Louise Hay Minisymposium at the Joint Mathematics Meetings

The minisymposium consisted of talks by winners of the Association for Women in Mathematics Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education and a panel, “The Mathematical Education of Teachers and the Common Core” at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans.

Background. The Common Core Standards Initiative of the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers is an unprecedented cooperative effort of 49 states to work collectively to develop and adopt a strong set of common core standards for K–12 mathematics. This initiative was a focus of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences Forum in October 2009 and October 2010 (more information, including slides is here). Over 40 states have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

These standards will require a sustained effort to implement, and a key component in the implementation will be the mathematical education of teachers. The purpose of the minisymposium was to bring together a group of distinguished mathematics education researchers and mathematicians involved in teacher education to discuss the education of teachers in light of the CCSS.

Statistics on women in STEM

Note: A brief annotated list of reputable sources of statistics about women and girls in mathematics and other scientific disciplines is here. Selected statistics (with sources) are here.

Ceci and Williams’s February 8, 2011 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says:

Since 1970, women have made dramatic gains in science. . . . In the most math-intensive fields, however, women’s growth has been less pronounced (2–4). Among the top 100 US universities, only 8.8–15.8% of tenure-track positions in many math-intensive fields (combined across ranks) are held by women, and female full professors number ≤ 10%. (SI Text, S1)

The statement in the second sentence doesn’t correspond to the SI text, which says:

Percentages of women hired on tenure track were as follows: chemistry, 21.2%; mathematics, 26.8%; computer science, 20.0%; physics, 16.8%; chemical engineering, 24.2%; civil engineering, 24.7%; electrical engineering, 15.5%; and mechanical engineering, 18.0%.