Carnegie Math Pathways

Comprehensive Support to Navigate the Reform Process: Exploring the New Strong Start to Finish Service Menu

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Comprehensive Support to Navigate the Reform Process: Exploring the New Strong Start to Finish Service Menu

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Originally published for and posted by Strong Start to Finish. Reposted here with permission.

For over a decade, Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd has been working alongside educators to design and implement math pathways solutions to support more students’ success in gateway college mathematics. Through this work, we’ve seen that it is possible to create more equitable learning systems that can benefit and support all learners. Yet, we’ve also come to understand that creating and effectively scaling developmental education reforms takes complex thinking, engagement of diverse stakeholders and a focus on equity at all levels. Because of this, we think Strong Start to Finish’s (SStF) newly updated Partner Services Menu is a helpful guide to institutions, decision-makers and change teams. 

The Partner Services Menu centers around six high-leverage service categories for developmental reforms — math pathways, corequisite support, placement redesign, other support structures and equity-first integration support.   

While the menu provides information about specific supports and services, it doesn’t mean that they need to be thought of in isolation. The value of this tool, from our perspective, is that it provides institutions and decision-makers with a useful framework to holistically prepare for and implement change. The tool aides strategic planning and scoping the needs and associated activities of institutional reform at multiple levels. The menu allows institutions to understand how the services intersect and build upon one another with the way the supports are presented. These supports enable leaders to identify the kinds of support needed and develop a more comprehensive plan to effectively achieve their reform goals.  

Seeing how these kinds of services have been combined in the past helps illustrate the benefits of using the Partner Services Menu. More impactful change plans are built when services are scaffolded across categories rather than selecting one-off services.  

Recently, we worked with a community college to redesign their math offerings and institute math pathways. This effort aimed to reduce equity gaps and improve student outcomes across their department. We supported the college as it engaged in multiple, overlapping activities to execute their planned changes. The following table shows how the overall body of work aligns to services from three of the four service categories in the SStF menu. 

 

Example of Institutional Activities  Related Services in Service Menu 
Restructuring and Case–making – Following the college math department’s decision to redesign their offerings and eliminate their developmental courses, key departmental leadership and math faculty worked with Carnegie Math Pathways. They worked to engage in math pathways case-making and course alignment consensus-building within and across departments. 

 

 Case-making for Math Pathways  
Professional Learning – Math faculty participated in Carnegie Math Pathways professional training in collaborative learning approaches and promoting productive student mindsets using social emotional student supports.   Equitable Teaching and Learning Strategies and Instructional Design 

Mindset Support 

Instructional support 
Leadership Support – Departmental leadership received coaching support from Carnegie Math Pathways’ administrator coaches to successfully organize, manage and sustain the change. Departmental leadership also received assistance to get buy-in from various institutional stakeholders, including faculty and advisors. 

 

 Math Pathways Action Planning 

Policy Development and/or Revision 

Leadership Development 

 

This college’s comprehensive approach to reform ultimately resulted in a successful transition. They saw markedly improved student outcomes by narrowing equity gaps in the students achieving college math credit and greater instructional confidence among the faculty.  

Creating impactful change requires broad thinking and engagement. The case above highlights the variety of actions and supports that institutions may need to execute a successful change plan. To increase equitable access and outcomes in college math, structural changes are not enough for success. Institutional decision-makers must also attend to the classroom learning experience and ensuring understanding and support for change across the institution, including among faculty and students. Yet, we know that doing so takes planning and partnership, which is where the Partner Services Menu comes in.   

The new SStF services menu illuminates options and possibilities for institutions navigating the developmental education reform process, taking out much of the guesswork. It is a great starting place for planning and identifying partners to help institutions and decision-makers. The tool supports the journey to create impactful and lasting change that supports the success of all students. Take the first step by reviewing it today and see how it can help build and execute a vision for meaningful, equity-centered reform.  

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Strong Start to Finish is a network of policy and research partners, institution and systems leaders and foundations advancing system reforms in developmental education, so every student can succeed in their first year of college. In particular, we support college success for Black, Brown, Asian American and Indigenous students, adult learners and students with low incomes, who have been underserved by the education system for too long. We work to scale the use of proven, proactive strategies that remove barriers that typically impede these students from earning essential college credits in English and math courses in their first year. Education Commission of the States is the host of the Strong Start to Finish network. 

