RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
A Student’s Self-Perceptions and Social Positions in an Undergraduate Precalculus Classroom
Page: 818
Mathematics education research has linked students’ development of positive mathematics identities to outcomes of academic success and persistence in STEM. I contribute to this research area by adopting a positional approach to identity development, focusing on the students’ development of in-the-moment identities through the negotiation of acts and roles. To better understand the connection between the roles adopted by students in class and the students’ mathematics identity development, I conducted classroom observations of an undergraduate precalculus classroom and interviewed four focal students on their beliefs about math and experiences in this course early and late in the semester. Student-instructor interactions from the observations were coded to produce positioning profiles for the focal students. Here, I present the positioning profile for one student, alongside a reflection of her transition from not identifying as a “math person” to identifying as one, as developed through narrative analysis of the interview data.