Validating a Culturally Sustaining Measure of Student Math Engagement Using Factor Analysis

• In Event: Revolutionizing Math Engagement: Culturally Sustaining Measures for Black and Latina/o Students

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents the results of a validation study on the Adapted Measure of Math Engagement (AM-ME) which centers the lived experiences of Black and Latina/o students. This paper uses both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to develop the math engagement measure and establish construct validity.

Perspectives
We used a critical participatory action approach to develop initial items and factors for this scale in partnership with teacher and student researchers (Mirra et al, 2015). We additionally ground our theoretical orientation to this work in ecological models of development (e.g., Vélez-Agosto et al., 2017) and culturally sustaining pedagogies (e.g., Paris, 2012). These perspectives informed the design of survey items and the way we conceptualized the possible dimensions of math engagement.

Data Sources and Methods
Data comes from a survey of middle and high school students in a diverse, suburban school district in Minnesota (n = 1,111 Black or Latino/a students). The survey asked 70 substantive questions about math engagement. These items were chosen by the AM-ME Research Group based on existing scales of math engagement (especially the Math and Science Engagement Scale; Wang et al, 2016) and original qualitative and quantitative data collected during the first year of the study. The scale items were organized into factors using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the factor structure was validated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We found the scale demonstrated metric and scalar invariance by race. A final round of data collection is occurring in Winter 2025 to test an updated version of the measure.

Results
We split the data set into two halves: on one half we used exploratory factor analysis to identify the underlying factor structure, and on the other half we used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the proposed factor structure fit the data well. The eight factors identified included some factors that broaden traditional understandings of engagement by including environmental factors such as cultural supports and barriers to engagement. CFA confirms this factor structure fits the underlying data (CFI = .961, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .044).

Significance
This study provides evidence of new dimensions of math engagement that have not been considered in previous scales of engagement. We conceptualize math engagement broadly, driven by the priorities of youth researchers and informed by dynamics systems theory and culturally responsive pedagogy. The results suggest that both practitioners and researchers adopt a broader definition of math engagement to fully capture the experiences of Black and Latino/a students.

Author

• Claire Kelley, Child Trends