TRANSFORMATIONS OF DREAMS AND PERSISTENCE OF MEANINGS: GIRLS ON

THE FAST MATH TRACK, TEN YEARS LATER

Maria Droujkova, Amanda Lambertus, Sarah Berenson

Natural Math, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
maria@naturalmath.com, ajlambertus@gmail.com, sarah_berenson@uncg.edu

Girls on Track is a longitudinal study in its eleventh year, following over three hundred fast
math track middle-school girls. Each cohort started with a summer math camp data collection
via observations, surveys, content tests, school records, and interviews. Every several years we
interviewed study participants about their current relationships with STEM disciplines, family
dynamics, and career plans. This paper focuses on the significance of mathematics in the
development of plans and dreams of four women from the first cohorts. These case studies are
viewed against the backdrop of all study data. Over the years, our models became more centered
on girls and their immediate communities and networks, rather than the institutional track.
Roles of mathematics in the persistence of deeper meanings of women's lives are significantly
more complex than sequential milestones in the linear school-to-career "pipeline" model.

Focus
This paper centers on four case studies of women who were on the fast math track in middle
school ten years ago. One of them is now a math major, two are in applied STEM fields, and one
is a journalism major. We compare and contrast the view of STEM as a direct job goal, and
education as a series of step toward that goal through a narrowing, increasingly more challenging
pipeline (Barker & Aspray, 2006; Blickenstaff, 2005; Stage & Maple, 1996), to the view of
mathematics as a personal strength, an asset in a variety of shifting career roles, and a tool for
constructing meaning (Belenky, McVicker Clinchy, Coldberger, & Tarule, 1986;
Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Jungwirth, 1993; Wenger, 1999). This paper is a step toward an
integrated model connecting academic track point of view and personal and community
significance of mathematics. Such a model can provide a greater diversity of perspectives in
STEM education, and ultimately support better solutions of human problems through
pedagogical developments.

Theoretical Background
The under-representation of women in science, technology, and engineering careers continues to
be a big national concern (Barker & Aspray, 2006; National Research Council, 2001). In the
nineties, the differences in elementary and middle school mathematical achievements between
girls and boys, pronounced in earlier studies, ceased to be significant, as, for example, data from
the Third International Science and Mathematics Study show (Beaton et al., 1996). However,
girls do not persist at the same rate as boys in continuing their study of mathematics beyond
middle school, taking less rigorous courses and leaving the pipeline leading into science,
engineering, and technology field careers, with mathematics serving as a filter or a gatekeeper
(Blickenstaff, 2005).
These and other reports cite the importance of rigorous high school mathematics as vital to
improving the quality of the workforce for the twenty-first century, and call for increased
intervention efforts that encourage girls and young women to select rigorous advanced
mathematics courses beginning as early as middle school algebra and continuing through
calculus in high school. However, fewer studies are done about the meaning and significance of
mathematics in the lives of girls and women (Jungwirth, 1993), and social structures outside of
classes, such as "geek circles" (Varma, 2007) that may support STEM careers. This paper is an
exploration of the significance of mathematics in the persistence of meaning threads in the first
ten years since the middle school.

