Content area
Full text
In a higher education career that has spanned over four decades Hunter Boylan has served as a gang control worker, a TRIO Program Director, a community college and university instructor, a learning center director, an academic advisor and counselor, Director of the Kellogg Institute, Director of the National Center for Developmental Education, Director of the Doctoral Program in Developmental Education at Grambling State University, President of the National Association for Developmental Education, Chair of the Council of Learning Assistance and Developmental Education Associations, and professor and coordinator of Appalachian State University's graduate program in adult and developmental education. He is the author of7 books and over 100 articles, book chapters, and monographs on developmental instruction, evaluation, administration, professional development, and best practices. He has delivered over 100 keynote speeches at regional, national, and international conferences and has presented over 250 conference workshops and sessions. He is widely known as a speaker and consultant-including service for the Community College Research Center, the Lumina Achieving the Dream project, and the Gates Completion by Design Project-and is regularly quoted in the media for his views on adult and developmental education. Recently the National College Learning Center Association honoredhim by naming their research scholarship the "Hunter R. Boylan Research Award," in recognition of his contributions to research in the field and the Associationfor the Tutoring Profession accorded him a similar honor. His favorite say ing is "Goodjudgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment."
Patti Levine-Brown (P.L.B.): How do you define developmental education?
Hunter Reed Boylan (H.R.B.): Developmental education is the integration of academic courses and support services guided by the principles of adult learning and development (Boylan & Bonham, 2014).
Remediation is typically a make-up course with high school level material taught without any connection with the rest of the curriculum or the rest of the support system. If the only thing that you are offering your students is a course in pre-algebra, then it is probably a remedial course. If you are offering a course in pre-algebra that is supported by counseling, tutoring, and advising, where the course is taught according to principles of how adults learn and develop then that is a developmental course. I often say that we don't know whether developmental education...