Introduction

AMTE (2015) defined equity as “access to high-quality learning experiences; inclusion for all learners, mathematics educators, and mathematics teacher educators; and respectful and fair engagement with others.” Building on this definition, in 2022, AMTE published a Statement on Equitable and Inclusive Mathematics Teaching and Learning, stating

“it is essential that teachers recognize and respect all students–including those that have been historically marginalized and minoritized based on factors such as race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, religion, immigration status, etc.–in ways that allow them to bring their full selves into the learning space.” (AMTE, 2022)

These statements are similar to and in support of the increasing number of mathematics education researchers, organizations, and policy statements in recent years that have called for culturally responsive curricula to increase equitable access to explore, understand, and respond to social injustices, and foster students’ positive mathematical identities through broadening the purposes of learning mathematics (e.g., Berry et al., 2020; D’Ambrosio, 2017; Leonard et al., 2010; Nasir, 2002; Nasir & Cobb, 2002; NCTM 2018, 2020a, 2020b; TODOS, 2020). These written documents align with what many mathematics educators have shared through conference presentations.

As the AMTE Equity Committee, we “promote awareness, understanding, and sustained attention to equity in mathematics teacher education to ensure that it is part of the work of all MTEs” (AMTE website). Previously, the equity committee has conducted two surveys to understand how AMTE members conceptualize equity (Suazo-Flores et al., 2020). Additionally, resources were cultivated to spread awareness of equity (AMTE Website). Building on this work, we sought to understand how mathematics teacher educators engage in work for equity. We conducted a longitudinal analysis of the past five years of presentations at the AMTE Annual Conference to understand and inform members about the aspects of equity and social justice research that is going on in our field.

Methods

We examined accepted AMTE Annual Conference sessions from 2019-2023 (N=1355 total presentations) to answer the following questions: (1) What has been the equity focus of AMTE Annual Conference presentations over the past five years?, and (2) How can these findings inform future conferences and help make the AMTE conference more inclusive? The committee used publicly available data from conference program books shared on the AMTE website. The data consisted of presentation year, session titles, descriptions, and strands. A filtering process was then used to compile an initial list of equity-related sessions. This process included all sessions submitted to the Equity and Social Justice strand and any sessions that contained an equity-related word (i.e., justice, identity, diversity, etc.) in the title or description. This resulted in an initial list of N = 508 sessions (Table 1).

Thereafter, an open coding process was used to analyze the connections to equity, which allowed us to explore and find patterns within the data. After we had a consensus on coding from all five members of the equity committee for N=60 sessions and a list of multiple categories based on a random sample of the sessions, two members of the committee coded each of the remaining sessions. Table 2 shares three examples from the initial coding. From this process, 328 sessions were categorized as being equity-focused based on their titles and descriptions and also resulted in new categories emerging.

Following the creation of multiple different categories, we recategorized to form the bolded subcategories described in Table 3. We recognize that multiple equity and social justice topics can belong in the subcategories, the committee grouped and collapsed codes based on our own expertise and research, such as that from Learning for Justice topics as well as codes that emerged through the coding process. In the next section we will share results from this analysis.

Results

The first category we looked at was the type of research, and we coded the data within 4 subcategories - empirical/report of study, not-specified or informational session, practitioner/action research, and theoretical. Figure 1 shares the results, which show that for just over one-half of the sessions, we were unable to determine what type of study was being reported on. For the remaining sessions, 29% described empirical/report of study, 14% described practitioner or action research, and 3% were theoretical.

Figure 1

Results for Type of Research

Figure 2

Results for Equity and Social Justice Focus

The next category is the Equity and Social Justice focus within the sessions (Figure 2). Some key findings indicate the dearth of presentations relating to inclusion, a topic which had very few presentations across the years examined and no presentations in 2023. In contrast to this, many sessions focused on equitable mathematics practices. While these practices are key to the work that many scholars in the field engage in, we also want to encourage our colleagues to submit presentations relating to other topics.

The third category we analyzed described the research participants for the study (Figure 3). The results from this analysis showed that consistently the majority of research participants were prospective teachers. In 2023 we also saw the emergence of a new sub-category - mathematics faculty who teach non-math ed mathematical content courses. In the case where research participants were not identified, this could either be because it was a theoretical presentation or because they were not specified by the presenters in their description. This analysis also revealed that while there has been a steady increase, there are still not many equity presentations relating to K-12 student participants. A further analysis revealed that there were almost no sessions related to equity and equitable instruction in early childhood. Similarly, there were not many presentations where school administrators, leaders, coaches, and community partners were research participants.

