Serving English Learners Under HB 2223: A Qualitative Analysis of Corequisite Reform Implementation in Texas

Characteristics of EL Students

The term “English Learner” is an umbrella term used to encompass a wide variety of students in the U.S. education system. This term includes any student “whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding English may limit his or her ability to (1) achieve in classrooms where English is the language of instruction and (2) access opportunities to fully participate in society” (Bergey et al., 2018, p. 3). This term includes international students, recent immigrants, a group of students referred to as Generation 1.5, and second-generation Americans, detailed further below.

The first group of students that fall under this term are international students, who come “from around the world . . . to improve their English, obtain degrees, and/or take coursework in U.S. postsecondary institutions” (Bergey et al., 2018, p. 3). These students are here to develop skills and obtain certifications they can take back to their home countries, or, in some cases, that they can reinvest into the communities where they studied. There are also recent immigrants, who have moved “to the United States from another country for better economic, political, or social opportunities” (Bergey et al., 2018, p. 3). In 2023, a PEW research poll reported that there were 47.8 million immigrants living in the United States. The third group of ELs are the Generation 1.5 students, or those who “arrive in the United States as a child or teenager . . . [and] maintain some aspects of their native culture, language, and identity while also acquiring English and adapting to a new culture” (Bergey et al., 2018, p. 3). Precise statistics on this subgroup are hard to calculate; however, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2012), there were around 1.8 million children living in the United States, between the ages of 6 and 17, who were born in another country. Lastly, there are second-generation Americans who are full citizens but may live in a household where English is not spoken or not often used and will need language support at school (Bunch & Kibler, 2015; Kibbler et al., 2011). Again, the exact statistics are hard to calculate, as is parsing the numbers between Generation 1.5 and second-generation students, but it is projected that immigrants and their children make up roughly a quarter of U.S. school-aged children (Ozek & Figlio, 2016) and further estimated that the children of immigrants will represent up to a third of U.S. school-aged children by the year 2050 (Passel, 2011).

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Although this study was not originally designed around a specific conceptual framework, faculty narratives consistently highlighted practices aligned with CRP. As such, CRP is used in this study as an interpretive lens for understanding faculty responses to the needs of EL students in corequisite courses, rather than as a deductive framework guiding data collection or analysis. CRP provides insights into understanding how educators can effectively engage and support linguistically and culturally diverse students, such as ELs, in developmental education and corequisite settings. CRP centers on the belief that students’ cultural backgrounds, experiences, and languages are assets that enrich the learning environment rather than deficits to be remediated (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Through the intentional inclusion of students’ cultural identities in curriculum design, instructional practice, and classroom interactions, CRP aims to promote academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. This approach aligns with broader equity-oriented reforms in higher education that seek to close opportunity gaps by valuing diverse ways of knowing and creating inclusive learning environments (Paris & Alim, 2017).

CRP emphasizes an approach that is both pedagogical and sociocultural, aiming to empower students by fostering a sense of belonging and identity within the educational space. For instance, incorporating students’ cultural histories and practices into the curriculum can address misconceptions and stereotypes, particularly for marginalized groups, thereby enhancing educational opportunities for all students (Meléndez-Luces & Couto-Cantero, 2021). In addition, CRP is intimately connected with the constructs of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which emphasizes the need to design curricula that cater to diverse learning needs while explicitly considering cultural differences (Kieran & Anderson, 2018). This synergy underscores the necessity for educational institutions to train preservice teachers in CRP, nurturing a commitment to multicultural education essential for increasingly diverse classrooms (Kumar & Lauermann, 2017).

In the context of corequisite developmental education, CRP provides a useful lens for interpreting faculty practices that integrate culturally relevant content and personalized supports for EL students. Prior research has shown that instruction reflecting students’ linguistic and cultural identities enhances engagement, persistence, and self-efficacy (Byrd, 2016; Gay, 2018). Some of the ways in which faculty can validate students’ lived experiences include through flexible assignments, empathetic communication, and family or community partnerships (e.g., Ciampa & Reisboard, 2024). These types of practices are particularly important for ELs, whose educational trajectories are often shaped by systemic inequities in placement and assessment (Bunch & Kibler, 2015; Llosa & Bunch, 2011).

