Mathematics Advising Program Exploratory Study and the Development of Mathematics Advising Supports for Gender-based Equity
PERIOD:
TO
This project will yield an understanding of how to promote gender equity in mathematics advising at the post-secondary level, as well as provide publicly available web-based resources for advising undergraduate students in mathematics.
The primary objective of this project is to explore the mediating role of gender in mathematics advising sessions for incoming undergraduate students in post-secondary contexts. The project will study a mathematics advising program of a large public university across four programs: the general student body in the liberal arts college, the honors program in the liberal arts college, the engineering school, and the business school. Previously collected data of the mathematics advising program (of about 100 advising sessions) suggests that course recommendations of undergraduate students are influenced by a set of gendered interactional dynamics (i.e., talk, gesture, and body comportment) that strongly influence narratives of mathematical competence and, consequentially, mathematics course recommendations. To reduce the mediating effects of gender on mathematics course recommendations, we seek to understand how students and advisors co-construct stories about mathematical competence when deciding on a first undergraduate mathematics course. In light of these understandings, we also seek to design and test an intervention for promoting gender-equity in mathematics advising sessions, and make the intervention (e.g., online mini-courses) publicly available to the undergraduate mathematics research and teaching community.
