Date of Award

8-23-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Mathematics

Advisor(s)

Nicole Fonger

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explored students’ expressed emotions as they worked on a problem-solving lab contextualizing the local lead poisoning issue in the city in which they attended college. I identified students’ expressed emotions and their reasoning for expressing those emotions. I also looked at the change in students’ emotions as they worked through the problem-solving lab, referred to as the lead poisoning lab. In this dissertation, I also analyzed students’ self-reports of developing five learning pursuits of Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) frameworks: identity, criticality, skills, intellect, and joy, and the different ways students developed these learning pursuits. I used Social Justice Mathematics (SJM) and Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) as conceptual frameworks to guide this study. These frameworks informed the design of the lead poisoning lab. I used HRL learning pursuits to define mathematics learning. This dissertation aimed to answer three research questions: (1) What emotions do college students express in response to learning about local lead poisoning issue and why? (2) How does a lead poisoning mathematics task affect, if at all, college students' emotions as they work through the lead poisoning task in a precalculus class? (3) How did college students self-report their mathematics learning experience after completing a lead poisoning mathematics task designed from a historically responsive literacy lens? This dissertation is an action research study that is a small part of a much broader action research project. This study reported on data collected from forty-three undergraduate students enrolled in two sections of a precalculus course. For this study, I used the lead poisoning lab developed by the Meaningful Mathematics Research Group led by Dr. Nicole Fonger. I employed a mixed methods approach to analyze data. I used thematic analysis for qualitative data analysis of students’ responses to the lead poisoning task on Desmos and the post-lab Qualtrics survey. The findings of this study suggested that students experienced various emotions as they worked on a mathematics task embedded in a local injustice issue. Students expressed negative, positive, and self-conscious emotions as they developed an understanding of the lead poisoning issue, learned about the lives of people affected by it, identified the role of people in power, realized the usefulness of lesson content, and analyzed the ongoing efforts to address the lead poisoning issue. I found that students expressed mostly negative emotions after they learned about the lead poisoning issue, but their emotions changed to mostly positive emotions after they learned about the existing efforts to address the lead poisoning issue. The findings also suggested that students developed the five HRL learning pursuits in different ways. The majority of the students agreed that they developed the five HRL learning pursuits in their self-report of their learning. This study informed the field about students’ expressed emotions and the reasons behind their expression. This information could help instructors to anticipate and prepare to address students’ emotions in their classroom. This research study provides an example of implementing a social justice mathematics lesson. This research opens up avenues for future research on instructional practices and task designs that address students’ emotions in mathematics classrooms.

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