Paying the Price for Sugar and Spice: Shifting the Analytical Lens in Equity Research

The analytical stance taken by equity researchers in education, the methodologies employed, and the interpretations that are drawn from data all have an enormous impact on the knowledge that is produced about sources of inequality. In the 1970s and 1980s, a great deal of interest was given to the issue of women's and girls' underachievement in mathematics. This prompted numerous different research projects that investigated the extent and nature of the differences between girls' and boys' achievement and offered reasons why such disparities occurred. This work contributed to a discourse on gender and mathematics that flowed through the media channels and into schools, homes, and the workplace. In this article, I consider some of the scholarship on gender and mathematics, critically examining the findings that were produced and the influence they had. In the process, I propose a fundamental tension in research on equity, as scholars walk a fine and precarious line between lack of concern on the one hand and essentialism on the other. I argue in this article that negotiating that tension may be the most critical role for equity researchers as we move into the future.     

Research,Reform, and Equity in U.S. Mathematics Education

This article discusses mathematics education research in relation to equity and current U.S. reforms. Although mathematics education researchers and reformers give attention to equity, work in this area tends to ignore relevant social and cultural issues. I begin by surveying articles on equity published in recent, mainstream education journals, highlighting the lack of attention given to social class and ethnicity. I discuss the implications of this limited research base. Specifically, I argue that current mathematics education reforms have been shaped by good intentions and existing research, neither of which offers adequate guidance to address the complexities of equity in mathematics classrooms today. Drawing from a study of social class differences in students' experiences in one reform-oriented classroom, I discuss the challenges and dilemmas inherent in sociocultural approaches to research in mathematics education and their potential contributions. I call for research from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on ways in which students from underrepresented groups can struggle when encountering particular instructional approaches, and ways in which teachers and students are able to address such struggles.     

Enabling the Practice of Mathematics Teachers in Context: Toward a New Equity Research Agenda

In this article, I address the need for a more clearly articulated research agenda around equity issues by proposing a working definition of equity and a focal point for research. More specifically, I assert that rather than pitting them against each other, we must coordinate (a) efforts to get marginalized students to master what currently counts as “dominant” mathematics with (b) efforts to develop a critical perspective among all students about knowledge and society in ways that ultimately facilitate (c) a positive relationship between mathematics, people, and equity on the planet. I make this argument partly by reviewing the literature on (school) contexts that engage marginalized students in mathematics. Then, I argue that the place that holds the most promise for addressing equity is a research agenda that emphasizes enabling the practice of teachers and that draws more heavily on design-based and action research, thereby redefining what the practice of mathematics means along the way. Specific research questions are offered.     

Research, Reform, and Equity in U.S. Mathematics Education

This article discusses mathematics education research in relation to equity and current U.S. reforms. Although mathematics education researchers and reformers give attention to equity, work in this area tends to ignore relevant social and cultural issues. I begin by surveying articles on equity published in recent, mainstream education journals, highlighting the lack of attention given to social class and ethnicity. I discuss the implications of this limited research base. Specifically, I argue that current mathematics education reforms have been shaped by good intentions and existing research, neither of which offers adequate guidance to address the complexities of equity in mathematics classrooms today. Drawing from a study of social class differences in students' experiences in one reform-oriented classroom, I discuss the challenges and dilemmas inherent in sociocultural approaches to research in mathematics education and their potential contributions. I call for research from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on ways in which students from underrepresented groups can struggle when encountering particular instructional approaches, and ways in which teachers and students are able to address such struggles.     

Enabling the Practice of Mathematics Teachers in Context: Toward a New Equity Research Agenda

In this article, I address the need for a more clearly articulated research agenda around equity issues by proposing a working definition of equity and a focal point for research. More specifically, I assert that rather than pitting them against each other, we must coordinate (a) efforts to get marginalized students to master what currently counts as "dominant" mathematics with (b) efforts to develop a critical perspective among all students about knowledge and society in ways that ultimately facilitate (c) a positive relationship between mathematics, people, and equity on the planet. I make this argument partly by reviewing the literature on (school) contexts that engage marginalized students in mathematics. Then, I argue that the place that holds the most promise for addressing equity is a research agenda that emphasizes enabling the practice of teachers and that draws more heavily on design-based and action research, thereby redefining what the practice of mathematics means along the way. Specific research questions are offered.     