Developmental Education and Corequisite Reform

Traditional developmental education has long followed a prerequisite, sequential model, requiring students to complete non-credit remedial reading, writing, or math courses before gaining access to college-level coursework. This structure was intended to provide extended time for students to strengthen their skills before advancing. For EL students, these pathways often emphasized mechanics, grammar, and sentence structure, aligning with second language acquisition theories that stress gradual, ordered exposure to academic English (Avni & Finn, 2021). However, while these courses offer more time for direct language instruction, they also carry drawbacks. Research has shown that long remedial sequences delay students’ progress toward degrees, increase educational costs, and contribute to high rates of attrition before students ever reach credit-bearing courses (Bailey et al., 2010; Bailey & Jaggars, 2016). Other studies echoed these concerns, noting that traditional developmental pathways often kept students “stuck” in extended coursework, while corequisite models accelerated progress and reduced these costs (Park-Gaghan & Mokher, 2025). Yet, as mentioned earlier, there are those who have raised cautions that these accelerated reforms might reduce the valuable instructional time EL students need to build proficiency, highlighting the ongoing tension between access, efficiency, and adequate support (Avni & Finn, 2021).

Recent reforms in developmental education have sought alternative pathways and sequencing that reduce the amount of time students spend on these courses with several states, including Texas and Tennessee, turning to corequisite courses. Corequisite courses allow students to complete both a developmental education course and a college-level course in the same subject area within the same semester. Research on corequisites has largely been positive and has been shown to improve student outcomes, particularly in the short term (Boatman, 2021; Coca et al., 2023; Logue et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2022; Mokher et al., 2024; Ran & Lin, 2022). For example, Ran and Lee’s (2025) study of Tennessee community colleges examined the heterogeneous effects of corequisite reform for remediation-eligible students with varying levels of academic preparation. They found that corequisite remediation significantly improved gateway and subsequent college-level course completion for students in all placement test score groups below the college-level threshold.

Texas Policy Context and HB 2223

Texas is an ideal state for this study due to its large and diverse student population. In 2024, there were approximately 732,000 students enrolled in public community, technical, and state colleges, with an additional 690,000 students enrolled in public universities (THECB, 2025). In the five years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment among Hispanic/Latino and Asian students in higher education institutions rose steadily, while the number of White students declined. These demographic shifts have gradually reshaped the overall composition of the student body. In 2016, White and Hispanic/Latino students each accounted for approximately 37% of total enrollment. By 2024, however, their shares had diverged by about 15 percentage points, with Hispanic/Latino students becoming the largest group (43.1%). This shift occurred even though both groups each represented roughly 40% of Texas’s total population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2024). A recent study by Schudde and colleagues (2025) found that among a cohort of Texas high school seniors in 2012 and 2013, ever-EL students made up approximately 25% of entrants at Texas public two-year institutions and 18% of entrants at public four-year institutions.

In 2017, the Texas Legislature passed HB 2223, which mandated the phased adoption of corequisite developmental education across all public colleges and universities. This legislation required institutions to place 25% of underprepared students in corequisite models by Fall 2018, 50% by Fall 2019, 75% by Fall 2020, and 100% by Fall 2021, which they achieved. By 2021, approximately 9 out of 10 institutions had reached the target of 100% participation for eligible students, indicating high but not total compliance (Mokher et al., 2023). After 2021, nearly all developmental education courses were offered in a corequisite format, although some institutions continued to offer traditional developmental sequences for exempt students such as those classified as ESOL at entry. While HB 2223 created the mandate, it also gave institutions broad flexibility in designing and implementing their pathways, leading to significant variation in course structures and intensities. Some of these formats include concurrent corequisites, offered alongside college-level courses; sequential corequisites, delivered in two shorter blocks within a single semester; and NCBOs, which provide flexible, self-paced alternatives outside of a traditional classroom setting.

