Exploring Quantification for Advocacy: Student Perspectives on Public Policy in a Summer Mathematical Modeling Seminar

• In Event: Learning to Fight, Fighting to Learn: Secondary Student Actors Reclaiming Mathematics Through Histories of Resistance

Abstract

Objectives
In an everchanging political landscape, critical mathematics pedagogy should engage students in understanding the policy implications of their mathematical work. In one ideal state, the work of critical mathematics should be interdisciplinary and historicized (McGee & Hostetler, 2014), meaning that it will consider the multiple dimensions of human development and agency (Gutstein, 2007), exist beyond the rigid boundaries of the disciplines and speak to a diversity of discourses (Harper, 2019), and take seriously the realities of the society (Gutstein, 2006; Moses & Cobb, 2002; Moynihan et al., 2023). Drawing on critical, community, and policy-orientations in mathematics (see, e.g., Moses et al., 1989; Gutstein, 2016), this study examines how youth utilize policy issues and mathematics to frame models for change; more specifically: How do student responses to community-oriented and policy-oriented discussions in a mathematics modeling seminar relate to their general framing and understanding of modeling processes?

Perspectives
In the research on mathematical modeling, there is a lack of research on public policy despite a legacy of action (Moses, 1993). The focus on public policy supports mathematics education and critical mathematics in a few ways – such as supporting students’ mathematical communication. The study used a critical ethnographic inquiry (Beach & Vigo-Arrazola, 2021) to explore how students engage with mathematics to frame responses to social and political oppression.

Data and Methods
Data for this study were collected over two summers during a residential youth program at a small liberal arts college in the Southeastern U.S. with tenth- and eleventh-grade students. This seminar was part of a broader study on youth engagement with quantitative and computational tools for issues of social and racial justice. The data corpus includes focus group recordings, student project work, survey responses, and regular group notes and notes from digital check-ins. Methods combined abstract and interdisciplinary approaches, such as game theory and algebraic modeling, to help students model complex societal issues and develop a critical quantitative modeling framework integrating social justice and mathematics.

Findings
Policy-oriented discussions helped focus student priorities when engaging in the selection and exploration of a mathematical model. Despite the hypothesis that students would select more diverse models beyond algebra, even when introduced to different subject classification, students tended to rely on algebraic models when introduced to both geospatial and game theory topics; this was found to be potentially related to how students view mathematics and less exposure to abstract content (e.g., geometry/topology and analysis), as opposed to algebra and statistics.

Scholarly Significance
This study can inform future research on how students develop complex ideas that they are also able to communicate in ways that are accessible, help inform decision-making and, ultimately, support students’ understanding of various civic and democratic processes within a mathematical context. While modeling is a single component of social action and policy, acknowledging the harm that mathematics has had in the past and expanding student frames of reference helps highlight mathematics as a real-world mechanism for advocacy that can provide useful insights.

Author

• Nathan Alexander, Howard University