Reforming Introductory Math Courses – While Attending to Everyone’s Emotional Needs

By Dave Kung, Director of Policy; Joan Zoellner, Professional Learning Specialist @utdanacenter

“Our developmental mathematics system is a shell game, disproportionately scamming Black, Latino and poor students.”

You could feel the air go out of the room at Gregory Larnell’s plenary session, opening the 2020 Research on Undergraduate Mathematics Education conference. Nearly every audience member had played some role in a system that placed students, coming largely from under-resourced K–12 systems, into long sequences of developmental math courses. The enticing prize for those students? Eventually passing a gateway math course (frequently college algebra or precalculus), unlocking a higher education credential and a more prosperous future.

How many of those students get their prize? Data suggest a success rate around 10%, far lower than the 33% chance you’d have to choose the shell holding a scammer’s pea at random. And Larnell wasn’t just labeling mathematics faculty as innocent bystanders. We were the shills hidden in the crowd, egging students on to keep playing: “You got this! I’m sure you’ll pass next time–and you’ll be ready for College Algebra in the spring!”

It didn’t feel good to be in the audience that day. It may not feel good to you reading this today. For anyone who cares deeply about equity, realizing that you have unwittingly been playing a role in a racially-biased shell game is a gut punch.

Thankfully, we know how to do better now.

Following the lead of innovative mathematicians like Tristan Denley and informed by painstaking research, math departments across the country are using multiple measures placement strategies and updated advising practices to place students directly into the math course(s) aligned with their aspirations. For many, that’s a course in statistics or quantitative reasoning designed to support success in their intended programs or majors.

Those who are deemed “underprepared” for these gateway courses, who historically would have been relegated to developmental courses, are now getting to skip the long sequence of prerequisites. These students instead are enrolling directly in college-level math courses with corequisite supports, additional concurrent credits providing just-in-time learning of important prerequisite content. Together, these reforms are pushing gateway math success rates to 60% or even 70%.

Numerous studies show the effectiveness of these reforms at schools from open-enrollment community colleges to highly ranked research institutions (see the Corequisite Mathematics Toolkit for a review of the research). So why hasn’t everyone replaced their shell-game developmental math sequences with the evidence-based corequisite alternatives? Why haven’t the data, the inspiring and sometimes shocking talks at national conferences from Larnell and others, and even statewide mandates for reform opened math faculty’s eyes to their complicity in the ineffectiveness of (well-intentioned) developmental math?

This question was the motivation behind a new report, The Challenges of Scaling Gateway Mathematics Corequisites: Recommendations for Policy and Practice. As part of the Dana Center’s Corequisite Research Design Collaborative, Dr. Sean Pepin interviewed dozens of math faculty and others working to reform developmental mathematics. The report uncovers five stages of corequisite implementation, each of which presents its own challenges:

Assessing: Identify and assess conditions for change, including engaging with proponents and skeptics
Exploring: Provide research, guidance, and data to better equip all involved to understand what corequisites are and the problems that they address.
Cocreating: Convene and engage faculty, chairs, advisors, and other stakeholders to build buy-in and co-create an implementation plan.
Implementing: Support instructors, advisors, and other campus professionals with professional development.
Revising: Engage in a holistic process of continuous improvement.

In addition to the added challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report identifies several common challenges and barriers at each stage. While some of those hurdles are related to policy and practice, others belong to the affective domain (e.g., problems that are related to interpersonal interactions, emotions, and feelings).

The following table summarizes the challenges in the latter four stages of implementation (affective challenges are indicated with an asterisk).

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The table is split up into four distinct categories with bullet points in each. The first section reads “Exploring” with the bullet points: State Legislation, Funding, System Guidance, Research and Data, Convergence of Policy Changes, and Trust*. The second section reads “Cocreating” with the bullet points: Champion for Corequisites, Convening Stakeholders, Mindset, Small and Rural Colleges, Models and Modalities, Wrestling with Inadvertent Past Harm*. The third section reads “Implementing” with the bullet points: Advising, Faculty Professional Development, Curriculum Approval, General Logistics, and Navigating Relationships*. The fourth and final section reads “Revising” with the bullet points: Course Improvements, Transparent Data and Evaluation, Placement, and Low Morale*.

The explicit call-out of affective challenges is one of the unique characteristics of the report. Importantly, one effective challenge in the co-creating stage is the need for faculty to wrestle with their participation in a system that has harmed students, specifically Black, Latino, and students experiencing poverty. In fact, some faculty members have previously been ardent advocates for the developmental education model—selling the shell game to their students without realizing they were promoting an unfair system.

One positive outcome of the tragic COVID pandemic is that math teachers are more aware than ever of how affective issues— including social belonging, anxiety, and an array of mental health concerns—impact our students. Faculty are getting much better at attending to the emotional needs of their students and helping them see themselves as successful mathematicians.

One of the primary lessons from The Challenges of Scaling Gateway Mathematics Corequisites is that reformers must also explicitly attend to the emotional needs of the faculty and staff. The same people designing and implementing comprehensive revisions have also experienced, advocated for, and worked within those same systems for the majority of their professional careers. Change is hard, even when it’s the right thing to do.

Leaders will be more effective if they can navigate the sometimes fraught relationships that can be frayed by transformational change. Faculty need to be prepared to deal with the common decrease in course-level success rates that appear alongside the higher rate of students earning college math credit via corequisites, and to find ways to support faculty morale when these outcomes occur.

Of course, reforms do not run solely on emotions, and The Challenges of Scaling Gateway Mathematics Corequisites also highlights five enabling conditions to support corequisite implementation. The report asks those implementing change to remember that the people doing the work—who are changing the systems—are just as much in need of effective support as the students who will benefit from the reforms.

Just as those of us in Larnell’s audience needed time to process our complicity as unwitting shills for a damaging system, so too will faculty, staff, and administrators involved in developmental education reform. Making space for, and facilitating growth and conversation related to, this issue should be a central and explicit component of any future plans to reform higher education.

The Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin works to ensure that all students—especially those who are Black, Latino, or are experiencing poverty—have access to an excellent math and science education. Dana Center Connections, a regular feature of the Math Values blog, will highlight different areas in the field where the mathematics community can make a difference in the lives of our nation's students.