Critiques of these models highlight both strengths and concerns. Concurrent supports can provide in-the-moment assistance, while sequential formats allow for extended class periods and more diverse instructional strategies. NCBOs, although flexible, have raised concerns about requiring high levels of student self-motivation, difficulties in progress monitoring, and mixed results in areas such as math pass rates and credit accumulation (Edgecombe, 2011; Paulson & Van Overschelde, 2021). Importantly, HB 2223 also exempted students classified as ESOL at entry, creating a policy gap for EL students who may not yet have full English proficiency but are nonetheless enrolled in college-level coursework with corequisite support. This policy context underscores the importance of examining how institutions interpret and implement corequisite reform for EL students, given both the opportunities and the challenges embedded in HB 2223.

ELs and Corequisites

As EL students enter higher education, community colleges and open-access four-year institutions often serve as essential access points because of their open enrollment policies, lower costs, and proximity to home (Bunch, 2009; Bunch & Endris, 2012; David & Kanno, 2021; Kibler et al., 2011; Nuñez et al., 2016). Yet despite these advantages, ELs frequently encounter barriers. Research has documented that ELs are often “tracked into lower rigor pathways, held to additional course requirement expectations, diverted into sheltered instructional settings, and subjected to additional testing” (Nguyen, 2021, p. 2). These practices contribute to delays in degree progress and higher attrition, as developmental education has been shown to add both time and cost to students’ educational journeys (Bailey et al., 2010; Bailey & Jaggars, 2016).

However, evidence for EL students is more complex. Studies have found that nonnative English speakers may experience unique challenges in corequisite models (Bostian, 2017; Llosa & Bunch, 2011; Melguizo et al., 2021). Placement testing often exacerbates these challenges. Standardized assessments, such as Accuplacer, disproportionately place ELs into developmental courses because test questions emphasize comprehension and grammar while neglecting speaking and listening skills, an issue particularly problematic for ELs educated in the United States, who may be stronger in oral communication than written grammar (Llosa & Bunch, 2011).

Some studies suggest that ELs benefit from integrated and complementary developmental education coursework. Hodara and Xu (2018), for instance, showed that language minority students fared better when enrolled in both reading and writing developmental courses compared to a single course, even though this meant taking more courses overall. Their findings highlight the fact that the needs of EL students in developmental and corequisite pathways may diverge from their native English-speaking peers.

In Texas, a pilot study of corequisite reform found benefits for underrepresented students, including Hispanic populations, but sample sizes were insufficient to detect subgroup effects (Miller & Daugherty, 2018). At the same time, some researchers have raised concerns that corequisite acceleration may inadvertently disadvantage EL students who are not yet fully proficient in English by reducing the amount of instructional time devoted to mechanics, grammar, and sentence structure (Avni & Finn, 2021). This tension underscores the need to consider whether and how corequisite reforms, while beneficial for many students, meet the distinct needs of ELs.

Taken together, the literature demonstrates that while corequisite reform has improved outcomes for many students, important questions remain about how ELs experience these pathways, particularly in light of policy mandates such as HB 2223 and the continued reliance on placement assessments. The gaps in existing research point to the value of qualitative exploration that centers the perspectives of faculty who work most closely with EL students in these contexts. By examining how educators understand and respond to the varied needs of ELs, this study aims to illuminate both the opportunities and challenges of corequisite reform, thereby informing institutional practice and broader policy efforts to advance equitable outcomes.

Data Collection

This qualitative study is part of a larger, multi-year mixed-methods evaluation of Texas’s corequisite developmental education reform. The project, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and conducted by Florida State University researchers in partnership with the THECB, examines the implementation of HB 2223. HB 2223 required institutions to scale up corequisite models between 2018 and 2021, with attention to how variations in course structure (concurrent, sequential, and NCBOs) and credit intensity shape student outcomes across math and Integrated Reading and Writing (IRW). The quantitative strand leverages statewide administrative data to track gateway course completion, credit accumulation, and persistence. The qualitative strand, which this study contributes to, provides contextual insights into how reforms are enacted and experienced. Specifically, the present analysis centers on faculty perspectives regarding EL students in corequisite courses, examining how practitioners perceive EL needs, instructional supports, and the challenges of implementing accelerated models in diverse institutional contexts.

