RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Conceptualizing Culturally Meaningful Participation in Undergraduate Mathematics
Page: 975
Participation in undergraduate mathematics courses is viewed as an important metric for assessing student learning and motivation, especially in active learning classrooms. However, engagement has been understood through a narrow lens, which overlooks the way students—especially students of color—engage with mathematics courses and positions them as disengaged. In this theoretical report, we introduce the idea of culturally meaningful participation in undergraduate mathematics to capture the organic ways that students of color draw upon cultural resources to create spaces for engagement in or with their mathematics courses. We draw upon Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth Framework and the notion of Ong’s STEM counterspace to support our theorizing. We argue that CME recognizes the assets that students bring to support their engagement with mathematics and also illuminates how these assets are drawn upon. We argue that CME has the potential to support broader anti-deficit efforts in undergraduate mathematics education.