“I Saw a Change”: Enhancing Classroom Equity through Student-Faculty Pedagogical Partnership

Persistent inequities in access to and experiences of learning in postsecondary education have been well documented. In line with efforts to redress these inequities and develop more just institutions, this study explores the potential for pedagogical partnerships in which students and faculty collaborate on teaching and learning initiatives to contribute to classroom equity. We investigate this issue by drawing on qualitative interviews with students who have participated in extracurricular pedagogical partnership programs in institutions in Canada and the United States, and who identify as members of marginalized groups (e.g., racialized students, 2SLGBTQ+ students, students from religious minorities, disabled students). While much existing research on equity and student-faculty partnership primarily focuses on the outcomes of partnership for participating students, we instead investigate students’ perceptions of the extent to which their partnership efforts contributed to wider impacts—such as developments in faculty thinking and teaching practice and student experiences in the classroom. We also consider challenges students noted connected to power imbalances and faculty resistance, which influence partnership’s capacity to contribute to equity and raise important considerations for those interested in partnership practice.

Classroom Equity and the Role of a Teacher Leader

Classrooms are filled with students from multiple backgrounds. Teachers see students of different races, genders, and socioeconomic statuses. Providing the best education for these students is a necessity to produce productive members of society. To do so, teachers must work toward classroom equity. The research collected in this chapter can help teachers move toward an equitable classroom environment. There are many factors that need to be considered in creating equity. Once these factors are contemplated, the ability to change can be easily instituted. Teacher leaders have the potential to initiate change, but there are circumstances within the school that can hinder or support this change. Once schools meet the necessary criteria to create change, the role of teacher leaders is imperative in making equitable classrooms a reality.

The Power of Choice

Infusing mathematics lessons with opportunities for students to make instructional choices is a teacher strategy to differentiate instruction toward achieving classroom equity.

Student Representations at the Center: Promoting Classroom Equity

The NCTM's Standards (2000) suggest that a representation is not only a product (a picture, a graph, a number, or a symbolic expression) but also a process, a vehicle for developing an understanding of a mathematical concept and communicating about mathematics. To serve as a vehicle in learning and communication, however, a representation must be personally relevant and meaningful to a student. Therefore, when choosing a representation to explore with a group of students or when reviewing student work, we ought to consider everything that students bring to the classroom. Even at a young age, students come to school with their own, often culturally influenced, valid representations (Lave 1998). Because those representations have been crafted, interpreted, and modified by the students themselves, they become vital to classroom instruction. To dismiss what students bring naturally to the classroom reduces mathematics to a one-way transaction between teacher as expert and student as novice, confirming the notion that a student's own thinking and all that he or she brings to mathematics is marginal at best. By relocating student-generated representations to the center of the instruction, the nature of how students experience mathematics changes dramatically. It reconsiders mathematics as a vibrant dialogue among different but equally valued thinkers. This deliberate approach to the teaching of mathematics, we believe, becomes vital if we are serious about creating greater equity for our students.