“They’re just students. There’s no clear distinction”: A critical discourse analysis of color-evasive, gender-neutral faculty discourses in undergraduate calculus instruction

ABSTRACT

Background

Calculus instruction is underexamined as a source of racialized and gendered inequity in higher education, despite research that documents minoritized students’ marginalizing experiences in undergraduate mathematics classes. This study fills this research gap by investigating mathematics faculty’s perceptions of the significance of race and gender to calculus instruction at a large, public, historically white research university.

Methods

Theories of colorblind racism and dysconsciousness guided a critical discourse analysis of seven undergraduate calculus faculty’s perceptions of instructional events.

Findings

Our analysis revealed two dominant discourses: (i) Race and gender are insignificant social markers in undergraduate calculus; and (ii) Instructional events can be objectively deemed race- and gender-neutral. We illustrate how calculus faculty varyingly engaged these colorblind discourses as well as discourses that challenged such conceptions of instruction. We also highlight how faculty dysconsciousness in reports of instructional practices reflect potential operationalization of dominant discourses that reinforce colorblind racism.

Contribution

With limited research on faculty perspectives on racial equity in mathematics, our study documents how color-evasive, gender-neutral discourses among mathematics faculty shape orientations to instruction that reinforce the gatekeeping role of calculus in STEM higher education. Implications are provided for race- and gender-conscious undergraduate mathematics instruction and faculty development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2022.2073233

Notes

1. We use both descriptors, colorblind and color-evasive, throughout the paper to honor the genealogy of theorizing racial ideologies while recognizing the distinction between them. Namely, we use colorblind when referring to the type of racism and broad ideology, and we use color-evasive for describing discourses that avoid recognizing race.

2. The asterisk in Latin* considers fluidity in gender identities among Latin American people. Latin* responds to (mis)use of Latinx, a term reserved for Latin American gender-nonconforming peoples (Salinas & Lozano, 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSF [DUE-IUSE 1711553,DUE-IUSE 1711712].