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Hidden competence: women’s mathematical participation in public and private classroom spaces

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Abstract

This paper reports on gender and participation in one inquiry-oriented undergraduate mathematics course. While there is evidence that inquiry can better support all learners, especially women, less is known about the distribution of participation in inquiry classrooms. Here, we focus on how men and women participated in both public spaces (in plenary with the whole class) and private spaces (with their group members). We found that while many women provided a large number of high-level “why” contributions in their groups, this did not necessary translate to participation in plenary discussions. We thus argue that women’s competence was hidden to the whole class, which contributes to the systematic marginalization of women in mathematics.

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Notes

  1. In this class, homogeneous coordinate notation consisted of points represented by a triple (X,Y,Z) and lines represented by a triple [X,Y,Z]. Furthermore, both points and lines belong to equivalence classes, and as such, can be represented by more than one triple—in which case the line or point is being represented on a different plane. The criterion for a point to be on a line is if the dot product of the triple representing the point and the triple representing the line is zero.

  2. Lines of talk that are omitted from the transcript are times at which the group is focused on the mathematical task, or instances in which the group is off topic, but in a non-gender-problematic way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, California State University, Channel Islands, One University Drive, Camarillo, CA, 93012, USA

    Jessica Brooke Ernest

  2. Department of Mathematics & Statistics, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA, 92182-7720, USA

    Daniel L. Reinholz

  3. College of Education, University of Washington, 2012 Skagit Lane, Miller Hall, Seattle, WA, 98195-3600, USA

    Niral Shah

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  1. Jessica Brooke Ernest
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Correspondence to Daniel L. Reinholz.

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Ernest, J.B., Reinholz, D.L. & Shah, N. Hidden competence: women’s mathematical participation in public and private classroom spaces. Educ Stud Math 102, 153–172 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-019-09910-w

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