Miles to Go Before We Sleep: A Two-Part Content Analysis of Representations of Equity in the Dev Ed’r Discourse Community

Abstract

This article continues the conversation begun in Armstrong’s (2020) call to Dev Ed’rs kept awake by uncertainty about their professional identity and the future of “The Field” of developmental education and college literacy. Through the lenses of critical discourse analysis and discourse communities, the author examined how Dev Ed’rs define equity and whom they cite. The two-pronged content analysis uncovered a lack of definitional work or citations to ground Dev Ed’r discussions of equity. The article advances four steps for (re)claiming the language of equity and, with it, The Field’s professional identity: (1) establishing a definition of equity for The Field, (2) grounding the definition in the literature, (3) incorporating the definition into professional conversations, and (4) amplifying Dev Ed’r scholarship engaging with equity.