level of
vocabulary required is troubling to our students. The basic reading/basic
writing model clearly helps to prepare the students for the former. Now let us
turn to the latter issue.

Reconceptualize Vocabulary Development

Students
entering postsecondary education need to understand from the outset that the
fundamental avenue for academic success is the ability to quickly expand their
vocabulary (Simpson & Dwyer, 1991; Stahl, Brozo, & Simpson, 1987).
Instructors must provide experiences that immerse students in (a) the "language
of the academy" or the terminology that allows the institution to function
(e.g., terms such as provost, bursar, financial aid);
(b) the "language of the
educated" or the advanced general vocabulary used by scholars as they
communicate; and (c) the specialized "languages of the disciplines" (Sartain,
1981) or those unique technical terms, symbols, etc. that permit scholars within
a field to communicate effectively. Students also must understand that, leaming
these words means more than the rote memorization of a brief definition; it
implies conceptual understanding of words. With conceptual understanding,
students know multiple definitions, examples, characteristics, synonyms, and
antonyms and are able to apply the word and its variant forms (e.g., zealous versus zealot) in a variety of situations (Simpson &
Dwyer, 1991).

To help students master the vocabulary in
the first category, instructors can draw heavily upon the institution's printed
materials, particularly the college catalogue and student handbook. Effective
strategies for developing greater vocabulary fluency in the second category
include generative vocabulary activities such as Haggard's (1982)
"self-collection strategy," Beck's (personal communication, 1979) "word of the
week,” and Pauk's (1984) "frontier system."  Finally, instructors can teach students
how to learn technical vocabulary by using activities such as Sartain et al.'s
(1982) "technical vocabulary log for study triads" or Simpson, Nist, and Kirby's
(1987) "concept cards."

Vocabulary development, like other instruction, calls for
innovative teaching. But instructors may spend unnecessary time (and
disappointment) reinventing strategies that have already been tested. Without
relinquishing their own creative expertise, instructors need to be aware of, and
use, research-validated strategies.

Use
Research Validated Learning Strategies

Instruction with textbook study systems (e.g.,
SQ3R, PQRST) has been a staple of the college reading/learning program for over
50 years (Caverly & Orlando, 1991; Stahl & Henk, 1986). Still, many of
the methods and strategies presented to college students have yet to be
validated credibly by research or have been researched with students atypical of
the population served in mandated developmental courses. More research needs to
be conducted with high-risk college students, especially research concerned with
student processes rather than research comparing one strategy to another.

While the
research base is not as large as with younger students, a few strategies have
been validated with high-risk college students. For example, after training
students to use textbook annotation, Simpson and Nist (1990a) reported
developmental students performed significantly better than an equivalent control
group on three different content area exams. More importantly, the annotation
group reported spending less time studying for those three exams. Another
promising strategy, PORPE (Simpson, 1986), was developed to help students
prepare for essay examinations. With PORPE, students Team to Predict potential essay questions to
guide their studying; Organize key ideas that answer those predicted questions
using their own words, structure, and methods; Rehearse key ideas; Practice the recall of those key ideas
in self-assigned writing; and Evaluate the completeness, accuracy,
and appropriateness of the essays by means of a checklist. These five steps are
synergistic as they build upon each other and lead learners through the
cognitive and metacognitive processes essential to successful independent
learning. PORPE has been validated in three investigations (Simpson, Stahl,
& Hayes, 1988; Simpson, Hayes, & Stahl, 1989; Simpson, Hayes, Stahl,
Connor, & Weaver, 1988) involving high-risk college students trained to
employ the strategy while studying Introduction to Psychology textbook chapter
excerpts. For additional descriptions of validated learning strategies pertinent
to high-risk college students, see the recent International Reading Association
Monograph, entitled Teaching Reading and
Study Strategies at the College Level, edited by Flippo and Caverly
(1991).

It is not
enough simply to introduce students to proven strategies. As instructors, we
must also be sure that we train students how to use them and how to choose among
them. This is an onus that has often been overlooked as college reading
specialists have attempted to provide great breadth of content coverage but
often not enough depth with instruction. Let us then turn to the training
issue.

