And a note about differences we did NOT see. No difference in gender, race, or grad school plans. Also, not a single person mentioned being told to repeat content (social capital).

But who engages content repetition? It tended to be students from middle- and upper-middle class families, with parents who have college degrees. Of the 23 “repeaters” (out of 53), only one was a first-generation college student. The other 6 first gen students were novices.

Novices were in the same courses, thus they were graded (on a curve) against students who had already seen the material. Many of them came away discouraged, thinking they weren’t as “naturally” good at math as their peers.

“Novices” are those who are taking the math content for the first time. You can see that students were usually either completely new to the content or had covered 100% of the content prior to taking their first course.

We were struck by how many students took their first math course as repetition of coursework they took before college. We call them “Repeaters.” 45% of the math-takers took their first math course as repetition.

Methods tweet: We conducted quarterly interviews with students to understand their decision-making, course experiences, and educational trajectories. 52 of those students took an introductory math class in the fall or winter quarter of their first year. pathwayslab.stanford.edu/pro…

The paper focuses on how students choose their first math class in college, largely because introductory math is important in STEM (and STEM-adjacent) pathways. Spoiler: this is about how inequality is maintained through the mechanism of course choice journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.…

The day has arrived! Our article has been published online @SocEducation (coauthors Mitchell Stevens @mitchellatedf and Philip Hernandez @Learn_with_Phil ). No time to read? A 🧵 instead.

Just making it official – I’ll be on the job market this year! Come scoop up this Sociology of Education PhD Candidate before it’s too late! MoniqueHarrison.com