Sample Selection

The sample consisted of 20 Texas institutions of higher education representing a diverse mix of contexts, including large urban community colleges, regional public universities, and smaller rural-serving colleges. Institutions varied substantially in size, from multi-campus systems serving tens of thousands of students to colleges with fewer than 5,000 enrollees. Several institutions were federally designated Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), including Hispanic-Serving Institutions, reflecting the demographic reality of Texas higher education. When selecting institutions for participation in this study, the research team intentionally sought public institutions from the 12 economic regions in Texas and a mix of two- and four-year institutions. Within each of these regions, some of specific institutions selected were based on convenience sampling from suggestions made by the THECB, or from personal contacts that the researchers developed with educators that we met at conferences in sessions about corequisites. The team also used purposive sampling to ensure that the sample reflected institutions serving diverse populations of students. For example, in one region the team selected an institution near the Mexico border with a predominate population of EL students. In another region the team selected a college in a remote rural locale.

Despite their differences, the participating institutions shared important similarities: all were open-access or regional public institutions, all served high proportions of first-generation and economically disadvantaged students, and all were required to comply with HB 2223’s corequisite mandate. Collectively, the sample captured the geographic, demographic, and structural variation across Texas higher education, from urban centers such as Houston and Dallas to rural colleges in the Panhandle and border regions. While not encompassing every public institution in the state, the sample offers a purposeful cross-section that reflects the range of contexts in which corequisite reforms are being implemented. This design allows the study to speak both to statewide challenges and to institution-specific adaptations.

Participant Selection

To select participants within each institution, we initially emailed invitations to participate in our research to the department chairs and/or developmental education coordinators at participating institutions at the beginning of each semester. These contacts were asked to identify faculty members teaching corequisite courses for participation in the study. We conducted small, semi-structured focus groups with faculty directly involved in corequisite developmental education in the English and mathematics departments. Participants were identified by academic role and recruited via email and telephone. Each focus group was conducted via Zoom and lasted 60 to 90 min, and typically included two to three individuals such as department chairs, developmental education coordinators, and faculty overseeing curricular decisions. Nearly all participants had either current or prior experience teaching corequisite courses. However, there were a few participants who were involved more in the planning stages to coordinate the initial implementation of corequisite courses. These participants would have had more limited information about the experiences of EL students in the classroom. In total, the sample comprised 116 participants: 50 from the English department and 66 from the mathematics department. Participants were informed that their participation was voluntary, that transcripts would be anonymized, and that findings would be reported in aggregate to encourage openness and trust.

Interview Protocol

Faculty interviews were guided by a semi-structured protocol designed to examine the design, implementation, and perceived effectiveness of corequisite developmental education courses. The protocol covered course structures and formats (concurrent, sequential, and NCBOs), placement and advising practices, instructional strategies, and student supports such as tutoring, supplemental instruction, and technology. Faculty were also asked to reflect on student subgroups—particularly EL students—and to discuss which course structures or intensities they perceived as most effective for these students. Additional questions addressed professional development opportunities, institutional supports, and comparisons between corequisite and traditional developmental education models. The protocol concluded with open-ended questions that invited participants to share successes, challenges, and additional insights not otherwise addressed. This design balanced consistency across institutions with flexibility to capture unique perspectives and local contexts.

Data Analysis

To better understand faculty perceptions of the experiences of EL students in corequisite courses, we began with a deductive coding approach grounded in prior scholarship on multilingual and language minority learners. Predetermined codes—Asian/Asian American, Hispanic/Latina/Latino, First-Generation Students, International and Immigrant Students, and English Language Learners—were applied because they reflect subgroups commonly included within the broader classification of ELs in higher education. This deductive frame was informed by research that conceptualizes ELs as a multilingual population with varied pathways to proficiency, including ever-ELs (current, former, and never ELs; Kieffer & Thompson, 2018; Schudde et al., 2025) and other classifications emphasizing language background over proficiency status (Kieffer et al., 2008). We coded any time that participants mentioned any of these EL subgroups (like immigrant status); however, we do not have this level of detail for most of the quotes. We do not want to generalize the findings based on the small number of cases where this information was reported, so the findings are not disaggregated by subgroup.