The Shift to Open Educational Resources (OER): A Step Toward Our Vision Of Equity-Centered Mathematics Education

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In just a few weeks, Carnegie Math Pathways will release our Quantway and Statway courses as Open Educational Resources (OER). This means that students and instructors will have free access to high-quality mathematics curricula proven to support students for success. It also means low-cost access to printed materials and the learning platform to enhance delivery of the curricula. Carnegie Math Pathways’ transition to open and affordable access marks a significant step in our commitment to create a more equitable system of mathematics education that empowers all students to succeed and advance toward their personal and professional goals. 

 

Impactful Courses With an Equity-Centered Design 

For more than a decade, Carnegie Math Pathways has been dedicated to improving outcomes and closing equity gaps in mathematics. Working alongside educators, we’ve helped shift the field to more inclusively see and value all learners and provide the support needed for them to succeed. Since their creation in 2011, Quantway and Statway course solutions have given institutions new mathematics options that provide meaningful and equitable paths for students to excel in math, graduate on time, and go on to achieve their career goals.  

With more than 100,000 students and more than 140 institutions served, the solutions have proven remarkably effective, with students consistently succeeding at 3 to 4 times the rate of their peers in traditional developmental math sequences and in half the time or less. These rates have held year after year across sex, race, and ethnicity, even as Pathways course enrollments have grown tenfold. 

 

Getting Closer to an Equity Vision for Math Teaching and Learning Through Open Educational Resources 

Math is an essential skill that benefits the lives and livelihoods of every learner. While the field has made important progress in adopting inclusive practices and pathways to support diverse learners in mathematics, equity gaps persist. 

For us, a more equitable system of math education would be one that 

  • ensures that all students have access to a high-quality mathematics curriculum that is relevant to their lives and propels them toward their academic and career goals, 
  • creates learning experiences that meet students where they are and allow for equitable ways for students to engage, and 
  • supports and empowers faculty to make curricular and instructional decisions that best meet their students’ needs. 

A move to OER gets us closer to our vision in the following ways:

It eliminates cost as a barrier to high-quality math education. Equity gaps can’t be addressed as long as high-quality education resources are accessible only to those who can afford them. By making our course curricula freely available and our print materials and learning platform available at much lower cost, we’re creating a way for more students both in the United States and globally to access and benefit from a proven curriculum. For institutions and instructors seeking opportunities to reduce student costs while maintaining a quality learning experience, Quantway and Statway OER provide them with tried and trusted, ready-made course solutions that remove the pressure to build a course from scratch, giving instructors the time and flexibility to focus on instruction and engage with their students.   

At LaGuardia Community College (LAGCC), where Statway pass rates consistently average 70% compared to traditional courses where fewer than half of students pass, having an OER option is key to equitably serving students with an already effective course solution. A math faculty member at LAGCC notes, “Making the high-quality Statway math curriculum openly available increases access to this proven pathway and removes financial anxiety for students enrolled in this course. And the downstream benefits are immense – higher graduation rates lead to higher incomes, better health, and generational uplift.”

Access to knowledge and education is priceless. The shift to OER enables us to live our ideals of ensuring that high quality proven curriculum and instructional materials are available to everyone.

It grants educators open access to an impactful approach that supports diverse learners. With the right set of supports, every student is capable of learning math. By shifting to an OER model, we open access for educators to use research-based curricula that have demonstrated impressive outcomes year after year, boosting student confidence in their math abilities and helping more students succeed in entry-level college math. 

Quantway and Statway are deliberately designed to engage and support learners who have previously struggled with math and to enable them to deeply understand and even love the subject. With relevant, contextualized curricula that are scaffolded to help students build and practice deepening their skills across concepts and targeted activities that address math anxiety and nurture a sense of belonging, the comprehensive curricula offer educators valuable tools to create a math learning environment that is safe and supportive for their students to grow as math learners. 

As a math faculty member from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee notes, using Quantway’s curriculum with its embedded student supports has benefited so many of their students and helped reduce equity gaps: “[With the adoption of Quantway College and​Corequisite], we’ve narrowed a 32 percentage point gap in success rates between Black and White students to just 5 points. Using Quantway Coreq has enabled us to give all students more equitable access to college math and a better chance at success in college, career, and beyond.”  