Who succeeds in STEM? Elementary girls' attitudes and beliefs about self and STEM

With ongoing underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, it is necessary to explore ways to maintain girls' STEM interest throughout elementary and middle school. This study is situated within the context of Designs in STEM (pseudonym), an out-of-school program that engages urban youth in authentic STEM experiences. Participants were 30 girls attending Designs in STEM in grades four and five. Participants were interviewed about their STEM interest, out-of-school versus in-school STEM learning experiences, and how gender relates to STEM success. Several key findings emerged. First, although students' prior school experiences with mathematics resulted in less positive dispositions toward mathematics than other STEM disciplines, their experiences at Designs in STEM revealed that mathematics could be fun and valuable when used for real-world purposes. Second, students found Designs in STEM to be more engaging and inspiring due to the context and pedagogies employed by Designs in STEM instructors. Third, despite observing girls' behavior that was more aligned with academic success, participants still identified STEM advantages for boys. Finally, participants defined success and intelligence in STEM based on speed and tracking. Discussion focuses on the need to consider how school-based mathematics instruction may serve as a barrier to girls' STEM interest and involvement.     

Enriching Science and Math Through Engineering

This case study reviewed the collaborative efforts of university engineers, teacher educators, and middle school teachers to advance sixth‐ and seventh‐grade students' learning through a series of project‐based engineering activities. This two‐year project enriched regular school curricula by introducing real‐world applications of science and mathematics concepts that expanded opportunities for creativity and problem‐solving, introduced problem‐based learning, and provided after‐school programming (for girls only) led by engineering students from the local university. This engineering education initiative showed significant impact on students' (1) confidence in science and mathematics; (2) effort toward science and mathematics; (3) awareness of engineering; and (4) interest in engineering as a potential career. With regard to gender, there were no significant differences between boys' and girls' responses. The girls' confidence in their own skills and potential, however, was significantly more positive than the boys' confidence in the girls. These results gave rise to new questions regarding mentor/mentee relationships and the overall effect of “girls only” mentoring.     

Inquiry as an entry point to equity in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Although many policy documents include equity as part of mathematics education standards and principles, researchers continue to explore means by which equity might be supported in classrooms and at the institutional level. Teaching practices that include opportunities for students to engage in active learning have been proposed to address equity. In this paper, through aligning some characteristics of inquiry put forth by Cook, Murphy and Fukawa-Connelly with Gutiérrez's dimensions of equity, we theoretically explore the ways in which active learning teaching practices that focus on inquiry could support equity in the classroom.     

Mother and Child Emotions during Mathematics Homework

Mathematics is often thought of as a purely intellectual and unemotional activity. Recently, researchers have begun to question the validity of this approach, arguing that emotions and cognition are intertwined. The emotions expressed during mathematics work may be linked to mathematics achievement. We used behavioral measures to identify the emotions expressed by U.S. mothers and their 11-year-old children while solving pre-algebra tasks in the home. The most notable positive emotions displayed by mothers and children included positive interest, affection, joy, and pride, whereas the most notable negative emotions expressed included tension, frustration, and distress. Reflecting the social aspects of doing homework together, mothers' and children's emotions were highly correlated. Independent of pre-existing differences in knowledge, children's emotions were associated with their performance on a mathematics post-test: tension was linked to poorer performance while positive interest, humor, and pride were linked to better performance. We found no evidence of gender differences in the emotions while working the tasks, although boys responded with more tension following an incorrect solution than did girls.     

Equity in mathematics education: unions and intersections of feminist and social justice literature

Traditional models of gender equity incorporating deficit frameworks and creating norms based on male experiences have been challenged by models emphasizing the social construction of gender and positing that women may come to know things in different ways from men. This paper draws on the latter form of feminist theory while treating gender equity in mathematics as intimately interconnected with equity issues by social class and ethnicity. I integrate feminist and social justice literature in mathematics education and argue that to secure a transformative, sustainable impact on equity, we must treat mathematics as an integral component of a larger system producing educated citizens. I argue the need for a mathematics education with tri-fold support for mathematical literacy, critical literacy, and community literacy. Respectively, emphases are on mathematics, social critique, and community relations and actions. Currently, the integration of these three literacies is extremely limited in mathematics.     

