- Year 2018
- NSF Award #1557255
- Registration Current Noyce Scholar
- First Name Marley
- Last Name Murrell
- Discipline Math
- Institution University of Arizona
Abstract
The Noyce Seminars have been at the heart of the AZ Mathematics Teaching Noyce Program as they have brought together the AZ Noyce community to engage in conversations on critical topics that are relevant to teaching and learning mathematics. The Noyce seminar time provides a space to discuss mathematics teaching and learning experiences that include discussions of readings that link research and practice with a particular focus on equity and diversity. Facilitators have presented interactive sessions on topics such as funds of knowledge, complex instruction, implicit bias, cultivating positive mathematical identity, students’ mathematical agency, culturally relevant mathematics teaching, and Sheltered English Instruction strategies for supporting multilingual learners. Through the Noyce Seminars, we have had the opportunity to share our developing views of equity and equitable teaching practices. Being a part of the Noyce Seminars has made the Noyce Scholars feel part of the mathematics education community in positive ways that are different from the coursework in the secondary mathematics teacher preparation program. We have learned from critical conversations around identity, bias, race, equity, culture, social justice, and what it means to engage in equitable teaching practices. As Noyce Scholars, we participated in activities that interrogated our own identity narratives and the possible impact of these narratives on our teaching and learning mathematics. For example, Dr. Lynette Guzman, Visiting Assistant Professor, led an activity in which the Noyce participants created personal identity markers, reflected on individual markers and the intersectionality of identities, and inadvertently rank-ordered the personal identity markers. We drew from Aguirre, Mayfield, and Martin’s (2013) notion of identity as ‘the stories that people tell about themselves and what they view as important to them: their understanding of their place in the world and their core beliefs’ (p. 27) situated in the context of teaching mathematics. We offer to share our experiences as prospective secondary mathematics teachers and as Noyce Scholars through our professional stories – those connected to teaching mathematics; personal stories – those from personal lives that are connected to teaching; and touchstone stories – those that can be either or both professional and personal that are rarely shared publicly (Chao, 2014).
