WORKING GROUPS

The are many potential answers to the question, "What does it mean to understand first-year calculus?" Most of the answers in the current research literature come primarily from a mathematics perspective and focus on mathematical priorities in terms of what calculus consists of, what students should understand after taking it, and what tools are available for assessing that understanding. Yet, calculus is not the purview of mathematics alone. It is a key content area for many STEM fields, and the vast majority of students who take calculus come from a variety of STEM disciplines. Calculus concepts are used to define and relate many real-world quantities, and they serve crucial roles in real-world modeling. Consequently, we adopt the stance that calculus should be seen as a shared content area across STEM fields, rather than being the exclusive domain of mathematics. This stance invites a re-thinking of what calculus consists of, what students should understand after taking it, and what tools are available for assessing that understanding. In this working group, we plan to kickstart this re-examination, which we expect to continue over time and likely in future working groups. 

Our working group invites the collaboration of both mathematics and science educators who are interested in making calculus a more “inter-STEM” space. We plan to begin the working group by examining existing documents and assessment tools that have attempted to answer the questions stated above about calculus. We will discuss the types of ideas they privilege, the kinds of work they emphasize, and the expectations they imply for student learning. We will then examine how this may, or many not, align with STEM fields’ use of calculus ideas, procedures, and concepts, and whether they capture what we’d want for calculus students. We can use these discussions to begin pushing toward what an inter-STEM calculus would consist of and what we would expect students to learn from it. Based on this discussion, we can start on the longer-term goal of re-imagining possible “inventory” assessment tools that are used to frame calculus content. While we obviously cannot definitively answer these questions in one working group, we hope to make progress by identifying areas where further work can happen, and hope to continue these discussions in future working groups. We expect that areas of potential work we identify could include both theoretical and empirical work, as well as researcher-oriented and practitioner-oriented work.

This long-standing working group focuses on research on the professional development and growth of college mathematics instructors, regardless of their level of experience or expertise. Many current members have a particular interest in the professional growth of novice college teachers (e.g., graduate students in their first teaching roles). The group meets online periodically throughout the year and face-to-face at the RUME conference annually. The group’s goals, historically and currently, continue to drive the focus of annual meetings. The working group’s primary goal is meeting the needs of its members as researchers in this area. 

Working group time at the conference is structured to bring in researchers new to the field through a variety of scholarly activities: exploring and discussing literature, giving and receiving feedback on research projects that are in progress, brainstorming potential collaborations and mentoring relationships for both long- and short-term studies, and continuing to discuss issues central to the field and ways to address them. Participants in this group include researchers in all areas of the professional preparation, induction, and development of college mathematics instructors, from across institutional types. Research areas include, but are not limited to, factors that shape instructional practices and related professional learning activities, experiences of instructors as they attend to student thinking in their instruction, and changes in instructional orientations, planning, and practices as teaching experiences accumulate. Researchers need not present their own work to participate in the group and provide feedback to others. Dissemination from the group is broad, from publications aimed at education research audiences to practice-oriented college mathematics instructor and mathematician communities. 

With the rapid rise of generative AI tools, some RUME scholars feel uncertain about the role that these tools should or could take in their work. Last year we focused on journal policies around AI tool use and disclosure. This year, our group is targeting what training is available to support researchers not in using a particular tool, but in generally reflecting on the role of an AI tool in their research and then frameworks for how to responsibly use the tool for research purposes. Within this discussion, we continue to center the impact on graduate student researchers and those mentoring graduate students. 

This ongoing group aims to create space for a community discussion around the role of LLMs or Generative AI in the RUME research community. We want to work on developing norms around what ethical and effective use looks like in different contexts and potentially different phases (ie grad school vs professional levels) of a scholar's career. This is a separate conversation from research on AI use in undergraduate classroom contexts.  

Prior to the session, we will recommend short readings to our participants. During the working group time, we will break into small groups to discuss two key questions: When determining which AI-tool to use for a research task, what are the ethical questions a scholar ought to consider? And what are the effectiveness questions? We will discuss ideas such as cognitive sovereignty, displacement detection, and authorship discrimination. We will conclude by identifying next steps for continuing this conversation beyond the conference.

In this working group, we aim to (re)convene researchers and educators interested in understanding the scope of research that can be pursued with Indigenous communities on issues related to mathematics teaching, learning, curriculum, and professional development. We welcome scholars working in Tribal Colleges and Universities, Native American-Serving Non-Tribal Institutions, other Indigenous-serving contexts, and anyone interested in advancing undergraduate mathematics education research with and for Indigenous communities in the United States, the Americas, and internationally.

A central goal of this group is to develop and strengthen a network of scholars who are pursuing, supporting, or considering research focused on Indigenous communities. Over the past several years, we have cultivated a welcoming and supportive community that has developed the continuity, trust, and shared commitment needed to begin exploring more intentional forms of collaboration. This year, our focus will be on building capacity for collaboration by identifying shared research interests, strengthening mentoring networks, and exploring opportunities for collaborative projects. 