Building on this profile, the second phase of analysis employed an inductive coding strategy to capture emergent themes from faculty discussions. This profile was then closely reviewed to identify recurring patterns, novel insights, and unexpected issues not encompassed by the deductive frame. Through iterative coding and memo-writing, the team refined these into thematic categories addressing EL needs, effective instructional supports, and challenges associated with accelerated corequisite models. This two-phase process ensured both analytic rigor and openness to participant-driven insights.

It is important to note that the analytic approach for this study was primarily inductive. While the research team did not apply a predefined theoretical framework during coding, we engaged in iterative interpretation to situate emergent themes within relevant scholarship. During this process, CRP surfaced as a particularly salient framework for interpreting faculty descriptions of instructional practices and student supports.

To enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of our findings, we adopted established qualitative standards (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Miles et al., 2020). Coding was conducted collaboratively by 2 to 3 members of the research team, with regular meetings to compare interpretations, resolve discrepancies, and ensure consistency across deductive and inductive phases. Analytic memos documented decisions and reflexivity, providing a transparent audit trail. Investigator triangulation was used to strengthen dependability, with multiple researchers reviewing coded excerpts and thematic summaries. We grounded interpretations in participants’ own words through illustrative quotations, bolstering confirmability. Finally, the team engaged in iterative discussions to ensure that themes adequately captured variation across institutions and roles, enhancing both credibility and transferability of the analysis. The next section presents the findings of this study, organized around faculty perspectives on the needs of EL students in corequisite courses and the instructional supports they view as most effective.

ELs Are a Unique Student Group With Varied Needs and Strengths

We begin by providing insight into the first research question about how faculty perceive and respond to the varied needs of EL students enrolled in corequisite courses. Our discussion of ELs with faculty in Texas public college corequisite courses highlighted the complexity of both describing and serving a student group made up of various nationalities and ethnicities. This student group consists of people from various ages, backgrounds, cultures, and values and who have experienced different educational systems and pathways before attending classes in a Texas college. Faculty explained how these various contexts, both in and out of the classroom, created unique needs requiring unique responses.

Across our sample, ELs were noted as facing multiple challenges pertaining to language barriers, exhibiting varied proficiency even with the same class of students, and coming from diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. For example:

One of the major things we have here in the Valley is the language barrier. And I understand it’s Texas . . . but we’re 15 minutes from the border . . . They’re coming from Mexico to school . . . [we help] them as much as we can with the grammar . . . how to elaborate and fix their syntax and things like that. I honestly feel like these students need like an ESL class or something sometimes. Like . . . How are they in [this course] if they can’t speak English?

Faculty also pointed out the variation in the skill and academic needs of different ELs within the EL classification itself, like one English faculty member who described providing language support to students from different nationalities. They stated “I know a pretty common issue with students who grew up speaking Spanish, for instance, may be proper use of prepositions. Or students who are Vietnamese . . . might have issues with American idioms and syntax.” Further elaborating:

But the skill level within a corequisite can be vast . . . some of them just need a little bit of help with putting the commas in the right place, and they’re good to go. Others are barely literate . . . And there are some who are just poor test takers, and freeze up, and get nervous, and otherwise are perfectly capable of doing the work. They just had a bad day.

The uniqueness and complexity of EL students creates substantial challenges for accurate assessment and placement into corequisite courses. Faculty consistently noted that standardized testing processes do not always capture the nuanced linguistic and educational backgrounds of their ELs, and in some cases questioned the reliability of placement scores in identifying the appropriate course and needed supports. This was particularly a challenge for EL students who often did not have enough time on the Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA) to demonstrate their full knowledge of the content. As one English instructor explained,

I mean, they don’t get extra time because they happen to be an English language learner, yet a lot of times they are a little slower in answering their questions because they are—many of them have told me what they’re doing on the assessment is they are reading it in English, they are translating it into their native language and translating it back, and that takes time.

