A Comparison of Centralized and Decentralized Developmental Education Courses in Four Public Appalachian Community Colleges and Students\u27 Perceptions Regarding the Seven Principles for Good Practice

Developmental education courses have become a standard in community colleges in the United States. An overwhelming majority of these public two-year schools offer developmental courses to a wide array of students. At the same time, developmental programs are under a constant barrage of attacks from a variety of stakeholder organizations that view these courses as redundant in the public educational system. As a result, community college systems across the nation are striving to find the most effective and efficient means to offer these courses, to decrease the length of time students are spending in these courses, and to increase the numbers of students who transition into the regular college curriculum.;This study examined four research questions: first, the researcher attempted to determine if statistically significant differences existed between the perceptions of students attending centralized and decentralized developmental education courses in regard to their instructors\u27 use of the principles for good practice; second, this study attempted to determine if there were statistically significant differences between students attending developmental education courses and instructors teaching in developmental education courses in regard to their perceptions of the principles for good practice occurring in these courses; third, this research attempted to determine if there were significant differences in the perceptions of students attending developmental English/writing courses and students attending developmental mathematics courses in regard to each of the seven principles for good practice; and finally, this research attempted to determine if there were significant differences between instructors\u27 perceptions regarding the principles for good practice based on subject taught (i.e. English/writing and mathematics). Six community colleges were sampled to address the last three research questions; four of the six community colleges were used to address the first research question. A causal comparative methodology was used for this research. A MANOVA determined that statistically significant differences existed between groups regarding all four research questions. Subsequent analyses of variance found that students from the centralized and decentralized groups differed on five out of the seven principles for good practice, with the decentralized group rating their instructors higher on four out of the five principles where differences were detected