Mathematics Persistence through Inquiry and Equity: Redeveloping Gateway Mathematics in a Two-year HSI to Promote Success in STEM

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project will study the major reform efforts designed to improve student success in gateway mathematics at a two-year HSI and develop inquiry-based and equity-driven interventions to support STEM achievement. Gateway mathematics courses are the first transfer-level mathematics course taken by most students intending to pursue a STEM major. These courses traditionally have a high failure rate, and are a common barrier for STEM-intending students from historically underserved communities. In addition, these courses are undergoing a shift as state law is impacting policies related to student placement. With this project, a collaborative team from a two-year institution and a four-year institution will analyze trends in student success, develop classroom-based interventions and professional development for instructors of gateway mathematics courses, study the impacts of the interventions, and examine the sustainability of change efforts. This work will have an impact locally by transforming gateway mathematics courses enrolling up to 10,000 students across the life of the project. By improving gateway mathematics courses, this project will contribute to the societal benefit of broadening participation in STEM majors and careers. This effort will also result in generalizable knowledge about institutional change in STEM departments at two-year HSIs, and the results will be disseminated through research publications, workshops, network improvement communities, and professional development conferences.The project will proceed in three phases. In Phase 1 the researchers will collect and analyze institutional and classroom-level data to inform a change effort. Analyses will use descriptive and inferential statistics, case study analysis, and be informed by inquiry learning and institutional change frameworks. In Phase 2, the researchers will engage in cycles of design research and professional development to build the capacity of mathematics instructors to leverage inquiry- and equity-oriented teaching practices in order to expand student success in gateway mathematics courses. In Phase 3, the research team will gradually reduce the active intervention, and study the sustainability of the changes enacted in Phase 2. The results of this work will be a model for the reform and redesign of gateway STEM courses in two-year HSIs. These results will be disseminated through research publications, workshops, network improvement communities, and professional development conferences. This project will make a beneficial contribution to society by improving the STEM education of Latinx students at a two-year institution, and more broadly through our dissemination efforts. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.