Four Cases And Their Threads Of Meaning

From the pipeline point of view, Cara is the very model of a modern female STEM career
woman, studying for a PhD in mathematics. Lorna is an example of someone who switched from
a math path to an applied and traditionally female-oriented biomedics path, still staying close to
STEM. Hellen selected hydrology, another STEM application, and Kelly dropped out of the fast
math track and STEM career path, initially wanting to be a veterinary doctor, but by high school
going into journalism. In this part of the paper, we explore the roles of STEM in some examples
of personal meaning threads that emerged from these four cases. In the next part, we situate the
threads within a model that comes from the larger study.
Cara: The Conceptual Architect
Cara is a poster woman for the math pipeline model. She is currently studying for her PhD in
mathematics. In her undergraduate years, she took all available math courses at her institution,
and obtained a math major and two STEM minors. In high school, Cara was taking all math
courses earlier than the average, and at a more advanced level, which defined her as a fast math
track student. She partially attributes the rather surprising fact that she never met a math teacher
she did not like to always being in earlier, faster classes that tend to be assigned to better
teachers.
However, Cara experienced a switch in future job plans in high school, in a scenario not rare for
girls that age (Blickenstaff, 2005): she did not like the math requirements of her chosen career.
She wanted to be and prepared to be an architect, taking and enjoying AutoCAD classes.
However, conversations with people from the field convinced her that architecture required "the
wrong kind of math": a lot of tedious number crunching and memorization for field exams. She
examined her strengths and decided to be a mathematics major, because she deemed she was
stronger at conceptual understanding. Her current major is a very applied area of mathematical
modeling, with prospective jobs in the private high-tech companies or a combination of private
and academe research. This is the superficial story, however. The threads of meaning that
emerged as interview data categories are the following.
Controlled information and communication. Cara is a family-centric, strongly religious
person for whom obeying authority and controlling information and communication sphere is a
matter of explicit attention and utmost importance. She would not take a programming class at
school because of the immaturity of other students in it, for example. Likewise, she rejects much
of social networking: "Everybody uses Facebook, so I would not." For Cara, mathematics is
associated with a pure, controlled, conceptually advanced system she can embrace and follow in
the company of a selective group of people. This thread is the reason Cara does not want to take
an academe path, because she can't control who she will be teaching, and her past experiences
clearly demonstrated teaching occasionally becomes rather unpleasant because of the
randomness of students.
Close groups of geeky, serious friends became an integral part of this thread. Cara talked at
length about following older friends' advice in choosing classes, the academic advisor, and
leisure activities. She is an avid gamer, for example, and a path into web site programming, then
architecture, then mathematical modeling has been supported for her by gaming since she can
remember herself. Gaming with friends, as a part of an exclusive, geek culture REF reinforces
STEM orientation for Cara.
"I am very practical." Cara spends a lot of time carefully researching, planning and
discussing with her network of family and trusted friends all matters of learning and future
career. She selected her graduate advisor based on the fact he hooked every graduate student
with a multitude of internships, providing job connections and opportunities from early on. Cara
graduated with multiple minors by applying AP courses to her college work. She carefully
selects professors for her classes, which, again, leads to "never met a math or science professor I
did not like." This thread pulled Cara toward an advisor with a strong business network, and a
career in the private sector.
Modeling. Far beyond being a mere future job, or even a career, modeling is a thread of
meaning for Cara. In middle school, she and her friends made art, and she was the person
creating web sites to host their art projects. She explained how building architectural
constructions, using software, grew out of these early pursuits, and then modeling real life
phenomena with mathematics was a continuation of the same thread. While architecture and web
sites seem hands-on and visual, Cara approached web design from the coding rather than
WYSIWYG perspective, and architecture from programming - so her "design" thread has been
growing into the increasingly conceptual and mathematical direction of modeling.
Lorna: The Academic Caring
Lorna was going to be a mathematician or a math teacher, but higher-level math courses
proved too abstract for her. She describes one class where she struggled and succeeded
somewhat, but the next one "started with that proof that square root of three is irrational, and I
had no idea how to even start, so I dropped the course and switched my major." She decided to
switch to biomedics.
Parenting as teaching. In her interviews, Lorna talked about her mother in detail, tenderly
remembering the many advanced, very pleasant academic interactions from her early childhood
on. She describes her mother as very smart, despite having to support the family from the age of
fifteen as a first-generation immigrant from India, and not getting a college education. When
Lorna progressed into math courses beyond those her mother had before, their roles reversed,
with Lorna teaching math to her mother as a way to understand it better. This may explain
Lorna's success at landing a job at the Sylvan Learning center as a calculus tutor, with
"everybody there at least twenty years older than I was." Lorna also sounded indignant (with
apologies, catching herself at it) about parents of struggling school or college students not
helping them better throughout their academic lives. She sees parenting as teaching, and teaching
as so much related to caring as to be, metaphorically, parenting. She tutored relatively advanced
math throughout high school, and chose the math major as a continuation of this "caring" thread.
As college mathematics became more abstract, Lorna could not assume this caring role
