Investigating individually expressed motives and collectively generated goals for equity-oriented reform in undergraduate mathematics education
Date
2024
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Abstract
Supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an explicitly stated goal of many mathematics departments across the country, and addressing ongoing disparities in outcomes and experiences within undergraduate mathematics is a shared responsibility among undergraduate mathematics community members. Despite the prevalence of ideological, political, and contextual barriers to equity-oriented action within undergraduate mathematics spaces, many community members can and do take a responsive stance toward enhancing DEI within their department and at their institution. Understanding how mathematics faculty members, administrators, and students are personally motivated to take up work toward these aims within their own mathematics departments is paramount in ensuring that such work continues. In this dissertation I present two investigations which draw on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as a conceptual and theoretical lens. In the first investigation, I analyze the motives of 30 undergraduate mathematics community members (five administrators, 17 faculty members, and eight students) across three institutions to understand their reasoning for participation in an intradepartmental community focused on creating transformative, equity-oriented change within introductory mathematics courses. A reflexive thematic analysis of journal entries and individual interviews with participants resulted in five themes which motivated participation in collaborative equity reform within their mathematics department: a relational motive, a self-improvement motive, a student experience motive, an influence motive, and a values to action motive. With these themes in mind, I then consider how a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) at one institution developed a shared object for their work through a CHAT lens, highlighting what rules, communities, subjects, artifacts, and divisions of labor proved salient to this development. The prevalence and pervasiveness of self-interests, identity neutrality, and paternalism are critically discussed within the context of these investigations, and I build on existing literature to produce recommendations for disrupting such ideologies to produce transformative change in undergraduate mathematics environments. Among these recommendations are the need for critical engagement to see beyond self-interest in the context of one's own reform work, and the need for collaborative reform groups to not only position students as experts on their own experiences, but to also conceptualize instructors as novices on student experiences. I conclude with a discussion of future work supporting continued theorizing of the link between individually expressed motives and collectively generated goals in undergraduate mathematics reform efforts.