Figure 3

Results for Research Participants

The last category we explored was the focus of the mathematical content within each session. For this, we found that of the 326 sessions, 313 did not specify or discuss mathematical content connections. As a committee, when we further discussed this finding, we determined that some of these presentations may have been about mathematics methods courses where pedagogy was in the foreground or theoretical presentations where frameworks and theories in connection to mathematics were a bigger focus of the presentation. In addition to this, as a field, we have been calling into question what it means to learn and do mathematics, which goes beyond just the connections to domains and standards. If we had more information than just the titles and the 40-word descriptions we feel confident that our colleagues are engaging in important work that connects equity to doing, teaching, and learning mathematics.

Concluding Thoughts

After coding over 500 session descriptions, the committee noticed that they were often vague and nebulous, in fact, a large number of session descriptions could not be coded. These results, in addition to what we shared in the previous section, encouraged us to reach out to the AMTE Board as well as the Conference Committee with some recommendations, some of which were accepted and put into implementation for the 2025 Annual Conference.

These recommendations included increasing the word count for descriptions from 40 to 100 which is also consistent with those required for proposals submitted to NCTM, NCSM, and PMENA. Additionally we believe increasing the word count will allow for much richer descriptions of the work being done and provide conference attendees with a better picture of what to expect at each session. Another recommendation was to provide members with additional guidance in writing presentation descriptions (Figure 5), which could allow for more mathematics teacher educators (who may be newer to the field or may not be in traditional research roles) such as graduate students, supervisors, district coaches, administrators, clinical faculty, etc. to submit successful proposals. A third recommendation focused on AMTE’s initiative to increase participation from non-university MTEs. The Equity Committee recommended adding language to the Call for Proposals to broaden the definition of mathematics teacher educators. In addition to getting further clarity about the sessions being presented, we hope these recommendations will also make the organization and conference space more equitable for all members.

Figure 4

Guidance for writing a session description

Note. 2025 AMTE Annual Conference Call for Proposals

In general, through our analysis of equity and social justice-focused sessions the results show there are several critical areas that have not been the focus of AMTE sessions. These results provide an opportunity for the organization to uplift the voices of colleagues who are engaging in different and innovative work that has not been as centered at AMTE conferences and/or provide guidance to the field on areas of missing research and practice.

References

Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. (n.d.). Equity Committee. https://amte.net/content/equity-committee-0

Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE). (2015). Equity in mathematics teacher education [Position Statement].

Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE). (2022). AMTE Statement on Equitable and Inclusive Mathematics Teaching and Learning.

Berry, III, R. Q., Conway, B. M., Lawler, B., & Staley, J. W. (2020). High school mathematics lessons to explore, understand, and respond to social injustice. Corwin.

D’Ambrosio, U. (2017). Ethnomathematics and the pursuit of peace and social justice. Digital Thematic Education, 19(3), 653-666.

Learning for Justice (n.d.). A Framework for anti-bias education. https://www.learningforjustice.org/frameworks/social-justice-standards

Leonard, J., Brooks, W., Barnes-Johnson, J., & Berry, R. Q. (2010). The nuances and complexities of teaching mathematics for cultural relevance and social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3), 261-270.

Nasir, N. S. (2002). Identity, goals, and learning: Mathematics in cultural practice. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 4(2), 213-247.

Nasir, N. S., & Cobb, P. (2002). Diversity, equity, and mathematical learning. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 4(2), 91-102.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (2018). Catalyzing change in high school mathematics: Initiating critical conversations. Reston, VA: NCTM.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (2020a). Catalyzing change in early childhood and elementary mathematics: Initiating critical conversations. Reston, VA: NCTM.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (2020b). Catalyzing change in middle school mathematics: Initiating critical conversations. Reston, VA: NCTM.

Suazo-Flores, E., Stoehr, K., & Fernandes, A. (2020). Mathematics teacher educators’ conceptualizations of equity. AMTE Connections. https://amte.net/connections/2020/11/mathematics-teacher-educators%E2%80...

TODOS: Mathematics for All (TODOS). (2020). The mo(ve)ment to prioritize antiracist mathematics: Planning for this and every school year [Position Statement]. https://www.todos-math.org/assets/The%20Movement%20to%20Prioritize%20Antiracist%20Mathematics%20Ed%20by%20TODOS%20June%202020.edited.pdf