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1. Building GTAs’ Knowledge & Motivation to Promote Equity in Undergraduate Mathematics

   Webb, Jessica; Manzanares, RaKissa; Houston, Scotty; Gomez, Josias; Harrell-Williams, Leigh (January 2020, 23rd Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (RUME))

   Karunakaran, Shiv Smith; Reed, Zackery; Higgins, Abigail (Ed.)

   Promoting equity in undergraduate mathematics education is of vital importance, yet has received considerably less attention than equity in K-12 mathematics. The current study focuses on a pedagogical training program for graduate teaching assistants’ (GTAs), which emphasizes equity in their teaching of undergraduates. The study examines GTAs’ journals and open-ended survey responses, including their definitions of equity and the ways they promote equity in their classrooms. The research will foster discourse about ways of promoting equity in undergraduate mathematics and about professional development for undergraduate mathematics instructors. 

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2. Initial Steps in Developing Classroom Observation Rubrics Designed Around Instructional Practices that Support Equity and Access in Classrooms with Potential for “Success”

   https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681221140963  

   Wilson, Jonee (November 2022, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education)

   Background: The field of mathematics education has made progress toward generating a set of instructional practices that could support improvements in the learning opportunities made available to groups of students who historically have been underserved and marginalized. Studies that contribute to this growing body of work are often conducted in learning environments that are framed as “successful.” As a researcher who is concerned with issues of equity and who acknowledges the importance of closely attending to the quality of the mathematical activity in which students are being asked to engage, my stance on “successful learning environments” pulls from both Gutiérrez’s descriptions of what characterizes classrooms as aiming for equity and the emphasis on the importance of conceptually oriented goals for student learning that is outlined in documents like the Standards. Though as a field we are growing in our knowledge of practices that support these successful learning environments, this knowledge has not yet been reflected in many of the observational tools, rubrics, and protocols used to study these environments. In addition, there is a growing need to develop empirically grounded ways of attending to the extent to which the practices that are being outlined in research literature actually contribute to the “success” of these learning environments. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to explore one way of meeting this growing need by describing the complex work of developing a set of classroom observation rubrics (the Equity and Access Rubrics for Mathematics Instruction, EAR-MI) designed to support efforts in identifying and observing critical features of classrooms characterized as having potential for “success.” In developing the rubrics, I took as my starting place findings from an analysis that compared a set of classrooms that were characterized as demonstrating aspects of successful learning environments and a set of classrooms that were not characterized as successful. This paper not only describes the process of developing the rubrics, but also outlines some of the qualitative differences that distinguished more and less effective examples of the practices the rubrics are designed to capture. Research Design: In designing the rubrics, I engaged in multiple cycles of qualitative analyses of video data collected from a large-scale study. Specifically, I iteratively designed, tested, and revised the developing rubrics while consistently collaborating with, consulting with, and receiving feedback from different experts in the field of education. Conclusions: Although I fully acknowledge and recognize that there are several tensions and limitations of this work, I argue that developing rubrics like the EAR-MI is still worthwhile. One reason that I give for continuing these types of efforts is that it contributes to the work of breaking down forms of practice into components and identifying key aspects of specific practices that are critical for supporting student learning in ways that make potentially productive routines of action visible to and learnable by others, which may ultimately contribute to the development of more successful learning environments. I also argue that rubrics like the EAR-MI have the potential to support researchers in developing stronger evidence of the effectiveness of practices that prior research has identified as critical for marginalized students and in more accurately and concretely identifying and describing learning environments as having potential for “success.” 

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3. Please Join Me/Us/Them on My/Our/Their Journey to Justice in STEM

   https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2022.2050084  

   Roscoe, Rod D. (March 2022, Discourse Processes)

   Despite decades of effort to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), many fields remain demographically skewed. Marginalized and minoritized people are still underrepresented in and underserved by the sciences. In this paper, the author considers the question, “How do we improve representation in STEM?” by reflecting on his own journey and themes such as imposter syndrome, decentering, meritocracy, and activism. Importantly, “underrepresentation” is not a mysterious happenstance but rather a predictable outcome of systemic inequity and systematic exclusion. By attending to the mechanisms of oppression, we can enact interventions that address root causes instead of symptoms. There are multiple ways that our research, teaching, and practice might change “the system” by making inclusion and equity the focus of our work, applying these principles to frame research questions and interpret findings, and adopting methods and practices that are inclusive and equitable. 

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4. Translanguaging in Mathematics Learning: Teacher Instructional and Attentional Supports

   Gilmore, M. (January 2020, ProQuest dissertations theses global)

   Students from less-dominant linguistic backgrounds generally have less opportunity to participate in classroom mathematical discourse compared to their English-dominant peers. An issue raised by mathematics education researchers concerned with issues of equity and opportunities for students is that status quo classroom practices and norms supported by teachers may be less familiar to students from non-dominant linguistic groups, or even detrimental to their classroom participation. Additionally, students who position themselves as doers of mathematics usually come from dominant cultural and linguistic groups (Abreu & Cline, 2002; Hand, 2012), potentially disposing students to perceive classroom mathematics learning through the lens of dominant cultural norms and practices. Thus, students who do not come from dominant linguistic backgrounds might perceive the mathematics classroom differently than their English dominant peers. However, less research has been conducted on how mathematics teachers attend to or notice norms around language and introduce new ones that encourage a multitude of linguistic practices, therefore heightening student participation. Heightening student participation can have implications for students being more likely to identify with mathematics. Additionally, examining students’ participation when using a multitude of linguistic practices or translanguaging is helpful for teachers attending to their own practice to support emerging bilingual students and bilingual students when engaging in mathematical sensemaking. 

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5. A framework to support teacher noticing of students' mathematical thinking in technology‐mediated environments

   https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12601  

   McCulloch, Allison W.; Dick, Lara K.; Lovett, Jennifer N. (October 2023, School Science and Mathematics)

   Abstract The practice of teacher noticing students' mathematical thinking often includes three interrelated components: attending to students' strategies, interpreting students' understandings, and deciding how to respond on the basis of students' understanding. This practice gains complexity in technology‐mediated environments (i.e., using technology‐enhanced math tasks) because it requires attending to and interpreting students' engagement with technology. Current frameworks implicitly assume the practice includes noticing the ways students use tools (including technology tools) in their work, but do not explicitly highlight the role of the tool. While research has shown that using these frameworks supports preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PSTs) developing noticing practices, it has also shown that PSTs largely overlook students' technology engagement when they are working on technology‐enhanced tasks (Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 2010; 41(2):169–202). In this article, we describe our adaptation of Jacobs et al.'s framework for teacher noticing student mathematical thinking to include a focus on making students' technology‐tool engagement explicit when noticing in technology‐mediated environments, the Noticing in Technology‐Mediated Environments (NITE) framework. We describe the theoretical foundations of the framework, provide a video case example, and then illustrate how the framework can be used by mathematics teacher educators to support PSTs' noticing when students are working in technology‐mediated environments. 

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