More Math for More People
CPM Educational Program is a non-profit publisher of math textbooks for grades 6-12. As part of its mission, CPM provides a multitude of professional learning opportunities for math educators. The More Math for More People podcast is part of that outreach and mission. Published biweekly, the hosts, Joel Miller and Misty Nikula, discuss the CPM curriculum, trends in math education and share strategies to shift instructional practices to create a more inclusive and student-centered classroom. They also highlight upcoming CPM professional learning opportunities and have conversations with math educators about how they do what they do. We hope that you find the podcast informative, engaging and fun. Intro music credit: JuliusH from pixabay.com.
More Math for More People
Episode 4.23 - We begin Math and Stats Month and talk with Dr Nicole Joseph
First, we launch into Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. But we don't need to tell YOU how important this is!!
Then we have part one of a conversation with Dr. Nicole Joseph of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Nicole Joseph takes us on a profound journey into the heart of mathematics education, revealing how identity shapes learning experiences, particularly for Black girls. Drawing from her personal story of being moved to an honors math class after her mother confronted a teacher who repeatedly overlooked her raised hand, Joseph illuminates how pivotal classroom moments can transform a student's relationship with mathematics forever.
The conversation dives deep into mathematics identity – that powerful construct encompassing both how we perceive ourselves as math learners and how others perceive us. Joseph explains how a teacher's belief in a student's potential can completely reshape their mathematical self-concept, while negative experiences can cement a lifelong belief of "not being a math person" despite successfully using math in everyday life.
Most compellingly, Joseph unpacks the structural barriers that contribute to Black girls' underrepresentation in mathematics. From the patriarchal culture of mathematics departments lined with portraits of white male mathematicians to the misinterpretation of Black girls' classroom behaviors like question-asking as weakness rather than engagement, these barriers systematically exclude talented students from advanced mathematical opportunities.
Her research on adultification bias reveals how Black girls are often held to adult standards while being denied the developmental understanding afforded to their white peers, creating additional obstacles to mathematics achievement. This conversation challenges listeners to reconsider how implicit biases manifest in classroom interactions and how we might create more inclusive mathematical spaces.
Continue the conversation and connect with Dr. Joseph:
Thread and Instagram: @nicolemjoseph3
Facebook: nicolemichellejoseph
Send Joel and Misty a message!
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
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You are listening to the More Math for More People podcast. An outreach of CPM educational program Boom. An outreach of CPM Educational Program.
Speaker 2:Boom, Guess what Joel.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:Today is the first of April which is one of my favorite days?
Speaker 1:Not really yeah well, it's the beginning of a new month. It is the beginning of a new month.
Speaker 2:It is the beginning of a new month. It's also April Fool's Day.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Which I'm not a big fan of.
Speaker 1:Is that true?
Speaker 2:Well, supposedly, I don't know. Huh, as a middle school teacher, I did not enjoy April Fool's Day.
Speaker 1:No, mostly because I had to pretend that my students had fooled me, because they weren't that clever, did you often get repeats?
Speaker 2:I thought they would just come and do things like Ms Nicklin, there's something on your forehead. Really, they're like oh, april Fool's. I mean, there's just little, very silly things like that that I was like oh. I didn't know it was April Fool's Day today, yeah, so not a big fan, see to my colleagues.
Speaker 1:I'd always send like fake collection notices from banks and stuff and be like ha ha, no, I never did that.
Speaker 2:But you tried to spam your colleagues, I never did that Wow.
Speaker 1:By the way, Joel, I think you owe a toll and you should reply to this at the end, or your license will be suspended in 24 hours If that's an indicator of April Fool's Day. I've been celebrating April Fool's Day for months now.
Speaker 2:So what is the national day today? I mean, I hope it's more than Apple Fool's Day.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, it even expands over the more than a day. It expands a month. It's Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month.
Speaker 2:Are you joking?
Speaker 1:No, it's a real thing.
Speaker 2:Wow, mathematics and Statistics Awareness.
Speaker 1:Month yes.
Speaker 2:Do we get like wristbands for those?
Speaker 4:We should.
Speaker 2:Like maybe those little pie wristbands yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Make it, let's make it happen.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, I'm sure we can order them. So okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Guess guess which president made it official? Jimmy Carter no Do you want to guess again?
Speaker 2:Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 1:Ronald Reagan President, ronald Reagan ow. In 1986 it became official well, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wonder why Ronald Reagan decided to do that. I'm not sure probably to beat the Russians probably probably to or the Soviet Union? Yeah, wasn't it the.
Speaker 1:That was the Cold War time, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:It was definitely.