It gives instructors flexibility to meet their students’ needs. Oftentimes, curriculum materials are context agnostic and culturally biased. Yet, we know that when a student can relate to what they are learning, it can transform their experience in the classroom and with a subject. Through partnerships with tribal colleges and universities in the United States and the University of the Free State in South Africa, we’ve witnessed the impact of empowering instructors to adapt and innovate lesson contexts, assessments, and student supports to reflect their students’ lives, cultures, and communities. For Indigenous students who regularly experience a sense of alienation from what they read and see in their textbooks, to see themselves in culturally adapted Statway and Quantway lessons was notable, as a math instructor from the College of Menominee Nation reports: “[Tribal college] students know that they’re not represented in the textbooks, and they’ve known it all along. But when they see themselves represented, you can’t imagine what an impact that has.”

Giving instructors license to modify, mix, and build upon the curriculum creates opportunities to elevate new and different perspectives into the course, including those of traditionally marginalized communities or underrepresented scholarship that may better resonate with and reflect students’ backgrounds. And, as was noted above, when students feel seen, it has an impact on their engagement, sense of belonging, and motivation to persist in the course. 

 

Our Learning Has Led Us to This Point 

Working with educators for more than a decade to test, improve, and continue to innovate Quantway and Statway, we’ve learned that transforming math education to support all learners takes a holistic approach—one that values the potential of every student to succeed in math and that empowers instructors with the flexibility and resources to meet the needs of their students. Our transition to OER gives us a chance to broaden access to our impactful curricula and approach, supporting educational communities everywhere to bring meaningful math pathway options to more students.   

As we progress on our journey toward a more equitable system of mathematics education, we look forward to continuing to learn together how we can best support and serve students.  

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR TRANSITION TO OER

From Classroom to Workforce – Using Quantway to Prepare Students for Work and Beyond

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An innovative approach to help struggling students succeed

Learning loss impacted students and schools across the country, including Brooke Stewarts’. Stewart teaches mathematics within the alternative education program at Oak Creek High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

“Before COVID, nobody knew who the alternative education teachers were,” says Stewart. “And now, post-COVID, everybody knows us.” With the impacts of COVID on the K12 education system, many more high school students fell behind and educators have found themselves trying to get students caught up, filling learning gaps, and encouraging credit recovery to help students complete and advance beyond high school. Stewart notes that “because of this, alternative education has exploded.” 

Her school has long served students who are in need of credit recovery to continue on their education path. Yet, while credit recovery and course support helps some students return to, and complete traditional high schooling, it isn’t a solution for all students.

In 2020, she and a team of colleagues created an innovative competency-based diploma program designed specifically to meet the needs of students who have historically struggled in school. The program serves students in their junior year, who are not four-year college bound and are significantly lacking in credits to complete traditional high school. Stewart and her colleagues wanted to build something that would support this group of students to graduate with competitive skills and be ready to enter the workforce. “The goal is get them to be on a path of success rather than stuck in this cycle of failing classes, credit recovery, failing more classes, credit recovery.” 

Identifying the right math solution

The one-year program beginning in the second semester of a junior year, is focused on resumè building skills and preparing students for employment immediately after graduation. There is a work requirement; students participate in a shortened school day to accommodate their work schedule, and they have the opportunity to graduate one semester early based on successful completion of the program. With these incentives, Stewart and her colleagues, hope it will motivate students to persist and complete the program.

Critical to the programs’ success, though, was finding the right math course to support students on this path. For Stewart, it was necessary that the curriculum not only develop her students’ basic math skills, but that it connect the math to real world experiences that her students were going to need to know about. “I wanted this to be something where if they’re going into the trades, or if they’re going into any sort of technical degree, that they could use these skills, or even just [better understand and manage their] personal finances – how to make a budget, how to have a credit card.”

Stewart’s search led her to Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), a close partner of Oak Creek and located just down the street. There she learned about their use of Quantway Core for technical college students not requiring algebra for their field of study. The course appealed to her because of its highly relevant curriculum that focused on practical application of the math concepts and its collaborative learning approach. This seemed like the right option for her students.

