Elevating Student Voice: Highlights from the Mathematics Pathways Designers Program

Last month we launched the very first Mathematics Pathways Designers Program, a week-long paid summer program for ten high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen and sophomores from the Boston area to design elements of fourth year high school math courses. 

The Designers program was all about creating a student group and elevating student voices and ideas to the important conversations taking place locally and nationally about improving mathematics education for all students. Lots of important work is taking place around updating and making mathematics pathways in postsecondary education more equitable. For example, when it comes to the high school side of the equation, California has experimented with replacing Algebra II with Data Science, with mixed results. Locally, Boston Public Schools (BPS) Mathematics program directors Stephen Garschina-Bobrow, Ashley Jacobson, Jerleen John, and Armando Segura have organized the Secondary Mathematics Pathways working group, a diverse group of secondary and postsecondary mathematics educators, education professionals, and BPS parents, to work on updating high school mathematics pathways. 

Over the course of our week together, Designers built a clearer understanding of how they can apply design thinking as a problem-solving tool. One student summarized their learning this way, “design thinking is a process that requires creative and careful thinking… [it is a] process of brainstorming ideas and creating prototypes meant to be tested quickly.” Through applying design thinking for equity to the problem of improving high school mathematics pathways, Designers created prototypes ranging from full course syllabuses to designing calculus course components to generating feedback forms for teachers and students to use. Part of the design process included stepping back and asking “What matters most?” in order to generate some design principles. For Designers, what mattered most was less about mathematics content and more about course structure, pedagogical approach, and classroom culture. According to them, math pathways design work should:

• Encourage student-led classrooms and prioritize student voices. Students must be invited to take an active role in shaping their learning experience.
• Incorporate real-world examples and applications into the learning process to help students see the relevance and practical value of what they're studying.
• Encourage teachers to explore multiple approaches to the same concept, which can help students better understand the "whys" behind mathematical principles and formulas.
• Foster an environment where students feel confident, fulfilled, and comfortable with making mistakes, rather than feeling intimidated or discouraged by the subject matter.

At the end of the week, Designers were asked to share some reflections. While the lunches were a clear highlight (go figure), there were also many important takeaways about the impact of having a community of diverse students from different racial, ethnic, economic, and mathematical backgrounds. One student commented, “The conversations I was able to have during this program were the most impactful part for me. Though we all came from vastly different backgrounds, we all shared similar ideas about what a math class should be, and I found that very powerful.” Another student reflected on how their thinking expanded around the connections between individual stories and system-level change, stating, “I absolutely enjoyed the math journey section on the first day where we all shared our experiences in the math space. I was able to hear how similar our experiences are and could see that everyone has a similar understanding that the school system needs to be changed.”

Designers week was a great success on many measures. When asked how the program can be improved for potential future iterations (see what we did there?), 70% of Designers wrote in that they’d like the program to be longer than a week! Our next steps include generating a research report including details about student designs and a toolkit that could be used to similarly elevate student voice in other education design spaces. At EdVestors, we are left thinking about how impactful it was to listen to the students about what matters and how to improve mathematics education for all.