Broadening Narratives about Math Majors: Investigating the Needs and Experiences of Community College Mathematics Majors

拓宽数学专业的叙述：调查社区大学数学专业的需求和经验

• 批准号: 2300725
• 负责人: Claire Wladis
• 金额: $ 237.43万
• 依托单位: CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-15 至 2028-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2300725&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Broadening; Narratives; about; Math; Majors

This project will directly investigate which factors impact student decisions to enroll and persist in mathematics majors in the two-year college context. There is a well-documented need to increase the diversity of the STEM and mathematics workforce, including increasing the number of students from marginalized groups who enroll in and complete mathematics degrees. Given the fact that half of all mathematics majors are enrolled at two-year colleges, if we hope to address long-standing issues with diversity in the mathematics and STEM pipeline, two-year colleges are a critical place to start. Two-year colleges have significantly more students from marginalized groups; as such, they are a natural place from which to recruit and support diverse groups of mathematics and STEM majors. It is particularly critical to study mathematics majors at two-year colleges as a specific subpopulation, because the experiences of two-year college students are often significantly different from university students. Thus, retention models that have been developed with four-year students are unlikely to translate directly to the two-year college context without significant modification. This project aims to identify factors that influence student retention among two-year colleges and to develop a model of retention in the two-year context, contributing to the field’s understanding of retention among this important population of students. In particular, this study has several aims: 1) to analyze trajectories that mathematics majors at two-year colleges have taken, in order to describe for the first time the diversity of paths students take to complete the major, as well as different paths that students make have taken before leaving the major; 2) to uncover various factors that have influenced the decisions of students at two-year colleges to choose mathematics majors and/or to remain in the major from term to term; and 3) to paint a robust and nuanced picture of the experiences of two-year college mathematics majors, both to develop for the first time a model of mathematics major retention in the two-year context, as well as to provide critical counter-narratives to many of the deficit characterizations of these students in the research and practice discourse. This research will include extensive quantitative analysis of existing data, qualitative analysis of in-depth longitudinal interviews, and both quantitative and qualitative analysis of longitudinal survey data, at one of the largest and most diverse urban university systems in the US: the City University of New York. This will fill a critical gap in the existing literature and pave the way for future studies and interventions aimed specifically at recruiting and retaining mathematics majors from the two-year college population. In particular, we aim to approach this research from an anti-deficit lens, focusing on the resources and strengths that two-year college mathematics majors bring to college regardless of their access to prior high-quality mathematics educational experiences; and eliciting two-year college mathematics majors’ perspectives on the ways that existing instruction, college culture, and institutional structures do or do not provide them the resources needed to obtain a mathematics degree. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将直接调查哪些因素影响学生的决策，以在两年年的大学背景下加入数学专业。有据可查的需要增加茎和数学劳动力的多样性，包括增加入学和完成数学学位的边缘化群体的学生人数。鉴于所有数学专业的一半是两年年的大学招募的事实，如果我们希望解决数学和STEM管道多样性的长期问题，那么两年的大学是一个至关重要的起点。两年级的大学有更多来自边缘化群体的学生。因此，它们是招募和支持数学和STEM专业的潜水员群体的自然场所。在两年学院学习数学专业的特定亚群是尤其重要的，因为两年年级的学生的经验通常与大学生大不相同。这是由四年学生开发的保留模型不太可能直接转化为两年的大学背景，而不会进行重大修改。该项目旨在确定影响两年学院学生保留学生的因素，并在两年的背景下建立保留模型，从而有助于该领域对这一重要重要性的保留理解，这项研究的目的是：1）分析轨迹的轨迹，以使两年学院的数学专业大满贯赛事使两年的专业都在使学生的多样化的途径相同，并使学生的多样化是不同的。 2）发现各种因素影响了两年学院学生选择数学专业和/或任期专业的决定的各种因素； 3）描绘了两年年大学数学专业的经历的强大而细微的景象，在两年的情况下，两者都首次发展了数学主要保留模型，并为研究和实践课程中这些学生的许多赤字角色提供了重要的反叙事。这项研究将包括对现有数据的广泛定量分析，对深度纵向访谈的定性分析，以及在美国最大，最多样化的城市大学系统之一的纵向调查数据的定量和定性分析：纽约市城市大学。这将填补现有文献的关键差距，并为未来的研究和干预措施铺平道路，专门旨在从两年制大学人口中招募和保留数学专业。特别是，我们旨在从反缺陷的镜头中进行这项研究，重点关注两年制大学数学专业的资源和优势，无论他们获得了先前的高质量数学教育经验，而不管他们获得了以前的高质量数学教育经验；并引起了两年的大学数学专业人士对现有教学，大学文化和机构结构所做或不提供获得数学学位所需的资源的看法。该项目得到了NSF的EDU核心研究（ECR）计划的支持。 ECR计划强调了基本的STEM教育研究，该研究在该领域产生了基础知识。投资是在重要，广泛和结束的关键领域进行的：STEM学习和STEM学习环境，扩大了STEM的参与以及STEM劳动力的发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响来通过评估来获得的支持。