Transforming mindsets on math and the future

Since Oak Creek’s competency program launched in 2021, Stewart has noticed a lot of positive changes in her Quantway students. In particular, she has seen dramatic shifts in students’ mindsets about math and their own math abilities. “I’ve noticed a lot of confidence boosts in my students. One student of mine told me she hated everything about math. And now, after going through this class, she saw the value in what we were doing. She was understanding the concepts and getting the big picture of why we need math. And she ended up doing awesome in the course.” 

These boosts are gratifying to Stewart, but even more meaningful is how this confidence has helped her students engage and persist in the course. Stewart sees how as her students build their math skills and collaboratively navigate the problem exercises in the curriculum they begin to connect how this matters for their lives and feel that what they are learning is worth their time and their effort. 

This program is having a profound impact on her students, and the transformation is motivating for Stewart. She enjoys being able to have conversations with her Quantway students about real world topics connected to the math they are learning. Their engagement and interest is also leading to changes in their attitude toward school as a whole and how they think about and plan for their future. While at the start of the program students may not have set goals for themselves, Stewart says this completely changes through the program, and when, two months before graduation, she asks students about their plans, she will now hear things like, “”Oh, I’m going to MATC. I’m going to study welding. And I’m starting on January 19th, and I’m going to do an apprenticeship in welding, and I’m going to get a job.”

For stories like this and to stay informed about Carnegie Math Pathways, sign up for our monthly newsletter, In Sum.

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Creating Culturally Responsive Math Pathways Together with Tribal Colleges & Universities (TCU)

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In 2017, Carnegie Math Pathways and several TCU formed a professional network with the shared goal of increasing student outcomes and college completion through culturally aligned mathematics learning and teaching that centers Native students and communities. 

Today, with over 3,500 TCU students served, we’ve made significant progress toward this goal. Our network of faculty have adapted the Pathways approach in meaningful ways to reflect and uplift their tribal communities and seen student retention and outcomes soar. TCU student success rates in Pathways courses have averaged 71% compared to 43% in the previous TCU developmental math programs or sequences, and students are more engaged, better connected with their peers, and showing enhanced confidence in their abilities as math learners.

A learning and teaching approach aligned with Indigenous values and practices 

Tribal Colleges have a mission to sustain and support the tribal culture, identities, and sovereignty of the tribal communities they serve. These unique institutions play a critical role in tribal educational sovereignty and nation building efforts by providing Native students access to education and services that are aligned with Indigenous values and ways of knowing and learning. 

The TCU-Carnegie Math Pathways network’s approach builds upon the Carnegie Math Pathways courses Statway and Quantway. Drawing on their institutional values around group learning and community-based values, TCU faculty have adapted the Pathways collaborative, active learning model as well as the embedded social emotional support designed to foster inclusion and belonging in important ways that reflect the Indigenous traditions and identities of the communities they serve

By shifting away from the direct instructional style commonly used in math classes, TCU instructors have been able to better align their instructional practice with their institutional missions and introduce a more culturally sustaining learning experience that better supports their students. As one Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College math instructor notes, “the pedagogy used in the Pathways completely changed how I teach. The cooperative and experiential learning in [Carnegie Math Pathways] reflects the learning-by-doing nature of traditional indigenous education.”  A math professor at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish college shares the impact for his Indigenous students: “The [Pathways] group activities enable the students to develop the spiritual qualities of patience, cooperation, friendship, compassion, responsibility, and love which are part of our college’s mission.”

Innovations and adaptations driven by TCU faculty

Ensuring the Pathways courses are aligned with the needs and missions of the TCU has been critical to their success. To achieve this, TCU educators have played a leading role in adapting the Quantway and Statway courses to make them relevant for Native students and create supports for TCU educators. Our network has:

  • designed new Quantway and Statway lesson contexts to reflect issues and themes of value to Native communities.
  • adapted the embedded Pathways social emotional supports and routines to incorporate local Native teachings and traditions that support collective engagement and productive mindsets.
  • explored and tested alternative mastery-focused assessment and grading approaches, and
  • formed an advisory committee of TCU educators who regularly meet and contribute insights and knowledge to guide our network activities.

The network provides an opportunity for educators to engage and exchange ideas with peers at similar institutions. These connections have proven extremely valuable, especially when exploring and developing culturally relevant resources and lessons to support Native students.

