Moving the System toward Equity
By: David Bressoud @dbressoud
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College and Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences
Links to responses by CBMS societies to the systemic racism that has been brought back to national attention by the murder of George Floyd are available here.
Links to resources and posted information related to the COVID-19 shutdown by the member societies of CBMS and other organizations are available here.
AAAS is running a series of five online discussions of Talking about Leaving Revisited. The next, on Entering an Uneven Playing Field, will be held on July 21. Details at seachange.aaas.org/events.
The murder of George Floyd, about seven miles from where I live, has been a vivid reminder of the systemic racism that confronts the United States. The demonstrations that have spread in the wake of his death have been a call to confront the systems that preserve racial and ethnic inequality. Our educational system is one of the contributors to this problem. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the divide between the privileged and the economically disadvantaged, it has also widened the educational gap between those with parents and resources that can further their education when schools are closed and those who lack these supports. The Economist devoted its International Section on April 30, 2020, to this problem and highlighted it in one of their Leaders. On June 6, the New York Times reported that by September our most economically disadvantaged students might be set back as much as an entire year.
Mathematics education is part of the problem. As stated in the MAA’s Instructional Practices Guide,
Because access to success in mathematics is not distributed fairly, the opportunities that accompany success in mathematics are also not distributed fairly. We in the mathematical sciences community should not affirm this inequitable situation as an acceptable status quo. We owe it to our discipline, to ourselves, and to society to disseminate mathematical knowledge in ways that increase individuals’ access to the opportunities that come with mathematical understanding. (MAA, 2017, p. 4)
It is not enough for the mathematical community to condemn overt prejudice and discrimination. We must make an honest appraisal of how the system in which we operate perpetuates socio-economic and racial inequities.
The insights of Talking about Leaving Revisited, about which I wrote in my last two columns, point to some of the hidden issues that must be examined if we are to give socio-economically disadvantaged students a fair opportunity to pursue a STEM career. Foremost is that those coming from economically disadvantaged high schools are no less capable of succeeding in a STEM career, but they are confronting a host of obstacles that can include a fragile sense of self-worth, a lack of understanding of what it means to study in the ways required at the university level, and gaps in preparation. We know interventions that work to address each of these They need to be implemented far more widely.
I have also written about the SEMINAL (Student Engagement in Mathematics Through an Institutional Network for Active Learning) project of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU). It examines the kinds of changes that have enabled mathematics departments at twelve case study sites to introduce and sustain active learning in precalculus through single variable calculus. In addition to their website, they are now preparing a handbook that describes the lessons learned from these twelve departments. This will be a joint publication of CBMS and AMS.
With regard to the need for systemic change, Reinholz, Rasmussen, and Nardi have just published a call for the RUME community (Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education) to focus much more attention on the processes of change within mathematics departments. They challenge the RUME community to develop richly contextualized theories of change in undergraduate mathematics education. They identify four broad categories for this research: the analysis of historical examples of departmental efforts to change the teaching of mathematics, the study of existing and ongoing efforts to change mathematics instruction, the role of the RUME community itself as catalyst and leader in promoting change, and the incorporation into theories of change of attention to issues of equity and social justice.
For those seeking to bring about change in STEM education, whether working on a departmental, collegiate, or university level, ASCN (Accelerating Systemic Change Network) is a rich collection of resources. It is split into five working groups addressing
·Guiding Theories. How might we better support people's use of theories, models, and scholarship in their planned systemic change efforts?
Costs, Benefits, and Demonstrating Impact. What are the costs and benefits of change? How can measurement and communication be used to promote change?
Change Leaders. Who leads change and how?
Equity and Inclusion
Aligning Faculty Work with Systemic Change
Each of these groups has identified the critical questions within their domain and has been assembling references to the relevant resources.
Shirley Malcom, Head of Education and Human Resources Programs at AAAS and Director for SEA Change talks about the goals and mechanisms of this program.
The last of the resources to which I want to draw your attention is the AAAS program, SEA Change (STEMM Equity Achievement, with the second M standing for Medicine), of guidelines for university self-assessment and planning that provides an overall view of “the principal barriers, challenges, and opportunities to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion at an institution.” It incorporates a system of awards—at bronze, silver, and gold levels—that recognize the effort of the university to promote equity, with an emphasis on recruitment, support, and retention of faculty in STEMM from under-represented groups.
References
American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 2020. SEA Change. https://seachange.aaas.org/
Accelerating Systemic Change Network (ASCN). https://ascnhighered.org
Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. SEMINAL (Student Engagement in Mathematics Through an Institutional Network for Active Learning). https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/stem-education/seminal/
The Economist. 2020. Closing schools for COVID-19 does lifelong harm and widens inequality. International Section, April 30, 2020. https://www.economist.com/international/2020/04/30/closing-schools-for-covid-19-does-lifelong-harm-and-widens-inequality
Goldstein, D. 2020. Research shows students falling months behind during virus disruptions New York Times, June 5, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/coronavirus-education-lost-learning.html
MAA. 2017. Instructional Practices Guide. https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/curriculum%20resources/instructional-practices-guide
Reinholz, D. L., Rasmussen, C., and Nardi, E. 2020. Time for (Research on) Change in Mathematics Departments. International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education. Published online 03 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-020-00116-7
Seymour, E. and Hunter, A.-B., Editors. (2019) Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence, Relocation, and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030253035
Download the list of all past Launchings columns, dating back to 2005, with links to each column.