A Study of Successful Doctoral Students in Mathematics From Historically Marginalized Groups

• In Event: What and Whose Stories Are Told in Mathematics Education and Toward What Ends?

Abstract

Within the context of an ethnography on mathematics doctoral students from historically marginalized groups, we use counterstories to place value on the voices of the students themselves, and to disrupt dominant narratives, which in the mathematics community have been perpetuated by a persistent lack of diversity. Additionally, because the research team is diverse across race, gender, discipline, and age, the counterstory development process has been an important methodological design choice to facilitate communication to clarify, conceptualize and refine results. We share our methodology for building counterstories and reflect on how the inherently recursive and creative counterstory development process can help research teams to conceptualize, understand, and apply themes identified during a qualitative analysis.

Authors

• Carl Westine, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Sarah Elizabeth Sword, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Michael Young, Iowa State University