Math faculty at Red Lake Nation College noted, “I have made connections with other TCU math educators and progressively implemented improvements in teaching, especially in making math more relevant to TCU students.” At Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College, a math instructor shared, “Working with native instructors and faculty from other TCU has helped me understand the culture on my own campus and community. “

The approach is benefiting students

The results of this effort have been impressive. TCU that have adopted Pathways courses to replace a developmental-level or college-level course have increased their success rates by roughly 30 percentage points.

TCU that have used Pathways courses to shorten their developmental math sequence, replacing between two to four courses with a single Pathways course, have on average achieved success rates with Pathways that are almost twice that of their original course sequences. They’ve also reduced students’ time to completion by more than half. 

Just as important, TCU math faculty have reported positive impacts in their students’ mindset, including increased confidence in their math abilities and greater recognition of the value in learning mathematics, a greater sense of belonging in the math classroom and willingness to persist through challenging problems, and a greater commitment to the success of their peers.

Administrators see this program as a valuable part of their effort to improve student success. For example, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College’s VP for Student Services reports, “This program has been and is continuing to be one of the best instructional modes that our students have benefited from. Our math scores, completion rates, and retention rates have improved every semester.”

We look forward to embarking on the next phase of this collaboration beginning this year and to expanding our efforts to support TCU in creating meaningful math learning experiences that are culturally responsive and sustaining for their communities.

Moving Mathematical Mountains: A Decade of Educator-Led Change to Make Math a Gateway to Success for All Students

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For far too long and for far too many, particularly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students, and students impacted by poverty, the traditional developmental math system has been a barrier to college completion, perpetuating inequalities in degree attainment and income. Since 2010, Carnegie Math Pathways has been committed to transforming this system of math teaching and learning in order to make math a gateway to success for ALL students.

In our latest Carnegie Math Pathways report, Moving Mathematical Mountains: A Decade of Educator-Led Change to Make Math a Gateway to Success for All Students, we show that changing the status-quo approach to math education is not only possible, but imperative to helping students not just pass college math but thrive academically, professionally, and personally. 

Working alongside educators for over a decade we’ve helped instructors, administrators, and institutions implement more equitable math learning by:

  • introducing math pathways aligned with majors, relevant to students’ lives, and to 21st century career paths;
  • engaging all students directly in college-level math, with the supports they need to be successful;
  • creating an active, collaborative learning experience centered on relatable and meaningful contexts;
  • attending to the needs of the whole learner through embedded social emotional learning supports that address key non-cognitive factors, such as growth mindset and belonging; and
  • supporting faculty and administrative leaders in transforming the student experience through rich professional learning and peer support. 

Moving Mathematical Mountains highlights the power of an educator-driven network and the impact of our community’s efforts through 10 years of outcome data, as well as student, faculty, and institutional feature stories. It synthesizes our learnings about what it takes to create and sustain equitable math reform and sets the stage for the exciting possibilities for the decade ahead. It shows us the potential of making lasting and impactful change in the service of students, something we as a field can learn from and continue to advance collectively to ensure more equitable learning and success in mathematics. 

READ THE REPORT

 

What Carnegie Math Pathways Research is Revealing About Scaling Reform Successfully

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Too often, education initiatives that can drastically improve student outcomes succeed in a contained setting but fail to achieve those same results at scale. A study by Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd is examining what conditions and support are needed for institutional leaders to implement promising innovations at scale effectively and sustainably.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and launched in 2018, the six-year Scaling Up through Networked Improvement (SUNI) project is providing leadership coaching to teams in two cohorts of two institutions to scale Carnegie Math Pathways course programs. The resulting evidence from the cases in the project is intended to shed light on effective approaches to implementing reform and change management at higher education institutions more broadly.

Early findings from this study have revealed several factors critical to enacting large-scale change effectively. These findings have practical value to college administrators seeking to scale proven solutions to bolster student success.

Rally support and buy-in from all stakeholder groups to ensure strong implementation.

Implementing reform at scale is more likely to happen when key decision-makers in multiple departments of the campus organization agree that the change is a worthy investment of effort and resources. For institutions participating in the SUNI study, it was clear that significant changes were needed to increase student success rates in developmental math, where many students’ education journeys were being derailed. Learn your department’s pain points and wishlists to develop ambitious but realistic goals that everyone can rally behind. 