Speaker 1:When do you think the Statistical Society, the American Statistical Association, first banded?
Speaker 2:1753.
Speaker 1:That's pretty old. This is 1839 is the information I have Okay.
Speaker 2:I had a different one. It was a different statistical society.
Speaker 1:That's probably true, disbanded and then rebanded. I clarified American statistical.
Speaker 2:There's probably European or Babylonian?
Speaker 1:The Babylonians probably had a statistical society. Probably the Babylonians probably had a statistical society.
Speaker 2:Probably. If they could I mean the Romans might have had it, but it would be really hard to do statistics and rolling numbers.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, can you imagine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, can't.
Speaker 1:I-I-I deviations from the.
Speaker 2:I don't want to even do long division.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's how we could appreciate and be aware of mathematics. This month is to do a Roman numeral long division. Maybe, polydoku, we'll do polydoku. Roman numerals.
Speaker 2:What Roman numerals Sweet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Does it have legitimate suggestions?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it says how to observe this month. You could get vocal on social, oh all right, here's your call. So if you have social media hashtag, math stat month.
Speaker 2:And then after that put hashtag more math for more people.
Speaker 1:Exactly, or M-M-F-P, m-m Is that right?
Speaker 2:M more math for more. No, m-m-f-m-p. M-m-f-m-p, is that right? M-more-m-f-m-p yeah, yeah, that one.
Speaker 1:You can bake a pie.
Speaker 2:You could bake a pie.
Speaker 1:With a side of quirky. You can bake a pie and serve it with a side of quirky. Math trivia.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. Do they have an example of quirky math trivia?
Speaker 1:It says for example did you know? That the French refer to the pie chart as camembert.
Speaker 2:Oh sure is that true or is that it's april fool's? No, it's not april fool's joy unless this whole page is an april fool's joke on me it could be. Could be, oh my gosh, we'll be duped you can host a math together math together like a math party, like invite your friends over and just do math. That'd be cool. I mean, I'd be up for that, yeah, but that's, I'm weird, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, and one last thing is you can make math interesting again. I, I those of you listening right now probably yes. I'm all for it the coolest thing?
Speaker 2:Well, there's just too much there. Okay, make math interesting again. Great, oh man. Okay, so great. How are you going to celebrate? I mean, it's not just a day, it's the beginning of this whole month.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:You could have many, many things, but what's the first thing you're going to do?
Speaker 1:maybe, so the first thing I think I will do is plan out my month in a maybe algorithmically but like an organized way mathematically kind of figure out how I'm going to celebrate for the month and plan that out how about that makes sense.
Speaker 2:How about you? I, I don't know. I'm kind of overwhelmed with ideas when I have a whole month to figure some things out.
Speaker 1:You do.
Speaker 2:So I'm not going to. Yeah, it's hard to say. We'll see I mean I try to celebrate math almost every day. Yeah yeah, so I could just keep doing the things I'm doing, that's true, and chalk it up as a double dip, right?
Speaker 1:Double, count. Well, I'll check in with you when we get to the end of the month and maybe we'll see what happens. Okay, we'll compare notes.
Speaker 2:Yes, awesome.
Speaker 4:Well, enjoy your mathematics and statistical appreciation month that launches today you too, hey, it's Jocelyn, our PLC of the Northeast region, and here are some of my thoughts heading into this last marking period. April seems to always hold two things, often in juxtaposition One moment, a northerner like me is enjoying the first flowers, only to wake up to them covered in snow. We pull on our warmest sweaters so we can also maybe wear sandals. We teachers are still in the thick of our content, meetings, planning, testing, and yet the number of days left is finally small enough to count. We are athletes carrying the exhaustion of our efforts but also twitching our fingers to ramp up adrenaline for the finish, wondering just how much we have left in the tank. When I find my tank is nearing empty and the opportunity to fill up is not quite close enough, I must lean into my best habits.
Speaker 4:What are your strengths as a teacher? Where can you give yourself a break? Where are your moments of zen? The best compliment I ever received from a student was she doesn't talk too much. She lets us try instead. So when the pressure ramps up, I try to step back and let students see what they can do. I think of it as pushing harder by letting go. I use more VNPS work as part of the existing lessons, I add standalone posters for consolidation and closure and I'll use the STTS hot seat to make good, old-fashioned computation practice less old-fashioned. And my best moments of zen come from realizing some students' thinking and discourse is so on point that I can tell them take the wheel. Endurance is a combination of choosing the right pace and fueling yourself. Your pace comes from your strengths and your fuel comes from the breaks and the moments you give yourself. So do yourself the kindness.