Here, the faculty member underscored how test-taking ability rather than actual readiness may drive placement outcomes, resulting in inappropriate assignments that hinder student success. Furthermore, these placement tests often fail to capture the wide variation in skills within the EL population, which spans from students requiring minimal support to those struggling with basic literacy, creating a persistent challenge in ensuring that ELs are placed in courses that match their actual needs.

ELs Respond Positively to Personalized and Culturally Relevant Instruction

Our second research question examined the types of instructional practices and supports that faculty viewed as most effective for promoting EL students’ success in corequisite courses. First, faculty felt that culturally relevant instruction and personalized supports were central to ELs success in corequisite courses. Many emphasized the need to view students holistically, acknowledging both their academic and personal contexts. As one educator explained:

We need to pause and acknowledge that some of our students are not performing 100-percent because . . . [of] the things they are going through . . . I’ve learned to validate my students . . . to have a little bit of empathy . . . so, I think the human part, we need to address our students as humans.

This perspective was echoed by math faculty, who emphasized the importance of relational approaches and individualized attention, stating:

I think knowing a little bit more about the student, knowing the student’s name, knowing their interests, that’s really important . . . And just reaching out to them . . . being adaptable to what’s going on with them, but not, you know, not in any way reducing the rigor of the course . . . definitely referring them to resources on campus are beneficial as well . . . sometimes helping them figure out things . . . [maybe they have] missed two classes, and they don’t know what to do. They’re completely lost. But saying it’s okay. It’s happened to me . . . We can get you through this.

In addition to personal connections, faculty emphasized that integrating personal or culturally relevant content into coursework enhanced student engagement and persistence. One English instructor shared how allowing students to select research topics relevant to their lived experiences helped sustain motivation:

I have a student right now, Hispanic male who’s very strongly into truck culture, like lowering trucks and customizing them, and so he’s doing his research paper on something related to that because he just couldn’t connect into the broader topic, and so I’m like, okay, well approach it from this way. What do you want to do? How are you going to do it? What research are you going to find? And so I’m allowing that flexibility for a student that I might lose otherwise who has the potential, just not the drive, I guess, for a disconnected topic in his mind.

Another faculty member described intentionally adapting reading selections to reflect students’ cultural backgrounds. She “created course content around the Ascender program” and explained that she tried to take a “comparative approach” to her reading selections in class—for example, if she had Asian students in the class, she made sure they could select reading materials written by Asian authors.

Taken together, these accounts illustrate how faculty regarded both culturally relevant pedagogy and personalized supports as essential to creating equitable learning environments for ELs in corequisite settings. By validating students’ lived experiences, tailoring content to their cultural identities, and providing flexible, human-centered supports, instructors believed they could more effectively promote EL persistence and academic success.

Community and Family Supports Bridge Competing Demands

A second area identified as effective for promoting EL students’ success in corequisite courses related to community and faculty supports that bridge competing demands. Faculty across sites described how community- and family-oriented structures help EL students reconcile competing home, work, and school demands by building belonging, aligning family expectations with college goals, and normalizing help-seeking behaviors. This included family nights, campus visits, motivational conferences, and wraparound services linked to corequisite English. For example, faculty at one institution talked about having a “Noche de Familia” or family night where the school invites “the student and two or three guests . . . [providing] dinner, cake, raffles . . . so that they can have a sense of belonging, and to tell the family it’s important that you support your child in this educational endeavor.” Faculty outlined the tradeoffs they observed their ELs face while trying to balance work, school, and homelife. These faculty felt that opportunities for direct engagement with families truly mattered to EL student success by increasing engagement, motivation, and developing a sense of belonging.

