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

这个项目将直接调查在两年制的大学背景下，哪些因素会影响学生对数学专业的入学和坚持。有充分证据表明，有必要增加STEM和数学工作人员的多样性，包括增加入学和完成数学学位的边缘群体的学生人数。鉴于一半的数学专业学生都就读于两年制大学，如果我们希望解决数学和STEM渠道中长期存在的多样性问题，两年制大学是一个关键的起点。两年制大学有更多来自边缘群体的学生；因此，它们是招收和支持不同群体的数学和STEM专业的天然场所。作为一个特定的群体，在两年制大学学习数学专业尤为关键，因为两年制大学生的经历往往与大学生有很大不同。因此，在没有重大修改的情况下，针对四年制学生开发的留存模式不太可能直接转化为两年制大学背景。该项目旨在找出影响两年制大学留住学生的因素，并开发一个两年制背景下留住学生的模式，有助于实地了解这一重要的学生群体对留住学生的理解。具体地说，本研究有几个目的：1)分析两年制大学数学专业学生选择数学专业的轨迹，首次描述学生完成专业学习的不同路径，以及学生在离开专业之前所走的不同道路；2)揭示影响两年制大学数学专业学生选择和/或继续留在该专业的各种因素；3)描绘两年制大学数学专业学生经历的一幅稳健而细致入微的图景，这既是为了第一次开发一个两年制背景下数学专业保持的模型，也是为了对这些学生在研究和实践话语中的许多缺陷特征进行批判性的反叙事。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，以及对纵向调查数据的定量和定性分析，这些数据来自美国最大和最多样化的城市大学系统之一：纽约城市大学。这将填补现有文献中的一个关键空白，并为未来的研究和干预铺平道路，这些研究和干预专门旨在从两年制大学生中招聘和留住数学专业的学生。特别是，我们的目标是从反赤字的角度来处理这项研究，重点关注两年制大学数学专业的学生为大学带来的资源和优势，而不管他们之前是否获得了高质量的数学教育经验；并激发两年制大学数学专业的学生对现有教学、大学文化和制度结构提供或不提供获得数学学位所需资源的方式的看法。该项目得到了NSF的EDU核心研究(ECR)计划的支持。ECR计划强调基础STEM教育研究，以产生该领域的基础知识。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

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.