anymore. She described her dismay at being able to understand material with some help from
another student, but not having enough mastery over it to help others. While capable of being a
math student, she was no longer in the position of "math parent" and therefore decided to change
things around. Biomedics supports her image of "parenting" or "caring" through the participation
in an advanced and sophisticated field.
There's nothing I can't do. Another defining thread in Lorna's life is her incredible
assertiveness. For example, she described several instances of persevering through multiple
rejections while landing jobs as a young teen, and most recently finding a biomedics internship
that took waiting by doors and multiple calls to five different professors repeatedly saying, "No."
Lorna says, "There's nothing I can't do if I put my mind to it!" Her early childhood and teen years
experiences with mathematics, especially tutoring, supported that image of assertiveness and
power.
But what about dropping off the math track in college? Paradoxically, Lorna claims she
wanted to do it to keep her feeling of power, including math power. The major switch had her
take quite a few advanced science classes in her last college semesters, and she wanted to feel
capable and confident, especially about mathematics involved. It was a challenge, but in ways
appropriate for her personally. It is Lorna's self-confidence that kept her from continuing with
the math major, which, given her previous track, she was likely quite capable of getting, just not
in that parenting, helping, assertive manner that was so important for her.
Hellen: The Art Of The Science
Hellen fondly recalls doing math with her big brother when she was young, but back then,
she wanted to be an entertainer. "Saturday Night Life people seemed so happy!" Starting from
high school, though, she turned toward sciences, and is currently applying to enter a graduate
school in hydrology. Hellen's threads of meaning reveal a surprising path toward science for her.
Ownership through creativity. Hellen is an outgoing, friendly person who smiles a lot. She
mentioned how she can make others laugh, and how entertaining others was so important that
she considered it as a career. But what really hit a chord with Hellen was designing her own
science experiments. She specifically recalls a biology camp where she did this over several
summers, and a school project about water quality that got her interested in that endeavor. Later,
she liked classes where she could be creative about her assignments, making beautiful and
meaningful outlines and working hard on presentations. For her, science is about design, it is a
creative, almost humanistic endeavor. Theater is still her big hobby. Hellen was thrilled that at
her graduate school interview, her writing skills were highly prized as something that will give
her an edge as an applicant. She is looking forward to graduate school experiences being more
open for that sort of creativity than undergraduate courses. Designing experiments is the thread
that pulls Hellen toward STEM.
Multi-generation networks. Family and friends play a big role in Hellen's professional
orientation. Her dad went to the science camp that somewhat determined her choice of subject.
She mentioned keeping in touch with camp counselors, who were undergraduate students at a
time, and following in their steps. Hellen kept connections with many of them, now advising her
on the choice of a graduate school. Since her creativity, including scientific creativity, is also
audience-oriented, the network thread playes a key role in pulling Hellen into the direction of a
STEM career.
Kelly: Stories With A Face
Kelly studies to be a journalist, works as a journalist for several student organizations, and
volunteers in various journalist capacities for friend and community projects. In the middle and
high school, she wanted to be a veterinarian, but an experience with an internship made her
realize it's not a job for her. However, anything and everything about journalism is tremendously
satisfying. She wants to present important and interesting stories either through being a news
anchor, or through investigative reporting. Are there any threads in Kelly's life related to
mathematics? Here are two examples.
"People relate to my stories with a face" - Kelly talks about the importance of information
being personal and human, delivered by someone listeners know, recognize, and trust. She thinks
it is her particular cognitive strength to give stories a twist people appreciate and understand, and
to present information in interesting ways. She works for days and weeks improving her videos,
"But when you are done and there is three minutes of it, you can see a strong story." Visual and
information literacy at this level, while not directly mathematical, is related to situated STEM
skills.
"It takes a village." Kelly is a highly networked woman, she has many friends and is a
member and a leader of many student organizations. Mathematics was always challenging for
her, took more time, and required more efforts than other subjects. School mathematics was also
separate from life mathematics such as finances, and not something ever, ever used. Kelly's
family, however, rallied around her, helped her when they could and hired tutors when they
could not. Kelly noted the very positive feeling that she was constantly supported in challenging
and extrinsic hardships, and able to pass these gatekeepers through collective efforts of her
family and her own hard work. In a sense, mathematics was something to rally against.
Situated complexity. As a possibility not yet set in stone, Kelly considers going into investigative
reporting, and she discusses at length the joys of seeing unexpected twists in stories, playing
devil's advocate and otherwise deeply interacting with her daily subject matter. Undoubtedly, this
requires logical abilities and very likely at least some statistics and data analysis, but Kelly does
not see this as mathematics (Lave & Wenger, 1991). She does acknowledge that her work as a
club treasurer involves math, but again, she sees that as very different from "school math"
(Hoyles, Noss, & Pozzi, 2001). The use of technology and software she describes in her award-
winning short video work is sophisticated too, but mathematics in it is very much applied.
Kelly's thread of complexity in everything she does suggest high logic abilities, without an
attempt to explicate them or to apply them to any STEM direction.

