DEI: The frame that dare not say its name
By David Bressoud @dbressoud
As of 2024, Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month.
I began writing this column at the RUME Conference (Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education) in Omaha, Nebraska. I had recently returned from an MAA workshop planning a project with the vision that
“Every student succeeds in introductory mathematics courses that are aligned with their aspirations.”
Who could argue with that? And yet, I’ve been reminded of the tremendous gulf that lies between “Black lives matter” and “All lives matter.” No reasonable person disagrees with the latter statement, but it weakens the attention that needs to be paid to how our society treats African-Americans. The project that we worked on at MAA has components that address issues of DEI, but it is intended to be national in scope. In today’s political climate, we dare not foreground its efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The RUME conference highlighted the importance of attention to traditionally underrepresented groups of students. There was much discussion—including as the focus of Estrella Johnson’s plenary in the last evening—of initiatives that raise overall rates of student success, but when one digs down to the effect on underrepresented subpopulations, the improvements are not there. Certain activities, such as whole class discussions, may even disadvantage specific groups of students.
Though we may be constrained from speaking it aloud, that does not diminish the importance of attention to DEI. A recent MAA Notes volume provides advice and assistance for working on this:
This volume describes seven themes that run through recent efforts to address issues of DEI. These are followed by thirty descriptions of work at a wide variety of institutions: two-year colleges, liberal arts colleges, regional comprehensive universities, and both public and private top research universities. It includes a handy chart pointing out which of these themes are prominent in which case studies.
The seven themes, each elaborated in its own chapter, are
1. Providing professional development for instructors that focuses on decentering (taking the instructor out of the center of classroom experience) and interconnecting (uncovering, understanding, and expanding on what students know and do).
2. Structuring classroom practice through the use of one of three possible frames: access, identity, power, and achievement; rehumanizing mathematics; or complex instruction.
3. Using role models. This includes the use Learning Assistants (undergraduates who have been through the course), training people to serve as role models, and recommendations for maximizing the effectiveness of role models.
4. Redesigning courses with the intention of building community and ensuring assessments are aligned with what we want students to learn.
5. Leveraging Identity and Language: This includes the use of student identities and their mathematical identities as well as attention to how language is used.
6. Reflecting on the role of assessment: This describes both the importance of multiple measures for determining placement and alternatives to timed exams as summative assessment.
7. Using a student advisory committee to gain student perspectives on what is happening in the classroom and across the mathematics curriculum.
We will not improve the success of students who are outside the dominant categories of race, gender, culture, language, or other sources of division without awareness of and attention to their specific obstacles and barriers. This resource is rich in suggestions of what can and should be done.
References
Voigt, M., Hagman, J.E., Gehrtz, J., Ratliff, B., Alexander, N., Levy, R. (2023). Justice through the Lens of Calculus: Framing new possibilities for diversity, equity, and inclusion. MAA Notes #96. Providence, RI: MAA Press. ISBN 978-1-61444-332-2
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus at Macalester College and former Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. davidbressoud.org
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