Remediation as Social Construct: Perspectives from an Analysis of Classroom Discourse

We write this paper believing that, however great the distance our profession has come in understanding the students and the writing we call "remedial," we have not yet come far enough in critically examining our assumptions about our students' abilities-assumptions which both shape the organization of remedial programs and orient daily life in remedial classrooms. (299)

we can forget to examine our assumptions about remediation--assumptions that are deeply held and so ingrained as to be tacit, that can, without much conscious choice on our part, drive the way we structure a course and circumscribe the learning that students will do in it. Our hope, then, is that this paper will be an occasion to reflect on the ways we, as teachers, can inadvertently participate in the social construction of attitudes and beliefs about remediation which may limit the learning that takes place in our classrooms, and to consider some ways in which we can begin to examine these basic assumptions, building from a different ground our notions about our students' abilities and the nature of literacy learning. (300)