April 22, 2022

About the speaker

Kaitlyn Serbin is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education in the School of Mathematical and statistical Sciences at UTRGV. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Virginia Tech in August 2021. Before coming to Virginia Tech in 2017, she received her BS and MA degrees in Mathematics from the University of Alabama. Kaitlyn Serbin has research interests in undergraduate mathematics education and mathematics teacher preparation. These interests center around these questions: How do teachers’ understandings of undergraduate mathematics support them in their instructional practices? Which teaching practices can promote equity, inclusion, and student confidence? How do physics majors use their understanding of mathematics to make sense of physical phenomena?

Equitable and Inclusive Teaching Practices in Inquiry-Oriented Mathematics Classes

Active learning pedagogies, particularly Inquiry-Oriented Instruction (IOI), hold promise for providing equitable learning opportunities for undergraduate Mathematics students. Several studies have documented the effectiveness of active learning pedagogies in enhancing student achievement and being more equitable for students from historically marginalized groups. Despite the hypothesized benefits of IOI, an analysis of student content assessment scores revealed a gender performance difference with men outperforming women in inquiry-oriented Abstract Algebra classes, which was not present in traditional classes that served as a comparison sample. In this presentation, I discuss my work in trying to unpack this finding by investigating the teaching practices of inquiry-oriented instructors whose classes had either gender-equitable or gender-inequitable student achievement outcomes. I present case studies of instructors within this data set and discuss their implementation of IOI to hypothesize how certain instructional practices may lead to equitable learning outcomes for students. I first focused on these instructors’ provision of opportunities for students to contribute in full class discussion. I next investigated the quality of the relational interactions between these instructors and their students during class. I then explored how instructors with gender-equitable student learning outcomes fostered inclusive social norms conducive to students’ participation in class. I provide implications for instruction regarding how to promote equity and inclusion while implementing active learning in the classroom.