Faculty also talked about the importance of showing empathy to EL students. While ELs faced a lot of similar complications to other students attending open-access institutions and community colleges (i.e., long commutes, working to support families while attending school, etc.), faculty felt that getting to know their students and their individual challenges was paramount to their success, with faculty explaining: “I’ve learned to validate my students, to have empathy . . . my class is not going to fall apart if I give . . . [them] an extra day.”

Taken together, these accounts suggest that dedicated supports that acknowledge and incorporate EL’s community and family-facing structures helped these students navigate conflicting expectations. By pairing these dedicated supports with embedded academic supports and culturally anchored instruction (discussed previously) ELs were more persistent in their corequisite pathways.

Faculty Incorporated Direct Literacy and Language Instruction Into Their Corequisite Courses

A third promising practice was that faculty worked to add direct literacy and language instruction into their corequisite courses, including focused assistance in sentence-level writing, targeted reading/vocabulary, and grammar to expand ELs’ academic vocabulary and improve their reading comprehension, with one faculty member stating, “I also add in some basic reading comprehension skills . . . and that also helps with vocabulary. I find these students tend to be pretty vocabulary deficient . . . so I [expose] them to additional vocabulary and sentence structure through reading.” Several departments structured their corequisite classes to “mirror” the paired college-level course to make sure that they were covering the same skills and providing the developmentally appropriate scaffolding. Other faculty used adaptive tools to individualize practice saying, “Our HOCKS Learning courseware tailors itself as students work, giving exposure to common issues for those who haven’t written much in English.”

Most faculty reinforced their corequisite courses by offering tutoring either online or during office hours or they referred ELs to other on-campus services found at the library and writing centers making comments like “our library is so helpful; we can either go to the lab there or they will come to our classroom.” They felt their EL students were more engaged in their work and more dedicated to attending the available on-campus supports than their non-EL peers. As one faculty member stated: “Whenever I have international students, I know if I tell them there’s a writing center, there’s a tutor who is going to help you with your essay for free, they’re going to go.” Overall, faculty felt that these practices were not just remedial add-ons to their courses, but integral to helping ELs meet college-level expectations.

Collaboration Served as an Enabling Condition for EL Success

A fourth promising promise identified that faculty regularly referred to collaborative efforts in their work to provide EL support in corequisite courses. They felt collaboration among themselves and with other campus support services enabled this success. Faculty discussed co-teaching and informal classroom partnerships, with one faculty member describing how the presence of an IRW instructor during their lectures in a college-level course allowed for real-time identification of students in need of help and prevented them from falling behind. They reflected:

It was so helpful to have the INRW teacher there, because when I was up presenting in front of the class, she was scanning for puzzled looks and she would very quietly go and work with an individual student, perhaps an English language learner, and get them over the hump and bring them back into what was going on at the front of the classroom. And having them in the class was really pretty wonderful, because the students were comfortable with both of us helping them kind of interchangeably, and we were using the same vocabulary.

Another teacher similarly commented about the value of shared curricular planning, noting, “I think that’s really important that we teach the same things, we don’t have something that’s just completely random and far apart that we’re trying to get—we’re trying working on the same things, same concepts.” This kind of collaboration and alignment made college-level instruction more efficient and accessible for students by using shared vocabulary and processes across instructors. Even when the instructors could not attend each other’s lectures, their departments planned or “mirrored” the structure and lessons (also discussed above). They said:

[If] we’re teaching run-ons and fragments and comma splices . . . They’ll have two quizzes, one in INRW and one in English 1301. They’re both on commas and fragments, but the difficulty on the English 1301 is a lot more . . . rigorous than the one in INRW, because this is [where] you’re developing the skills . . .

Instructors also commented on the importance of working collaboratively with other campus support services. One English instructor explained:

We have a wonderful woman that’s an adjunct who teaches our ESOL classes, and we will start working with her as quickly as possible. So, if I have a student who may be in my co-req who I really think may benefit from working with her, I will get with her right away.

These examples underscore how collaboration served as an enabling condition for EL success by showing how working together allows peers to share expertise, align their instructional and academic support practices, and provide consistent structures to support their students’ progression through corequisite pathways.