Equity oriented practices in a college level pre-calculus classroom

Equity-oriented practices have been studied and researched primarily in the K-12 setting (Rubel, 2017). The examples of these practices in college have mostly been studied in developmental math courses (e.g. Frankenstein, 2014). College instructors express the concern that topics relating to social justice are too controversial or that integrating them into math courses will take time and focus away from the mathematics that students are supposed to learn. In this study, I designed and enacted three lesson lessons for college pre-calculus, each incorporating different aspects of equity-oriented pedagogy. The students' experience in these lessons were compared with student experience in more standard pre-calculus lessons on the same topics taught by the same instructor in another section of the course. Results show that students did have different experiences between the two sections section using the social justice lessons, with higher rates of feeling supported and that they belonged as members of the classroom than in the traditional lessons. These students also indicated more frequently that they found the mathematical content relevant to their lives. The two classes had a similar distribution of course grades and results on a common cumulative assessment indicated that that the introduction of equity-oriented lessons did not hinder students' mathematical learning. This work indicates that it is worth continuing to investigate the use of equity-oriented lessons at the college level. This will require investing in professional development for both instructors and students to be able to comfortable facilitate and engage in these lessons.