Research Topic Background

My project is the start of my dissertation which is an auto-ethnographic study examining how my lived experiences as a mathematics educator shape my pedagogical approaches to equity and access in the classroom, particularly when working with students retaking Algebra 1. These students—many of whom have been under-served by traditional mathematics instruction—represent a population that challenges me to constantly interrogate my own assumptions about what it means to teach mathematics well and for whom our current systems work.

My research emerges from a career trajectory that moved from the "hard sciences" through K-12 teaching into graduate study, a journey that fundamentally shifted my epistemological stance from primarily quantitative to increasingly qualitative ways of knowing. This evolution itself became a puzzle worth examining: how do my formative experiences as both a student and teacher influence the pedagogical choices I make today? When I design learning experiences for students who have historically struggled in mathematics, which parts of my past am I drawing from, and which am I actively working against?

To explore these questions, I developed a web-based Dissertation Tracker that serves as both research tool and data source. The tracker captures three interconnected strands of my experience: formative memories with technology, mathematics, and education spanning my entire career; detailed documentation of my pedagogical decision-making process when designing learning tools; and explicit connections I notice between past experiences and present practice. This approach—what I think of as "reflection through making"—positions the act of systematic documentation as the research itself.

This study employs a mixed methods approach that integrates the depth of auto-ethnographic inquiry with systematic data analysis. Following my understanding that quantitative methods describe WHAT is happening while qualitative methods explain WHY, I'm treating my tracker entries as both narrative data and quantifiable phenomena. The quantitative strand involves systematic coding and pattern analysis across my documented entries—tracking frequencies of themes, temporal patterns in my reflections, and categorical relationships between past experiences and present pedagogical choices. The qualitative strand provides the interpretive depth necessary to understand what these patterns mean, exploring the lived experience behind the data points through thick description and reflexive analysis. These strands integrate throughout the research process: the act of logging entries generates both types of data simultaneously, and analysis moves iteratively between identifying patterns (what themes recur across my teaching career?) and interpreting meaning (why do certain memories surface when I'm designing for student agency?). The goal is not to generalize my experience to other educators, but to deeply understand how one teacher's biography shapes their present practice in ways that might illuminate broader questions about who gets to do mathematics and how we might better serve students whom traditional approaches have failed.