Speaker 2:On the podcast, dr Joseph was the keynote speaker at the 2025 CPM Teacher Conference just recently in San Diego, and we're really excited to have her as a guest on the podcast today. We spoke with her for some time, so you're going to hear part one of our conversation today. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr Joseph. So Dr Joseph is an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She's also an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She's also an associate dean in the Peabody Office of Student Life and she directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab, an intergenerational lab that focuses on training and mentoring its members on Black, feminist and intersectional epistemological orientations.
Speaker 2:Dr Joseph's research explores two lines of inquiry Black women and girls, their identity development and their experience in mathematics, and gendered anti-Blackness, whiteness, white supremacy and how these systems of oppression shape Black girls' learning. White Supremacy and how these Systems of Oppression Shape Black Girls' Learning. Access, underrepresentation and Retention in Mathematics Across the Pipeline. She has been active in this field for some time and has a number of publications and initiatives and projects that she is working on. Her most recent funded project includes co-designing and validating a measure of mathematics identity that includes intersectionality barriers and intersectionality assets. She is awesome and we really enjoy talking with her, so I hope that you enjoy this part one of our conversation with Dr Nicole Joseph. I am super excited today because we're here with Dr Nicole Joseph, who was the keynote speaker at our teacher conference in February.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm super excited to talk with her about some things today. So welcome to the podcast, Dr Joseph.
Speaker 1:Welcome. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. So, to get started, tell us a little bit about your own background experience and what brought you to your research area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm born and raised in Seattle, washington and I did the traditional attending a public school. I think I learned pretty early how to quote, unquote, do school Learned quickly how to be successful, what I needed to do, who were the teachers you know to talk to, and I've always loved math and I opened up, actually, my book with the conversation that. Well, it was an observation my mom was making outside the class the third grade class we were doing math and I was raising my hand and the teacher didn't call on me and my mom basically said the lady was racist and was like you have to, nicole will be removed out of this class. Well, the only class that was available was the honors class. I don't remember the actual name of it, but it was the honors class and you had to test in that. And my mom was like I'm sorry, she's not testing in it, she's getting out of this class. So the principal agreed to put me in that class with Mr Johnson, who I remember. You know we have those teachers that we just remember and really the my math trajectory just sort of like the rest is history, as they would say. I really thrived in this class, fell in love with math. It wasn't that he was teaching like culturally responsibly or anything like that, it was just there was connection. I love problem solving. We got to talk with each other as kids and that's something that, just you know, changed my life.
Speaker 3:So, needless to say, I go through middle school and high school and all the things, college and majored in economics and minored in mathematics, and became a teacher, a math teacher, and I think it was really there where I started to sort of ask myself questions, although in high school I was like why am I the only Black student in the calculus class Didn't have language, of course, on what was going on, but like I felt it in my body and I also just like was looking around and I'm like this is, this is not fun to be the only one, but when I became a teacher is when I really started trying to think about some of these questions pedagogies and interactions with my students and families. That would help me help them see the value of math beyond school and why math was important, not just to take these tests here or not because you need this for you know the next grade level, but really what can it do for your life? Like, how do you use it in your life. And that's when I decided I think a few years after that that I wanted to get a PhD and that I wanted to research some of these things, to learn how to become a researcher so that I could deeply understand some of these issues, and you know some of these questions.
Speaker 3:So it's been a long road. I've been thinking about this for a long time because having equity in math for me and social justice is really important, because we have established math, I think, just in society in general, as you either are a math person or you are not. And then the complexity comes when we think intersectionally about how that can impact and shape. You know well Black girls in my case, but variety of marginalized students and learners. So that's how I came to this work. I was just really passionate and I had questions. I wanted to figure out how to answer those questions and explore.
Speaker 1:Do you think when you became a teacher then and you're thinking back, was it Mr Johnson? Do you think you tried to use some of those strategies, or is that more of an experience of questioning? So you started to question, so you were coming up with your own strategies.
Speaker 3:I think it was just more of an experience for me. Like I said, I don't really think he was doing anything. That was like super earth shattering. I think it was just. First of all, it was just being in an honors class and like having this level of expectation that you could do the work and then me actually showing myself that I could do the work, and I'm specifically, you know, talking about math, but as well as like language arts and others. So I don't know like math made me feel like I could do better in other areas that I felt weaker in, Because I just felt the power. I can't really explain it, but I just felt like when I was able to solve problems in man, that just gave me this very powerful feeling.