The session will include opportunities for participants to share ongoing research, teaching initiatives, and emerging ideas; discuss opportunities for collaboration and mutual support; and reflect on future directions for the working group. We will also engage in conversations about leadership, year-round engagement, and structures that can sustain and strengthen our community between conferences. Participants at all stages of their work, from those exploring initial ideas to those leading established projects, are welcome. Together, we hope to continue building a supportive scholarly community while exploring pathways toward community-oriented action.

Inspired by the meaningful discussions and contributions from last year’s Bridging Research, Practice, and Advocacy in Graduate Mathematics Education working group session, we envision this year’s session as a continued space and community for those interested in research in graduate mathematics education (RGME). Despite the relevance of graduate education to mathematics and mathematics education, it remains under-researched compared to undergraduate mathematics education. Since the RGME working group’s inception in 2023, interest in this area has grown among both researchers and practitioners. This working group aims to continue cultivating a supportive space for collaboration on research-driven approaches to improving postsecondary mathematics education.

During the 2026 RUME conference, our working group involved the collaborative development of a draft of a Graduate Bill of Rights (GBR), a living document that articulates the dignity, equitable treatment, and institutional support that mathematics graduate students deserve. The GBR as an aspirational artifact articulates what mathematics graduate students deserve, first as people, then as students, mathematicians, and professionals. This document holds potential to inspire and guide future research. Drawing on Donna Hicks’s (2011; 2018) concepts of dignity consciousness (how individuals want to be treated) and dignity in action (how we embody and uphold dignity in practice), we have developed the GBR as a touchstone for RGME inquiry, one flexible enough to support a range of research lenses and topics, yet focused enough to unify the group’s efforts. We intend to leverage the GBR as a dynamic, evolving framework connecting research, practice, and advocacy, highlighting areas where the field must grow while allowing research to shape the GBR as a living document.

For this upcoming session, we ground our efforts around key questions: How can a draft of the GBR spark new research questions, inform institutional practices, and provide a foundation for advocacy? How can we leverage our shared understanding of the landscape of mathematics education to support the growth of education research in this context? This year’s working group includes: (1) a series of lightning talks from various researchers and members of the graduate education community; (2) discussion spurred by the lightning talks related to connections between the GBR and research in graduate mathematics education, beginning the groundwork for the collaborative working session; (3) break-out groups by areas of research interest to facilitate more specific collaborations; and (4) collaboration time for focused discussion, mentoring, feedback, and continued development of research in RGME.

The Stochastics Education Research working group is for researchers of all levels who are interested in investigating the teaching and learning of Statistics, Data Science, Probability, and related areas. Our primary goal for this session is to finalize a survey instrument and recruitment strategy for gathering information on what representations instructors are using in the Statistics, Data Science, and/or Probability classes and how they go about supporting students in their sense making of those representations. Beyond finalizing our group project, we will have opportunities for members to share what they have been investigating since our last meeting and discuss current issues and/or lines of inquiry. As always, we continue fostering the growing connections, support, and mentorship between RUME community members who are interested in Stochastics Education Research and beyond.

This working group brings together researchers who focus on teaching and learning in community college mathematics. Supported through past working group sessions at RUME (2012-2020, 2022-2026) and committee work within AMATYC (2009-2019), a growing group of faculty (6 faculty in 2009 to more than 40 to-date), has been collaborating to advance a national agenda and create a network of community college mathematics education research. The work from the 2019 conference devoted part of the time to brainstorming and editing at the 2020 conference for Spring 2020 final submissions. This work resulted in at least 18 submission ideas for a special issue of the MathAMATYC educator with and the publication of 8 research articles. Multiple collaborative research proposals were envisioned and submitted for funding after the 2020 conference. As a result of the 2022 conference, a subgroup of 22 working group members have also been meeting regularly to discuss how definitions of “college level” mathematics could be reconceptualized. Over the past two years collaboration at the conference working group has originated several groups working to produce original research on topics such as trauma-informed pedagogies in mathematics, transferability of mathematics courses, and neurodiversity in undergraduate mathematics courses.

We propose to leverage the RUME working group session to continue to grow the network of community college mathematics faculty, university research faculty, and doctoral students working to develop and disseminate research on and with community college mathematics stakeholders. We welcome new working group participants who are seeking to conduct or are conducting research in mathematics teaching and learning within community colleges and are interested in advancing this agenda through collaborative or coordinated research projects and focused plans for the dissemination of research.

The focus for 2027 is to collaborate on: (1) continuation of research topics developed from previous years’ meetings (2) creating and expanding collaborations between returning and new members of the group; and (3) further develop our interprofessional organization collaborations for future conferences and special publications focused on community college mathematics research.