Systematically Train Students to Employ Strategies

One of the primary goals of the college
reading instructor should be to train students to be able to select, modify, and
transfer a variety of strategies to their own learning tasks. To accomplish this
goal, self-control training (Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981) is essential.
Students who have received self-control training not only "know" a
strategy, but they also have knowledge of the conditions under which the
strategy is appropriate and why it is appropriate. Paris, Lipson, and Wixson
(1983) refer to this type of knowledge as conditional knowledge. In contrast to
this systematic type of training is the most prevalent form of training, labeled
blind training by Brown et al. (1981). Students receiving blind training in a
strategy are not as likely to learn why, how, or when to use a strategy but
instead tend to blindly imitate the instructor. With blind training students
will not be as likely to transfer the strategies they learned to their own
learning tasks.

Validated training approaches and models
(Garner, 1988; King & Stahl, 1985; Nist & Kirby, 1986; Pressley, 1986;
Stahl, King & Henk, 1991) are numerous, but they do agree that instruction
should be direct, informed, and explanatory. In other words, students can be
trained to employ a strategy if they receive intensive instruction over a
reasonable period of time that is characterized by (a) strategy
explanations and rationales (i.e., steps/tactics, advantages, performance
enhancement issues, appropriate time and use considerations); (b) strategy
modeling and talk throughs by the instructor; (c) examples from real tasks and
texts that students will encounter; (d) guided practice with real texts,
followed by immediate and specific feedback and correction; (e) debriefing
sessions that deal with questions, student doubts, and fix-up strategies for
difficult concepts; (f) frequent independent practice opportunities across
appropriate texts; and (g) guidelines on how to evaluate a strategy's success or
failure.

Training
sequences such as these can help students with the declarative and procedural
knowledge about strategy use. That is, such instruction will help students
learn the what, how, and why of strategy employment. Once students master the
declarative and procedural knowledge of a strategy, instructors must then
consider the issues of strategy control and self-regulation. With our next idea
we will address this important concern.

Promote
Strategy Control and Regulation

To be
effective independent learners, college students need to be able to control and
regulate the strategies they employ. Such control is a critical aspect of
metacognition that involves learners in planning, monitoring, and evaluating a
plan of action across a variety of tasks and texts (Kluwe, 1987). Unfortunately,
research has demonstrated consistently that most college students, and
particularly those at risk, lack the abilities to plan, monitor, and evaluate
their own learning (Weinstein & Rogers, 1984).  Practically speaking, this means that
college instructors should teach their students to (a) define tasks, establish
goals, and allocate resources; (b) make a plan of action that incorporates the
appropriate strategies and distributes time; (c) activate and monitor the plan
of action and make appropriate changes, when necessary; and (d) evaluate their
plans success or failure in terms of goals and the task in order to plan for
future situations. In addition, to have strategic control, students must have a
repertoire of strategies to choose from so they may select and adapt the most
appropriate one to the specified task and text.

Though difficult to obtain, strategic
control and regulation can be facilitated when instructors use
cognitive-based course models that emphasize systematic training and realistic
transfer opportunities. In addition, strategies such as PLAE (Simpson &
Nist, 1984) can help students and instructors operationalize these metacognitive
processes. PLAE is a research driven, recursive model that involves students in
four stages of mastering strategy control and regulation. In stage 1, Preplanning, students define the task
and set performance goals by answering a set of guiding questions. In stage 2,
Listing, students list the most
appropriate strategies and construct a task-specific study plan that outlines
their specific goal for each study session, the amount of time they predict it
will take to reach their goal, and where they will study. In stage 3, Activating, students implement and
monitor the plan, making adjustments if their plans are not working. Stage 4, Evaluation, occurs after students have
received their test scores. Students evaluate their performance by diagnosing
errors and looking for patterns of strengths and weaknesses. Students then use
this information as they plan for subsequent tasks (e.g., exams). PLAE has been
successful with high-risk college students in improving their metacognition and
test performance across a variety of content areas (Nist & Simpson,
1989).

Strategies such as PLAE are among the most valuable
students can learn. But learning how to use them effectively also requires time
and practice. Unfortunately many developmentallevel students may not be
motivated to expend such effort until they encounter immediate success with and
benefits from the strategies they are learning in the reading and learning
class. A number of other strategies offer more direct benefits to college
learners in shorter instructional time.