Develop an implementation plan that defines and guides the scaling effort and helps minimize disruption amid leadership turnover.

Documenting shared goals, roles, and responsibilities can help leadership teams understand the scope of the work to be done, how it will get done, and by when. Using an implementation planning tool that project coaches introduced to the teams, institutions developed a guide to define and help steer the implementation of their reform. Inspired by the A3 management process developed by Toyota, this tool helps leaders develop shared goals, measures of success, and a means to communicate those goals and progress towards meeting them.

Since each leadership team created its implementation and scaling guide, the buy-in for the initiative was high. During times of change, such as when leaders transitioned to new positions, this guide has given new leaders a road map of the project, allowing them to quickly orient and keep the initiative on track. 

Nurture authentic engagement among your team with strong relationships and mutual trust.

Because scaling reform requires buy-in, it’s perhaps not surprising that fostering relationships built on trust and mutual respect is a key aspect of effective scaling. As we saw at one institution, when a key administrative leader consistently honored the contributions and positive impact of his team, it made them more willing and trusting participants in the reforms. Additionally, open and honest communication about the challenges and barriers that they faced along the way, and a willingness to consult with and accept input from colleagues, also helped strengthen support for the scaling effort. Before and throughout undertaking reform, evaluate relationships among your team and explore the resources available to strengthen them, such as professional development and coaching for leadership on team-building.

Ensure quality of communication and coordination between departments to maintain effective implementation.

Quality communication that supports transparency and coordination across stakeholders is essential to any reform endeavor. Early in the study, leaders at one institution discovered they were struggling with a lack of clarity about their roles and responsibilities for their reform initiatives, which led to unclear expectations. Through coaching and professional development facilitated by the project, these leaders identified ways to more concretely organize and communicate their needs, roles, and expectations to fulfill their program goals. As you consider embarking on reforms, evaluate the quality of communication among and between departments. What channels are they using, and are these channels effective at keeping your team(s) informed? What steps can be taken to improve the effectiveness of communication and the quality of coordination?

Continuously improve processes to sustain reform efforts.

With goals, challenges, and potential solutions subject to change quickly and at any moment, it’s critical to practice continuous improvement to sustain reform. When conditions that impact reform arise, recalibrating with colleagues is crucial not just for delivering the best possible outcome for students, but for keeping teams engaged, proactive, and joyful in their work of serving students. Continuous improvement means the regular evaluation and reevaluation of the considerations described above—maintaining buy-in, refining the implementation plan, nurturing strong relationships, and ensuring effective communication. Build in time to regularly monitor and assess what’s working and what isn’t so that the right improvements can be made at the right time.

In addition to these factors, the research reveals that engaging in coaching and networked learning (collaborative professional learning with peers), and extending these supports to entire leadership teams, is linked to the successful scaling of Carnegie Math Pathways programs. These insights remind organizational leaders that trust, communication, and shared goals are vital for sustaining large-scale reforms and building leadership capacity.

Throughout the next and final year of the study, participating leadership teams will continue to receive coaching and professional development support as they scale their Pathways programs. At the end of the study in 2023, the research team will publish the results to support institutional leaders in scaling ambitious reforms that can drastically improve student outcomes. 

To learn more about our findings to date, join our session at the 2022 NISOD International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, In Sum, to stay informed about this work.

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Increasing Student Success with Corequisite Solutions

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Carnegie Math Pathways Quantway and Statway corequisite solutions are helping students succeed in gateway mathematics at 3-4 times the rate of the traditional math sequence, and in a fraction of the time—saving students time and money on their educational path.

Since their launch in 2017, Quantway and Statway corequisites have provided students with targeted, just-in-time supports to successfully complete college-level math in a single term while offering institutions the flexibility to implement in a variety of models.

Read the impact brief for an overview of our corequisite course design and the results to date.

Read the brief

Transforming Student Learning with Online Course Solutions

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Carnegie Math Pathways Quantway and Statway online course solutions are changing the way students experience learning math remotely.

Since their launch in 2019, Quantway and Statway online courses have served over 5,000 students at 50 institutions. In that time, they’ve demonstrated the same high success rates as in-person Quantway and Statway courses, even as implementation scaled in the fall of 2020.