Speaker 3:That then helped me to approach reading and literacy, which I didn't feel like I was that great. I didn't like novels, I just didn't like that stuff. I loved informational texts and give it to me all day, but like novels I just wasn't. And poetry and things like that, both things I felt were challenging to me because they were so metaphorical. It was, you know, like all these interpretations and I'm like, no, just give me the information that I need. So I think that that was just my experience. But when I went and became a teacher I hadn't really thought about, like, what did Mr Johnson do? That? Maybe?
Speaker 3:I could adapt. I think at that point I had just had so much experience myself being a teacher that these ideas just sort of started coming to me about how I need to engage with kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, in more meaningful ways, yeah, so, as you moved from teaching and then doing your PhD and beginning this study and looking at particularly Black girls in math classrooms, what are some of the questions? Right, I love that you had these questions that you were pursuing. What are some of the questions that you've asked and maybe found some answers to or have led to more questions?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So why weren't? Why are black girls not in advanced mathematics? Was like one really big question. Why do black girls feel like they can't be strong math learners or strong math students, what? What's getting in the way in terms of, like, our educational system, like what might be getting in the way of them being able to, for example, be in advanced math classrooms? So those types of questions.
Speaker 3:Once I came into the construct of math identity as a graduate student and started to really begin to think about that, math identity is very powerful because it really is the way in which researchers understand how someone feels about themselves or how they perceive themselves as a learner of math and as a doer of math, and not just themselves, but also other.
Speaker 3:How do other people perceive you? And so that's what makes a math identity, in my mind, a really powerful construct to think about is there's sort of the mirrors and windows, like it's both things happening, and what shows up, I think, in a student or a Black girl is some of that space of both of those things happening. So, for example, a fourth grader might say, oh, you know, I'm not good at math, or whatever, but the teacher might recognize that this student is good at math and might say, oh, you should enter the, you know, the math club or the math competition or whatever. Whatever she takes up that identity and does it and then something begins to like you know sort of happen where she probably feels, oh my God, I can do it and don't let her, like, win the competition, because then really she, I think, comes into this identity of I can do that. But sometimes it happens that way, like someone else sees it in you.
Speaker 3:You don't necessarily see it in yourself because maybe experiences that you've had it is so powerful.
Speaker 2:I think that there's so many times with young people, because of how they're bringing the work at that time, right Now is everything, so a small experience can feel like it's everything. So a small positive experience or a small negative experience could just make it be all or nothing for them. And adults you know, older people and other kids, but primarily, I think, adults in their lives important adults in their lives can have so much impact on that. Those tiny little shifts of their identity.
Speaker 3:I just believe a math teacher can make or break a student's math trajectory. I talked to so many people. I mean I could ask the both of you, like, did you have a math teacher that like made a difference, either negatively or positively? Like we remember who they are, you know, I think we remember teachers period, but math teachers especially. You know. There's just something about that experience that I think we hold on to once we become even adults, in terms of what that was like with certain teachers was like with certain teachers.
Speaker 1:That is good. And going back to the, I am a math person, not a math person. Somebody may be successful in having employment and having using math on a day-to-day basis. You alluded to honors versus non-honors, that the difference in the expectation is being able to do work or not be able to do work. The difference in the expectation is being able to do work or not be able to do work. So somebody who's very capable of doing work using math in life might still say I'm not a math person because of an experience they had with a teacher, Absolutely, or a different adult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and educators are really important. There's a really old study I don't know if someone has replicated the study, but it's called the Pygmalion effect. I don't know if you guys have heard of the Pygmalion effect, but you know, basically there was two groups of kids. One group was really low, one group was really high. The teacher was told the opposite, that the high group was the low group and that the low group was the high group. Well, you know what happened? Because the teacher had these high expectations for what would be the high group, those children who were like, I guess, technically really like low in terms of their achievement started achieving. Because teachers, their beliefs are so powerful. It's like if they believe that you can do it, they're going to, in turn, teach you in those ways and engage with you in those ways. That will reflect those beliefs and expectations.