From The Leaky Pipeline To Persistent Threads of Meaning

Leaky Pipeline
Many studies considering women in STEM careers adopt the "leaky pipeline" perspective,
starting somewhere around the first Algebra classes and ending in PhD degrees, with many
women not making it all the way through (Barker & Aspray, 2006; Blickenstaff, 2005; Stage &
Maple, 1996). We summarized the characteristics of several pipeline models from the literature:
• The pipeline is linear, with no turns, pauses or detours.
• People who drop out of the pipeline are gone forever
• Milestones within the pipeline, such as classes or internships, are motivated by being
prerequisites to further milestones
Threads of meaning
Yet this picture does not seem to match women's own views on meaning and significance of
STEM in their lives, or our analysis of the same when we adopt a perspective centered on
women rather than classes and institutions. From case studies, as well as quantitative analysis of
larger samples of our longitudinal data, emerge individual threads and thread categories of
personal meaning that form each woman's path, and in which STEM has varied significance.
Cara's controlled information and communication and "I am very practical," Lorna's parenting
as teaching, Hellen's multi-generation network, and Kelly's "it takes a village" threads belong to
the category of PLNs, personal learning networks (Siemens, 2005) that start with families, and
develop to include friends and eventually colleagues. These threads also belong to the Parent
Power category. We found that threads from these intersecting categories had a strong impact on
STEM tracks of all study participants.
Cara's modeling, Lorna's ownership through creativity, and Kelly's situated complexity are
examples from the thread category of content-specific ways of knowing (Belenky et al., 1986;
Lave & Wenger, 1991) These content threads may not tie with particular academic or curricular
subjects, but are overarching themes or topics important in each person's life and developing
from naive to sophisticated forms as the person matures. The pedagogical practice of cross-
disciplinary unit studies (McColskey, Parke, Furtak, & Butler, 2003) is connected to this
category.
Cara's "I am very practical," Lorna's "There is nothing I can't do," Hellen's ownership
through creativity and Kelly's "People relate to my stories with a face" are example of women's
awareness and focus of their personalities in career paths. STEM skills have particular, complex
relationships with personality traits, a topic women discuss at length in their interviews.
Lorna's parenting as teaching and "There's nothing I can't do," and Kelly's "People relate to my
stories with a face" are examples from the caring and helping thread category. While studies
show that women in the academe are not any more likely than men to find job satisfaction in
caring or helping roles rather than research roles within the field (Stage & Maple, 1996), girls in
our study integrated caring into career selection and explained how they view their work as
helping people and the world.
Cara's modeling and Kelly's situated complexity belong to the category defined by the
abstract-applied gradient. The need for grand causes and abstract concepts, or the need to
immediately see results of pursuit are expressed in, and supported by, different approaches to
STEM.

Conclusions
We would like to finish with a quote about life dreams from Janush Korczak, a Polish pedagogue
and a champion of children's rights (Korczak, 1990):
When we don't have enough material to reason, there appears a poetic meaning of what little
we have. Into a dream we transform the feelings that don't get realized in reality. The dream
becomes our life's program. If we only knew how to decipher it, we would see that dreams do
come true.
If a poor boy dreams of being a doctor and becomes a nurse, he fulfilled his life's program. If
he dreams about being rich, but dies on the bare mattress, his dream did not come true only
superficially: after all, he did not dream about hard work toward a goal, but about
squandering money away; he dreamed about champagne, but drank moonshine; dreamed
about salons, but had bar brawls; wanted to throw gold to the wind, but wasted coppers.
The other wanted to be a priest, but became a teacher or simply a groundskeeper, but, being a
teacher, he's a priest, being a groundskeeper, he's a priest.
She wanted to be a terrible queen, and is she not a tyrant to her husband and children, having
married a low-level clerk? Another wanted to be a beloved queen, and is she not ruling a folk
school? The third one wanted to become a great queen, and is her name not covered in glory,
the name of a wonderful, extraordinary seamstress or matron? (p.112)
While the dreams and plans change and transform, the personal meaning threads, and the
corresponding significance of STEM in threads and thread categories are continuous and persist
through time. Examining these meanings and significances at the level of individuals and their
networks can prove fruitful in understanding how to support women in STEM careers.

References
Barker, L., & Aspray, W. (2006). The state of research on girls and IT. In Women and
information technology: Research on underrepresentation (pp. 3–54). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Beaton, A., Mullis, I., Martin, M., Gonzales, E., Kelly, D., & Smith, T. (1996). Mathematics
achievement in the middle school years: IEA's Third International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS). Boston, MA: TIMSS International Study Center, Boston College.
Belenky, M., McVicker Clinchy, B., Coldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women's ways of
knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Blickenstaff, J. (2005). Women and science careers: Leaky pipeline or gender filter? Gender and
Education, 17(4), 369–386.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY:
Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Hoyles, C., Noss, R., & Pozzi, S. (2001). Proportional reasoning in nursing practice. Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, 32(1), 4-27.
Jungwirth, H. (1993). Reflections on the foundations of research on women and mathematics. In
Math worlds: Philosophical and social studies of mathematics and mathematics
education (pp. 134–149). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Korczak, J. (1990). Kak lyubit' rebenka (How to love a child). Moscow, Russia: Politizdat.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
McColskey, W., Parke, H., Furtak, E., & Butler, S. (2003). A structured professional
development approach to unit study: The experiences of 200 teachers in a national
teacher development project. In Proceedings of the 84th Annual Meeting of the American
Educational Research Association. Presented at the American Educational Research
Association, Chicago, IL: American Educational Research Association.
National Research Council. (2001). Building a workforce for the information economy.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal
of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3–10.
Stage, F., & Maple, S. (1996). Incompatible goals: Narratives of graduate women in the
mathematics pipeline. American Educational Research Journal, 33(1), 23-51.
Varma, R. (2007). Women in computing: The role of geek culture. Science as Culture, 16(4),
359–376.
Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.