Learn about our approach to online learning and the results so far in our latest impact brief.

Read the brief

Q&A with Michelle Brock: The Importance of Social-Emotional Supports in Math Classrooms

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Pictured above: Michelle Brock and a banner hanging in her home office, visible during Zoom sessions with her students.

Teaching math has traditionally been about just that—teaching math. But as Michelle Brock, Carnegie Math Pathways Faculty Mentor and math faculty at American River College, notes, addressing non-cognitive aspects of learning can help math educators build a supportive environment in their classrooms that both reduces students’ anxiety and brings out their strengths.

Brock is part of the Pathways’ Productive Persistence Research and Development team, a group that develops and continuously refines the social-emotional support package the Pathways calls Productive Persistence. We spoke with her about the difference these kinds of supports can make for student success.

How has incorporating social-emotional supports into your instruction affected your students’ self-perception as math learners and doers?
It’s hard to say without actually talking to them how their perception changed but I can say how it played out in the classroom. What I’ve seen the most is the transition from students seeing my class as something they needed to be able to graduate—and not necessarily having faith that they could do it—to being able to redefine how they interpret success. I’ve seen students who would have success in math and still not interpret that as being successful. So being able to see that transition from students becoming resistant or tentative learners to becoming more willing to take risks in the class and more willing to risk not having the perfect answer, has been rewarding. I also think that was evident in the way students would realize that it’s okay to ask for help.

How do you know what sort of social-emotional interventions to use, and when, to best support your math students?
It would be lovely if you could just apply one thing to a class and it would work for everybody, but we’re all human. For me, I listen to how students are speaking about themselves as learners. When they speak to me about their troubles, I listen to the things that they say, or listen to how they speak about themselves in their groups, like, “You all are smarter than me,” “I don’t think as fast as you do.” We’re trained to think that learning looks one way. Some people only have to see something once and they can do it. That’s not me, and I don’t detract from that fact. I think demystifying that for students is important, so listening to how my students talk about themselves affects how I support them.

It sounds like that’s a really good strategy for you. Are there any other strategies you’ve found to be effective in helping your students feel like they belong in your class?
I think also watching other patterns in behavior that may not be so vocal, like attendance. In the past, I’ve heard from students that their anxiety got so high and they were so nervous that they couldn’t get to my class. So that takes a different kind of approach to be able to get them in the door. In the past, it might’ve been easy to classify these students as disinterested. Certainly, there are going to be cases in which people don’t perform because they aren’t interested, but I don’t think that’s the overwhelming narrative. I think there are other things in play that affect how students see themselves and how they perform. We need to take the time to acknowledge that we’re teaching human beings.

Yeah, for sure. It can be difficult sometimes, though, to get in touch with students who have been absent for a while. Have you found that to be the case, and if so, how did you overcome that?
I used to email when we were in-person. But what I learned when we went remote was that email may not be the best way. So, I’d watch for a response and if I don’t get one, I’d go to the phone. If I wasn’t hearing from them, I started calling them. I have yet to experience somebody say, “Why did you just call me?” It’s all been, “Wow, I’ve never had a teacher call me, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.” And so, just trying to figure out how to connect wherever I can. I also use a texting app on my phone (Remind) to reach out to both individual students and the whole class by text.

Suppose that beginning tomorrow, you had to teach your current math courses without any attention to the social-emotional wellbeing of your students. You’re strictly teaching math. What do you think your students would lose?
Everything. Seriously, everything. I think it’s easy for a student to fall off and not bring their full selves if we don’t even take the time to see them as their full selves, if we don’t take the time to reach out and understand if there are any barriers that we can remove from our space. We can help. This has always been something that has been in my sights since I’ve been teaching. I started tutoring when I was a senior in high school and math anxiety was always kind of high. Students had lots of stuff about math anxiety, but that still didn’t really get at the meat of what’s going on. It’s a piece of it, and I think that’s what drew me to the work around Productive Persistence, was getting a chance to name something that I’ve always felt in this space.

You say it’s a piece of it. What is that bigger thing that it’s a piece of, do you think?
I just think it’s just a bigger piece of just the whole psychology of humans. That anxiety comes from other things that are in play that we’re not always paying attention to. It’s those kinds of things that we, as math educators, haven’t paid a lot of attention to.

