Hi Mesut, 

We are glad you enjoyed the video! We recruited undergraduate students enrolled in the calculus sequence at Penn State. We screened participants for eligibility before participation. Focus groups of students were designed so that we had groups that consisted of all women, all people of color, and all majority group members. We designed groups this way so that underrepresented students might feel more comfortable speaking about their unique experiences. 

Hi Lindsay:  Thank you for your reply, and for providing additional info about focus group selection, this is very helpful.  --Mesut

Hi Neela, 

Thanks for your comment! This study was conducted before the emergency transition to remote learning. However, we do have an available pre-print of some preliminary findings about STEM students perspectives of their instructors and universities during the pandemic: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/f6jkx/

Hi Lindsay, thank you for this link to the preliminary findings.  I will take a look at it.  Great job!

Hi Alexander, 

Sure thing! What we found is that students had clear ideas of what were positive and negative behaviors that were shared across groups. So, we did find themes common to all groups. However, we found that what students felt were most important or valued the varied given their background. For example, one theme was related to interpersonal skills. The interpersonal behaviors of their instructors was something that was thematically represented across all groups. Students mentioned both positive interpersonal interactions (e.g., being empathetic to students concerns) and negative ones (e.g., being condescending). For underrepresented group members, they felt that instructors who  "engaged everyone" was an important interpersonal skill -- but this was hardly discussed among majority group members. So, while we found themes that emerged across groups -- we found that majority/underrepresented students valued components of the thematic content in different ways. 

Hi Travis, 

Thank you for asking this question! To make students more comfortable to participate in the focus groups, we didn't ask them to provide us with details about their instructor. Students were really concerned about confidentiality and whether we could identify the instructors they were discussing. However, we are using our focus group data to create items for an externally valid scale to examine this phenomena more broadly. As a part of this work, we are considering ways we can use this instrument to understand students' experiences in the classroom as well as consider bias in student evaluations towards URG faculty and teaching assistants. 

Lindsay:

Wondering if this means you're developing a survey...

Also thinking about how written data might inform development of those items.  I love the use of focus groups because you get outcomes that are greater than the sum of the parts (participants) due to the social interaction. I'm impressed, too, by the way you designed the groups to consist of rather homogeneous participants.  That's probably the opposite of my thinking on focus group recruitment in every case, so it's given me something to consider for the future.

But for those more negative perceptions in particular, I wonder if some people might be more willing to reveal in written narrative. When I teach elementary math methods, I start the term by having the teacher candidates write their "mathematical autobiography" with a focus on how their teachers from PK to present made them feel about mathematics.  Those stories have been very revealing, and I'm not sure all of them would talk about it out loud in a group--or even one-on-one.  So, just wondering if there are any written narratives from students informing this work so far or if that mode might factor in at some point.

I can't wait to see what comes from your group on this project!

Hi Kelly, 

Your use of written narratives is really fascinating! I would love to hear more about it and think about this in a college classroom. 

We do plan to develop a survey with our focus group data! We have several reasons for doing so ourselves and I also love the point you brought up about how we might get more candid responses from participants. 

Thank you for your comment! We appreciate it.

There are a few things out there about the use of reflective narratives among college mathematics learners (including some of my own work :)...

Hauk, S. (2005). Mathematical autobiography among college learners in the United States. ALM International Journal 1(1), 36-56.

Krause G.H., Maldonado L.A. (2019) Our Linguistic and Cultural Resources: The Experiences of Bilingual Prospective Teachers with Mathematics Autobiographies. In: Bartell T., Drake C., McDuffie A., Aguirre J., Turner E., Foote M. (eds) Transforming Mathematics Teacher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21017-5_12

Lawler, B. R., & Gargoretzi, E. C. (2017). Mathematical Autobiography as a Window into Sociopolitical Teacher Identity. In Smith, W. M., Lawler, B. R., Bowers, J., & Augustyn, L. (Eds.). Proceedings of the sixth annual Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership conference. Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

Hi Marcia, 

Thank you so much! 

Hi Sandra, 

I love the clicker training analogy-- thank you for your comment!

Hi Paola, 

Thank you! We are excited by the work in K-12 instruction and happy to learn from it. 

Hi Lauren, 

Thank you for your comment! We will continue to speak to these issues and hope that the momentum will grow. 

Hi Jonee, 

Thank you! I agree it is so important to elevate and center students voices when discussing classroom equity. I loved learning about the work being done by the VEAR-MI team to create more equittable STEM participation in your video! The way your rubrics connect theory and teaching practices is really fascinating and inspiring for college contexts. Thank you for your comment!

Hi Caroline, 

I agree with your comment that there is so much to be learned from the work in K-12 education and we are grateful for it as we explore it as we examine equity in college classrooms! We do aim to use this work to create interventions and pedagogical trainings for college-level instructors.