A Conceptual Approach to Promoting Equity in Math Classrooms

• In Event: 34.050 - A Wake-Up Call: Mathematics as an Equalizer for Social Justice and Equity

Abstract

Dr. Mesa will highlight conceptual frameworks that can serve to enhance research focused on community college mathematics classrooms. Surprisingly absent from most of the studies on persistence and student success is the role of mathematics instruction on student success (Mesa, 2017). Attending to instruction defined as the interaction between faculty and students with mathematical content embedded in particular contexts and evolving over time (Cohen, et al., 2003), we acknowledge the relational nature of knowledge exchanges that occur in the classroom and recognize the individual roles that students and teachers have in shaping students’ identities as mathematics doers when they are bounded by the common goal of learning a particular piece of content (Martin, 2009). Methodologically, the definition allows for several entry points (students, teacher, and content) to describe the interactions and to account for those that support URMs in mathematics (Wood, Harris, & White, 2015). In addition, it helps to differentiate from curriculum, which refers to content and programmatic factors. Instruction refers concretely to classroom experiences (whether face-to-face or virtual). Using this definition of instruction, this presentation will highlight problematic patterns of interaction in precisely those community college mathematics courses that prepare students for a calculus course sequence (Mesa, 2010; Mesa & Lande, 2014).

Author

• Vilma M. Mesa, University of Michigan