In spring and summer 2024, Carnegie Math Pathways embarked on the development of an updated student supports framework to aid instructors in fostering a positive and productive learning community for their students. The new framework, known as Creating Inclusive, Resilient Communities of Learning or CIRCL for short, builds off the Productive Persistence package originally integrated within Carnegie Math Pathways’ Quantway and Statway course solutions. CIRCL incorporates important changes making it relevant and accessible to more classroom contexts using Quantway and Statway as well as those teaching other subjects.
CIRCL reflects the latest research and best practices in the fields of social psychology, math education, and learning sciences, especially with respect to culture and identity in mathematics. The practices and routines are specifically designed to give instructors:
- more flexibility to select and use the activities that make sense for your context;
- guidance to locally adapt the activities to align with your unique student community;
- revised versions of the essential activities from the Productive Persistence package, and
- a fresh framework for co-creating inclusive and engaging learning environments with your students.
Tribal college and university (TCU) educators using Quantway and Statway have been instrumental in pushing Carnegie Math Pathways to rethink and revise the Productive Persistence supports through their own adaptations of the routines and activities to meet the needs of TCU values and missions and reflect their students’ cultures. This shaped the decision to utilize a co-development process to re-envision these supports.
To create this updated package, Carnegie Math Pathways worked with experts in STEM education and culturally responsive education to conduct a literature review of the current research and engaged collaboratively with tribal college students and instructors who have participated in Quantway and/or Statway to gather feedback and codesign the updated activities. By the end of this process, both TCUs instructors and students saw the new framework changes as valuable improvements that strengthened the package of supports and its use in diverse settings.
Haley McNamara, lead researcher for Productive Persistence at WestEd, notes, “We have been learning and codesigning with Carnegie Math Pathways’ faculty and students for over a decade. The work with the TCUs in particular has been central to making this package more accessible and relevant to more students and classrooms, setting us up for the OER release. I’m excited that we’re able to share this learning as an open resource and help many more students in Quantway and Statway courses and beyond.”
The new CIRCL package will be openly available as a stand alone resource beginning this November 1st. It will continue to support instructors implementing Quantway and Statway courses, yet the resource can now also be accessible to and used and adapted by instructors in other courses and programs. To learn more, sign up for our December orientation webinar for an overview of the new resource, and look out for our spring training series in which we’ll provide deeper divers into each driver at key points during the term.