How would you say you measure the social-emotional wellbeing of your students?
I think from the surface and watching their participation gives me some clue, but the best way I’ve been able to measure it is through our Productive Persistence surveys (surveys intentionally built into each Pathways course that measure non-cognitive indicators important to student success at the start of the course and their change over time.). Generally, I judge that somebody is doing okay if they’re engaged and participating and they’re reaching out for help.

How has training and support from Carnegie Math Pathways helped you effectively apply social-emotional support in your courses?
It gave me access to other people who were working on the same kinds of things that I could roll questions back and forth with. And it created the space for me to really tap into my learner self. I’ve always learned something new every day I’ve been teaching, but this actually made me sit in my classroom and purposely put on my learner hat. That has helped me be able to recognize more quickly when students maybe needed a different kind of nudge.

It’s also been helpful to talk with people who are going through the same struggles with their students and realizing that it didn’t matter whether you were here in Sacramento—or New York or Georgia or Ohio—we’re all dealing with similar challenges. Being a part of this community is a chance to really get out of the silo of teaching. It just took the individualistic aspect out of teaching and made it more community-based.

Learn more about Productive Persistence

Q&A with Andre Freeman: How to Establish and Maintain Connections in Your Quantway or Statway Virtual Course

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Andre Freeman is a professor of mathematics at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut and a Faculty Mentor in the Carnegie Math Pathways Network. As an experienced Statway College Virtual instructor and course designer, we asked him for advice on how faculty can establish and maintain connection with students remotely, and for general best practices for online instruction. Here is some of what he shared:

What best practices would you share with someone teaching Quantway or Statway for the first time?

I think doing a robust, thorough orientation is really important and also getting information on when students can meet for collaboration sessions with other students. Getting that information about a week before the semester begins is critically important (because) building those collaboration groups quicker, I think, will enable a smoother launch for students.

Then in week one, sitting in on collaboration sessions and being there as a support if not for the entire hour, but maybe for the first half an hour. I think really having a strong instructor presence in week one makes a big difference and can lead to the groups working efficiently and effectively for much of the term.

The other thing that I would say is ensuring that the collaboration groups are working well by reaching out to students individually to just check in on how things are going.

What strategies helped you support student retention during your Statway College Virtual course?

Email was huge. I would email students and ask them how they were doing, (if they had any) questions, concerns. Just reaching out.

Unfortunately, a lot of students dropped the class after COVID and I would reach out and try to get them to continue. And it wasn’t just in this course, but in all of my classes at Capital. Our campus was hit pretty hard due to the disruption.

For those that did receive additional flexibility and support, I tried to use my office hours to connect with students and tried to meet on Zoom. Those who did take advantage of that expressed their appreciation and said that that made a big difference.

Pathways Pointer: Pathways educators have learned a lot from their spring 2020 experience with our virtual courses, particularly amid the Covid-19 outbreak, and have helpful tips to share. Register for our free, two-part mini-webinar series for community-building and general instructional strategies that can help support student retention.

How did you initially introduce the virtual Collaboration sessions to your students?

The class orientation was a really important way of introducing the entire course, including the collaboration structure and the requirements for collaborations. In addition to that, I sent out a lot of emails that described that requirement. I emphasized the benefits to students of studying in groups and also emphasized how Carnegie Math Pathways has shown that students in many situations learned better when studying with other students and learning from other students’ perspectives. I really used those two messages to motivate students and to understand why studying mathematics in a collaborative fashion is important and something that they should be open-minded about doing.

Pathways Pointer: “Collaboration sessions” refer to the student group meetings, usually independent of an instructor, held via built-in Zoom rooms in Quantway and Statway Virtual. Holding a full-class orientation at the start of the term is a helpful way to introduce the instructor, students, and the features and structure of the course.

This course allows students to work synchronously via Zoom video conferencing independent of an instructor. How do you stay connected with your students when they meet without you?

I established connection with students by orienting them through a Zoom session (at the start of the term) which allows students to meet me, for me to introduce the course and structure, and to introduce the requirements. I also had the ability to pop in on students’ collaboration sessions. I was then able to stay connected with students through frequent video communication. I would email, post videos of (my feedback), and hold office hours. I found that through constant communication, I was connected with students.