Speaker 2:And I think, as young people, we do tend to look to the adults who we see as people who know more, have been there, whatever that they have quote unquote truth yeah, I mean, they don't, but they have some more knowledge and information and we look to that for validation and affirmation of who and what we are and what we can do. Yeah, it's very powerful, it's very powerful we are and what we can do. Yeah, it's very powerful, it's very powerful. So what are some of the reasons that black girls aren't are? Just you know that they they aren't as represented in mathematics. Yeah, these questions about why? Yeah, what were some of the things that you came to?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, come to so far yeah, I'm gonna start with the sort of structural stuff which is just the culture of mathematics, so the discipline of mathematics. So, when you ask someone, when you think of a mathematician, who do you think about? Seldom will people say my grandmother, or seldom will they say someone that they're related to, or seldom will they say someone that they're related to and I'm talking about really anybody. But specifically, when you ask, I think, marginalized people, folks that have been excluded from math and you know, I've done talks at universities in math departments and one of the things that I ask them to do is to take a walk down their hallways and I ask them to look at the walls and to ask them like what do you hear? What are your walls speaking? And you know the jaw drops because basically they're all white men essentially. So it's just like what kind of messaging do you think you say, not just to marginalized people, but also to like white students? Like this is first of all, I don't belong here if you are white and male, but also I'm dominant, or this is my space if you are white and male. So it's like these messages that we get.
Speaker 3:So the culture of math is very exclusionary, it's very patriarchal. It's Scholars have called it white supremacy, male dominated space, because there are certain conditions, certain ways of thinking, certain characteristics about competition, individualism, all of these characteristics that sort of describe our discipline. Even when you take certain math classes take, for example, geometry you know it's about proofs, it's about proving what quote unquote is true and your ability to be able to do that. So it's exclusionary and it basically does not feel welcoming to Black girls, feel welcoming to Black girls and we see that across K-12, but I think we also see it more salient in like undergrad and you know, graduate schools, graduate education. So that's one thing I think.
Speaker 3:Another thing is we talked a little bit about is the low teacher expectations and like limited access to gifted programming. So how do you get into a gifted program and advanced math? You have to have letters of recommendation or recommendations from teachers. So if teachers don't see you as a strong math student, then they're not going to recommend you. And I think in the talk I may have shared a study that looked at teachers not recommending basically Black girls for gifted and part of it was because they had a not a deep understanding in how Black girls participated in math. So, for example, they asked a lot of questions and were asking for clarification. And in that particular study and if you want it, you know for the thing I can definitely give it to you In that particular study the teacher interpreted that as you must not be ready, if you're asking me this many questions, you must not be ready for the next math class or the next level of math. So that was, you know, strange, but that both were. Some of the things that we saw in the findings for that study is that you know they're not recommending black girls to programs.
Speaker 3:I think the other thing that I talked about there is just the complexities of who they are, and part of that is I talked about adultification bias. You know a lot of educators and schools are very concerned with how Black girls behave, what they wear, like all of these things, and treat them like adults rather than kids. And so you know what a white girl might be able to get away with. A Black girl cannot. It's described as like developmental and you know she just needs support if it's a white girl, but then if it's a Black girl it's like you ought to know better and you shouldn't be doing these things. And so I haven't done a study.
Speaker 3:I would love to get do a study on like referral of Black girls, like examining those referrals.
Speaker 3:I have done that part, but what I haven't done is where those referrals came from. I would be curious to know if they're coming from the math and science classes or is it just all over the place. My gut tells me that it's probably math or science classes where a lot of those referrals are happening, because, one, there's just low expectations for those girls in a lot in a lot of schools not everywhere, but in a lot of places but also, secondly, because the girls have heard over and over, implicitly and explicitly, that you don't belong in this space, that you're not a good math student, that teachers don't want to support you in the ways that you need. It's like you might cut up, I'm saying like you may not do exactly what it is that you're supposed to do. You're trying to protect yourself and so that's misunderstood when you don't understand, like Black girlhood, for example. So those are a few things that I think contribute to why we see what we see in terms of disproportionality and underrepresentation in math.
Speaker 1:And then looking at that study and wondering about referrals and things like that, is there not a solution, but something that you see that might be counteracting that?
Speaker 3:I mean. So are you asking me like, what should we do?
Speaker 2:Oh man, as usual, we're going to leave you right there so that you are very excited to come back and find out the answer to that question in two weeks on the next episode of More Math for More People podcast. We'll see you then. So that is all we have time for on this episode of the More Math for More People podcast. If you are interested in connecting with us on social media, find our links in the podcast description, and the music for the podcast was created by Julius H and can be found on pixabaycom. So thank you very much, julius. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 1:It'll be April 15th, national Rubber Eraser Day, and we're going to celebrate rubber eraser invention and I remember back when I was a student in school and used those erasers to correct any mistakes. I remember my students doing the same things and then I remember I switched to like golf pencils in my classroom and there weren't any erasers and I thought it was a good thing because students would see the mistakes there as they recorded their work and things like that. But I'm happy to visit National Rubber Eraser Day again because it's such kind of a cool invention and very regular and accessible in our homes, in our classrooms, in our communities. I can't wait until.
Speaker 2:April 15th to talk about it. Ha ha ha.