Every few years, I teach a first-year seminar called “Mathematics for All.” The course description begins:
What kinds of mathematical knowledge are necessary for full participation in contemporary democratic society? How well, and how fairly, do our schools educate students in quantitative skills and reasoning? By what measures might we judge success?
To put it another way, what would an equitable mathematics education system look like? In this post, I reflect on some articles published on this blog that support our efforts to move toward fairness.
A good place to start is in our own classrooms. Once we acknowledge the disproportionate distribution of access to mathematics experienced by our own students, we can make use of Six Ways Mathematics Instructors Can Support Diversity and Inclusion, by Natalie LF Hobson. One of the six ways is to “[e]ncourage your students to embrace a growth mindset,” which Cody L. Patterson explores in Theory into Practice: Growth Mindset and Assessment.
My seminar includes a service-learning project. As Ekaterina Yurasovskaya demonstrates in Learning by Teaching: Service-Learning in a Precalculus Classroom, such a project, while challenging on several levels, can benefit both the community being served and the students. If my own experience is any guide, the instructor can also gain some unanticipated lessons about mathematics learning in the early grades.
Attending to equity and inclusion is hard work. When I need to take a step back for an energy recharge, I go straight to contributions from Ben Braun, our founding Editor-in-Chief. His Aspirations and Ideals, Struggles and Realities is rich with inspirational ideas. I’ve assigned The Secret Question (Are We Actually Good at Math?) to my own students. It means a lot to them, and the resulting conversations are deep and illuminating.
Let’s not forget about the struggles our own colleagues may continue to face as they work within the flawed systems that Ben describes so well. A useful reading in this regard is Student Evaluations Ratings of Teaching: What Every Instructor Should Know, by Jacqueline Dewar. The author points out that “‘ratings’ denote data that need interpretation,” and gives useful guidelines for interpretation. While not focusing exclusively on the question of bias, the article does cite sources on that topic, including this study published in 2016.
Moving on to other aspects of our professional lives, Viviane Pons describes An Inclusive Maths Conference: ECCO 2016 . Having been to dozens of conferences, many of them quite worthwhile, I was fascinated by the intentional design details that made this one special, and wish I’d been there to experience it!
A simple Announcement of a Statement from the American Mathematical Society’s Board of Trustees reminds us that we can work toward the greater good within our professional societies.
While I’ve had plenty of my own “secret question” moments in a lifetime of learning mathematics, I recognize the benefits of mathematical habits of mind to me as an individual and as a citizen of the world. Those benefits should be available to everyone. We can all work toward that end, and I hope you’ve found some ideas here on how you might help.
