Focus on Inquiry and Equity in Mathematics for Education Faculty

Education Development Center, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Development and Implementation project will address two questions: What is mathematics? and Who is successful at doing it? Mathematics continues to be widely seen as a static body of knowledge that gets delivered to students. This misperception limits the potential for students to experience the real nature of the discipline, including developing their own mathematical questions. Research shows that this situation is often exacerbated for students of color, partly because the scarcity of visible mathematicians of color can suggest to students that mathematics is not achievable for students of colors. This project will develop and test a model of a yearlong fellowship program for educators of mathematics teachers to work with one another and mathematicians from the NSF INCLUDES Mathematics Affiliates of Color (MAC) network at Iowa State University. Improving the professional development of educators of mathematics teachers is in the national interest as a mechanism to better prepare mathematics preservice teachers. A primary goal of the project is to use the developed model to document why and how mathematics teacher educators shift their thinking and instructional practice to incorporate inquiry and equity into learning experiences for preservice teachers. The project's inquiry and equity model will provide mathematics teacher educators with opportunities to: (i) ask and investigate mathematics questions of their own with each other and with mathematicians; (ii) reflect on the experience of asking and investigating those questions with a particular focus on issues of status and equity; (iii) strategize together about how to infuse their own existing courses with opportunities for pre-service teachers to ask and investigate their own questions, attending to status and equity; and (iv) work together, with project staff, and with MAC mathematicians as they build and implement their own courses for pre-service teachers with sharpened focus on inquiry and equity. Pre-service teachers in courses taught by the Inquiry and Equity Fellows will have the opportunity to ask and investigate mathematics questions of their own design. Likewise, the pre-service teachers will enter the teaching profession with the first-hand knowledge that expertise and creative work in mathematics is indeed the domain of people of color. The twenty faculty Inquiry and Equity Fellows will teach thousands of pre-service teachers over the course of their careers; the pre-service teachers will in turn reach hundreds of thousands of students. Research in the Inquiry and Equity Project will focus on Fellows' thinking and course preparation, Fellows' implementation of the inquiry and equity practices with their pre-service teachers, and the effects of the Inquiry and Equity Model on pre-service teachers. This research will build insight into why and how mathematics teacher educators shift their thinking and instructional practice to incorporate inquiry and equity into learning experiences for pre-service teachers within the context of current teacher education coursework. Finally, the Inquiry and Equity Project will document and disseminate the model for further replication. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.