Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to examine how developmental education in community colleges has been reported in one of the most prominent newspapers in higher education, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Using Framing Media Theory (de Vreese, 2005; Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 2000; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000), 31 articles published from 2010 to 2015 were analyzed to explore the scope of attention given to developmental education, the frame devices used to describe the topic, and how the dominant frames changed from 2010 to 2015. The final results of this study indicated that the dominant frames associated with developmental education were human interest, economic consequences, and conflict. Among those dominant frames, three themes were identified based on their saliency— external influencers, expert authorities, and the college completion agenda. The majority of the articles focused on what external influencers were proposing or doing to change developmental education through the economic consequences frame to increase the college completion rate. Expert authorities focused on refuting much of the external influencers' claims through the human interest frame by presenting success stories with inconclusive data to support their claims. The researcher viewed the exchange between external influencers and expert authorities as a battlefield, defined by the conflict frame, between two forces over developmental education and the college completion agenda.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2016

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Cintron Delgado, Rosa

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education and Human Performance

Department

Child, Family, and Community Sciences

Degree Program

Educational Leadership; Higher Education

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0006481

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0006481

Language

English

Release Date

December 2016

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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