Economy: the absent centre of mathematics education

Social and political turns in mathematics education research have brought into the field postmodern theorisations that researchers have been using to dismantle traditional philosophies of mathematics, to posit mathematics in the sociocultural terrain, and to spell out the role mathematics has in school exclusion. Sociopolitical perspectives constitute a privileged field of research to address the influence of economy on mathematical achievement. However, instead of investigating the role of economy in students’ achievement, sociopolitical studies have been contributing to a disavowal of the economic dimension of school mathematics. This paper synthesises a set of investigations carried out by the author in the last 5 years endeavouring to posit mathematics education in the political and economic spectrum of our time. It takes advantage of the contemporary combination of Hegel’s dialectics, Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marx’s critique of political economy, carried out by Slavoj ?i?ek, to develop a critique of the way research within the so-called ‘sociopolitical turn’ deals with the issue of equity; and marks out the contours of mathematics education’s ideological belonging.     

Gender Equity in Mathematics: Beliefs of Students,Parents, and Teachers

The attitudes about mathematics held by girls and boys participating in a regional mathematics contest, their parents, teachers, and mathematics coaches were investigated. Quantitative data regarding mathematics as a male domain, perception of importance of mathematics, confidence in learning mathematics, effectance motivation, and usefulness of mathematics were obtained. It was found that the traditional gender‐based differences in the beliefs regarding mathematics persist even in these mathematically talented students. Furthermore, parents' responses to the questions regarding the role of mathematics revealed that mothers, more than fathers, focused on the computational aspects of mathematics, while fathers more than mothers mentioned the role of mathematics in science or as a language. Boys, fathers, and certain mathematics teachers admitted to a low level of gender stereotyping, as evidenced by their scores on the Mathematics as a Male Domain subscale. However, the girls, mothers, and mathematics coaches did not endorse this stereotyping. Unsolicited responses of girls and mothers, in fact, emphatically denied that gender stereotyping exists. These findings are discussed in terms of the need to resolve the essential conflicts between students', parents', and teachers' deeply held beliefs regarding the nature of mathematics, gender differences in mathematical abilities, and the desire for equity within mathematics education.     

A Relational Perspective on Issues of Cultural Diversity and Equity as They Play Out in the Mathematics Classroom

In this article, we present a relational perspective in which cultural diversity is viewed as a relation between people's participation in the practices of different communities. In the case at hand, the relevant practices were those of students' local, home communities, and the broader communities to which they belonged in wider society on the one hand and the specifically mathematical practices established by the classroom community on the other hand. In the 1st part of the article, we discuss how we might characterize the practices of these various communities by drawing on Wenger's (1998) notion of a community of practice and on Gee's (1997) notion of a Discourse. In doing so, we question the manner in which students are frequently classified exclusively in terms of the standard categories of race and ethnicity in investigations of equity in mathematics education. Later in the article, we clarify that in addition to focusing on the continuities and contrasts between the practices of different communities, the relational perspective also encompasses issues of both power and identity. As we illustrate, the gatekeeping role that mathematics plays in students' access to educational and economic opportunities is not limited to differences in the ways of knowing associated with participation in the practices of different communities. Instead, it also includes difficulties that students experience in reconciling their views of themselves and who they want to become with the identities that they are invited to construct in the mathematics classroom.     

Factors Influencing Elementary Teachers' Positioning of African American Girls as Science and Mathematics Learners

Despite recent progress toward gender equity in science and mathematics education, the underachievement of low‐income African American girls remains a challenge when compared with their white counterparts. Furthermore, the causes of this persistent underachievement have not been explored thoroughly. We have initiated a three‐year longitudinal study of how African American girls position themselves in relation to science and mathematics learning from fifth to seventh grade, including the impact, if any, of the positioning of teachers, counselors, and parents on this process. In this article, we share findings examining science and mathematics teachers' actions and perceptions and their positioning of African American girls. This qualitative study used an interpretive design with multiple data sources including classroom observations, interviews, and field notes. Findings reveal that school‐wide policies and teachers' autonomous decisions impact the regularity of science and mathematics instruction, and that teachers do not always conceptualize the girls as science and mathematics achievers, positioning them in negative ways.     

