Hate math? Time to rethink developmental math courses

Mathematics — whatever your experience in school, you are likely to have developed a strong opinion. It’s quite possible you’ve been turned off for years; math tends to do that to some people.

Now that the new academic year is underway, from K-12 schools through higher education, it is timely and critical to rethink the labels many assign to learners with — and especially without — a demonstrable affinity for mathematical skills.

For many, math is at the top of the academic pyramid (bested or paralleled only by reading). Math is a notorious school gatekeeper, and many in professional and academic circles routinely use mathematical achievement as a credential for societal attainment and mobility.

A variety of labels justify and reinforce math’s heightened status and signal which individuals and groups are mathematically worthy — terms like gifted, low or high, advanced, remedial, basic and more.

To put it differently, math is used to sift and sort people and opportunities. One of the more glaringly consequential places in this mathematics pipeline where many experience such labeling and gatekeeping is the transition to college.

During the past 20 years, I have studied the phenomenon of mathematics remediation, primarily at large, four-year universities in the Midwest. My research focuses on how students experience these courses and the impact on how they view mathematics and themselves as mathematics learners.

Remediation has a long history, beginning with Latin tutoring at Harvard College for incoming students (then exclusively white men) during the 1600s. The first remedial mathematics courses were offered at the University of Wisconsin in 1849.

Fast forward to the 1970s. Following the expansion of higher education, remedial mathematics courses became a mainstay of entry-level coursework at two- and four-year institutions.

Although the numbers vary by year, region and institution type, it’s estimated that between 20 percent and 30% of all students entering four-year universities in the United States are placed in developmental mathematics courses. In two-year colleges, this range rises to 30% to 60%. This represents a significant swath of the college-going population — thousands of students yearly.

Research has long indicated that students from racially marginalized groups are disproportionately placed in these courses. In my own research, I ask, “What does it feel like to negotiate the ‘developmental’ or ‘remedial’ label?”

Despite the focus at times on the negative stigma associated with these courses, many see developmental mathematics courses as equity-oriented levers that broaden access to higher education. In some ways, they do.

But for far too many students, developmental math courses become a hurdle — and in many four-year institutions, they do not count toward graduation. Still they are required, and are sometimes a considerable cost for students who repeat the course multiple times.

So it is critical to support more students with strengthened coursework as they reach college.

Multiple reform efforts recently have shifted the landscape of mathematics remediation. California has been a national leader in this push, with recent legislation that seeks to establish more viable pathways for students to complete their degrees.

What may seem to be an even more radical idea is that in developmental mathematics courses that often meet more frequently than typical undergraduate courses, educators use the time to focus not only on mathematical content and skills but also disposition.

According to a groundbreaking National Research Council Report from 2001, along with focusing on concept and procedural development, an important point of focus in mathematics education needs to be the development of a productive disposition, or the habitual inclination to see mathematics as something useful and worthwhile to know and do.

It is important to prepare educators to spend time talking with students about what mathematics means for them. Instead of punishing students with procedures, it is perhaps best to work toward a mathematics education that finally adds up and create a mathematics-learning experience that attends to and includes the whole person in the equation.

Larnell is an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois Chicago and a public voices fellow through The OpEd Project.