Equity in Teaching Collegiate Mathematics: The Possible Role of Embodied Cognition

The four pillars of inquiry-based based mathematics education are (1) students should have opportunities to engage deeply with meaningful mathematical tasks, (2) students should have opportunities to collaboratively process mathematical ideas, (3) instructors should inquire into student thinking, and (4) instructors should foster equity in their design and facilitation choices (Laursen & Rasmussen, 2019). In this presentation, I will describe a professional development (PD) program for collegiate mathematics faculty that integrates these four pillars and share how the participants claimed to have transformed their teaching as a result of the PD. I claim that theoretical (Adiredja & Andrews-Larson, 2017) and practical (Estrada et al., 2018) perspectives of fostering equity in the classroom are necessary for transforming teaching and how community building can weave these two perspectives so as to benefit both teachers and students. I will close my presentation by offering potential connections between Estrada et al.’s work and embodied cognition.