Use High-Utility Strategies for Immediate
Acceptance

Experienced instructors realize that many
students enter required reading/study strategies courses with negative
attitudes about having been assigned to a "remedial" class. Consequently, rather
than starting the term with processes that may take several weeks or all term
for students to reap benefits from (e.g., scheduling and prioritizing
activities), instructors can begin by teaching a high-utility strategy that
promotes immediate transfer to other course work. Instruction on how to take
notes from lectures (Stahl, King, & Henk, 1991) or how to read and remember
information from text through annotation (Simpson & Nist, 1990a) provides
such an avenue to immediate use and probable course success. Once students
realize that there is value in these strategies and develop a degree of trust in
the instructor as a mentor, they are more apt to accept with equal value those
techniques such as scheduling and planning activities which might seem a bit
"preachie" or those methods such as multistep textbook study systems that
require both time and effort to master.

Indeed,
being careful not to overlook the student's vantage point is of importance in
designing a postsecondary reading/learning program. Yet we must be careful not
to be so myopic in our desire to produce better readers and learners that we
forget that there is power in integrating reading with writing activities in the
developmental learning program. Many instructors, however, overlook the value of
writing to teach reading, either as a step in a strategy or by itself.

Incorporate Writing into the Curriculum

Writing
aids students in becoming cocreators of the texts they read, in creating their
own articulated understanding of content material, and in providing a means of
monitoring and revising that understanding (Hayes, Stahl, & Simpson, 1991).
For instance, to elicit background knowledge before a reading assignment, the
instructor could ask students to freewrite on the general subject of the
assignment, to write down all the questions the reading passage's title brings
to mind, or to skim the passage and then freewrite on what they predict the
passage will say or formulate questions or objections to what they think will
appear in the passage. The instructor could also ask that, as students read,
they pause for 3 minutes before going on to the next main heading (or if no
headings appear, after every couple of pages) to summarize what they have just
read, to write down questions about what remains unclear, or to respond
personally to what they have read. An instructor could have students reflect on
an assignment during a 10-minute writing before class discussion of key
concepts. Not only do such writing activities engage students in the reading
material, but they afford students an opportunity to monitor their understanding
and to contribute more actively and knowledgeably to discussions (Hayes, 1990).
In a sense, writing about reading assignments turns the reading process inside
out, exposing readers to the inescapable constructivist activity of creating
meaning in and from words.

A growing
body of research supports the benefits of incorporating writing within the
reading curriculum. Best known, perhaps, are studies showing that having
students write summaries of reading selections can improve their reading
comprehension and recall abilities (Brown, Day, & Jones, 1983; Johnson,
1982; Taylor & Berkowitz, 1980). Analytic writing has proven to engage
students with reading material in even more cognitively complex ways (Langer
& Applebee, 1987; Marshall, 1987). Such written analysis, and its
concomitant thinking, leads students to forge connections among the various
levels of generality in a reading passage as it also engages them in
(re)creating coherent text structures. Daily reading logs and directed writing
activities have been shown to increase remedial college students' reading
comprehension and writing abilities (Hayes, 1987). The process of writing, then,
can be an effective means of making sense of the written product.

Conclusion

These 10
recommendations certainly do not begin to touch on all that a beginning
instructor of reading and learning strategies should know. They do provide a
beginning point for the novice. At the least, they offer some practical ideas
for the classroom and provide some direction for further exploration. We also
hope that they reinforce a commitment to teaching reading and learning as
holistic, complex processes, not as discrete, simplistic skills.

Professional growth is a continuing process that comes
with the deliberate decision to be part of the professional community of
postsecondary reading and learning specialists. This is the professionalism that
has been required of all of the nation's developmental educators whether they be
serving in community colleges, liberal arts colleges, or universities or whether
they be employed in developmental programs, learning assistance centers, or
Educational Opportunity Programs. This is the professionalism that comes with
the ongoing reading of our professional journals and literature, and with the
regular attendance at and participation in the local, state, regional, and
national conferences offered throughout the year. This is the professionalism
that is fully formed when one understands and appreciates Manzo’s (1983)
conception that college reading and learning is both a generator of new ideas
and a repository of considerable wisdom. Yet, most of all, it is a level of
professionalism that comes shining through the first time you share your own
pedagogical knowledge of our field with a new member of the field who also
wishes to be known as a college reading and learning specialist.

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Norman A. Stahl,
Associate
Professor,
Faculty in
Reading, Northern Illinois University,
DeKalb, IL
60115-2854

Michele L. Simpson,
Associate
Professor

Christopher G. Hayes, Associate Professor, Division of Developmental Studies,
University of Georgia, Athens,
GA 30602