Gender perspectives in mathematics education: intentions of research in Denmark and Norway

A framework is presented for analyzing gender perspectives in mathematics education (structural, symbolic, personal and interactional gender), and the Danish and Norwegian researchers’/teachers’ work within the field of gender and mathematics is presented with reference to these four perspectives. Furthermore, the gender issue in TIMSS and PISA is briefly discussed. The main thread through the article is the researchers’ willingness and intentions of investigating the gender perspectives in mathematics education. However, so far, these research intentions have not been realized in Denmark and Norway.     

Students' gendered perceptions of mathematics in middle grades single‐sex and coeducational classrooms

With the introduction of single‐sex classroom settings in coeducational public schools, there is an ongoing debate as to whether single‐sex education may reduce or reinforce traditional stereotypes and gender roles. In this article we present findings from a study that investigated the extent to which mathematics is perceived as a gendered domain among adolescent students enrolled in single‐sex classes and coeducational classes. Further we analyzed the relationships between student characteristics, class‐type, and teacher variables on students' perceptions of gender in mathematics. Findings from this study challenge the traditional view of mathematics as a male domain. Female participants more frequently considered mathematics to be a female domain than the male participants. Male participants, on the other hand, typically did not stereotype the mathematics as a gendered domain. Results from this study do not indicate, for girls at least, that participation in single‐sex classes results in a greater propensity to stereotype mathematics as a gendered domain than would be the case in coeducational classes. This study contributes to the evolving discourse and understanding of adolescents' gendered attitudes and beliefs towards mathematics—especially in light of stereotyped assertions that have a bearing on efforts to promote the learning of mathematics and science.     

Motivations and meanings of students' actions in six classrooms from Germany, Hong Kong and the United States

This article presents an analysis of about 100 interviews with students from eight-grade classrooms in Berlin, Hong Kong and San Diego that reconstructs student motivations and the meanings they attribute to classroom activities. The data of the six classrooms were produced in the Learner's Perspective Study (LPS). The LPS is an international collaboration of researchers investigating practices in eighthgrade mathematics classrooms in 13 countries. Although not the central focus of the research, the case study of six classrooms revealed a variety of students' beliefs and perceptions, which are the focus of this article. These correspond to the possibilities the classroom practices offer. The study also reveals some similarities among student motives and concerns across classrooms. The findings are an important reminder that basing a curriculum upon an alternative vision calls for changing mathematical content as well as the social relations that are established through teaching methods and principles of evaluation.     

Gender‐Related Beliefs and Mathematics Performance of Preservice Primary Teachers

The aim of this study was to examine whether there are gender differences in mathematics achievement and in beliefs about mathematics of preservice teachers over a period of four years. Data were collected from preservice teachers (156 males and 155 females) from the Ad?yaman University Faculty of Education in Turkey. The Mathematics as a Gendered Domain instrument was used to investigate preservice teachers' beliefs about the gender differences in mathematics. The results indicated that gender had no effect on mathematics performances of the preservice primary teachers. Findings of this research show that most of the male and female preservice primary teachers do not gender‐stereotype mathematics and believe that mathematics is gender neutral, although there are gender differences on some types of items of instrument.     

Conceptions of mathematics and student identity: implications for engineering education

Lecturers of first-year mathematics often have reason to believe that students enter university studies with naïve conceptions of mathematics and that more mature conceptions need to be developed in the classroom. Students’ conceptions of the nature and role of mathematics in current and future studies as well as future career are pedagogically important as they can impact on student learning and have the potential to influence how and what we teach. As part of ongoing longitudinal research into the experience of a cohort of students registered at the author's institution, students’ conceptions of mathematics were determined using a coding scheme developed elsewhere. In this article, I discuss how the cohort of students choosing to study engineering exhibits a view of mathematics as conceptual skill and as problem-solving, coherent with an accurate understanding of the role of mathematics in engineering. Parallel investigation shows, however, that the students do not embody designated identities as engineers.     

Science and Mathematics Equity Issues at a Local School District Level

Many reports to the nation have revealed differences in the educational experiences of males and females. This is especially true in mathematics and science where females are not receiving the necessary educational background to develop the skills and understanding required to be citizens and employees in today's technological world. As a result, females are underrepresented in science, mathematics, and engineering professions. This study compares one school district's data with the data in national reports and then attempts to analyze what factors exist in the community and school district that reinforce and perpetuate inequitable situations for females. This study also provides a model for other school districts to conduct a self-study of gender equity education issues.