Sarah Roberts, Assistant Professor of Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, will give the free talk “Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Conceptions of Equitable Mathematics” on Thursday, March 12 at 12 noon in the Don Gevirtz Boardroom, 4th Floor, Education Building. The event is sponsored by the Gevirtz School’s CORE (Conversations on Research in Education) Lunch Series. All members of the UCSB community are invited to attend; please bring your lunch – light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to Carla Whitacre by Wednesday, March 11 if you plan on attending: cwhitacre@education.ucsb.edu.
Dr. Sarah Roberts’ research focuses on issues of equity in mathematics education. In research with colleagues at the University of Kentucky and Boston University, she provided secondary mathematics prospective teachers (PTs) several tasks related to equity in mathematics teaching. Dr. Roberts will describe one of these tasks, in which PTs responded to five quotations about equity in mathematics teaching and learning. She will describe how the students attended to equity in their written responses, classroom discussions, and post-discussion written reflections.
While discussions regarding equity are becoming more commonplace in mathematics education, attending to issues of power and identity is still fairly rare. Providing opportunities for PTs to delve into issues of equity, particularly supporting them in attending to power and identity, means that these individuals have opportunities to appreciate and build on the experiences and perspectives of all students during mathematics instruction.
Sarah Roberts is an assistant professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Education. She received her B.A., M.A., and teaching credential from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from University of Colorado at Boulder. Prior to attending graduate school for her Ph.D., Dr. Roberts taught high school and middle school math and science for several years in the Bay Area.