When Will It All "Add" Up? Awakenings and Community College Mathematics

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

Abstract

Women and racial/ethnic minorities are the fastest growing segments of our workforce (Toossi, 2012). The reality of the changing demographics is shifting the composition of America’s labor market as a critical mass of our human capital are people of color. Many of the high skill, high demand and high wage positions are in STEM fields. The emerging majority-minority together with projected increases in the need for STEM-trained workers is transforming educational and employment opportunities. This reshaping of the labor market landscape illustrates that mathematics is both a gateway and gatekeeper as wage-earning differentials have been attributed to differences in math coursework by racial/ethnic groups (Battey, 2013). Moreover, of those underrepresented racially minoritized students who major in NSF defined STEM fields, 36% attend community colleges. The demographic shifts in the U.S. indicate an acute need to transition more URM students (namely African American, Latinx, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian American students are underrepresented in STEM) through the Developmental to Pre-calculus to Calculus II (DPC2) sequence in community colleges. Dr. Zamani-Gallaher will discuss how access and participation is often thwarted in mathematics given the normalization of deficit framing of community college students, especially students of color and those in developmental education. In spite of community colleges being referred to as democracy’s doors, there are organizational structures and racial stratifying in the access, enrollment and success in math reflective of “possessive investment in whiteness”, the operationalization of white privilege and curricula that reinforce status quo (Gutiérrez, 2017; Lipsitz, 1998; Martin, 2009). Zamani-Gallaher asserts that community college spaces are not exempt from mathematics being framed as a racially neutral subject. She’ll highlight how findings to date from the TLC3 research project illuminate institutional practices that work and those lacking in successfully transitioning diverse learners in, through and out of developmental math to college-level math and STEM pathways to completion.

Author

• Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign