PLACE VALUE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF BEING A BLACK GIRL IN URBAN MATHEMATICS CLASSROOMS

This qualitative study documents and examines what it is like being in a Black girl body while learning math in urban schools. The ten participants in this study self- identified as Black and female, and they graduated from three high schools in an urban school district in the Northeast between 2017 and 2019. Despite demonstrating excellence in and out of school, participants’ stories were burdened by experiences of exclusion, marginalization and oppression in their K-12 math learning. Drawing on Critical Race Feminism (CRF), a framework used to theorize interlocking oppressional forces, I designed this qualitative study after conducting a pilot program to improve Black girls’ math experiences. Preliminary findings from the pilot study suggest that Black girls’ math experiences and performance outcomes are largely shaped by the extent to which they are given or denied social place and intellectual value in math classrooms. I appropriate the math concept of place value, and I use it as a metaphor in a framework I developed called Human Place Value. This study examines three questions to understand Black girls’ lived experiences in urban math classrooms: 1) How do Black girls face exclusion, marginalization, and other forms of oppression in math classes? 2) How do Black girls identify and recognize negative attitudes and beliefs about their identity in math classes? 3) How do Black girls respond to and navigate their experiences in math classes? I collected personal data about my participants through background questionnaires and one-on-one semi-structured interviews. I analyzed the data using tenets of CRF and classroom interaction frameworks to distill three themes across social place and intellectual value: visibility, positionality and knowledge production. Key findings from the study suggest that being in a Black girl body renders students particularly vulnerable to math marginalization in the form of hostility, maltreatment and instructional neglect. The data collected from the ten participants tell a collective story that warrant consideration for the role Human Place Value plays in teaching and learning that yields disparate mathematical outcomes. This study concludes with a presentation of counternarratives from two participants and cross-case insights that detail implications for theory and practice

Assuming Data Integrity and Empirical Evidence to The Contrary

Background: Not all respondents to surveys apply their minds or understand the posed questions, and as such provide answers which lack coherence, and this threatens the integrity of the research. Casual inspection and limited research of the 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10), included in the dataset of the World Values Survey (WVS), suggested that random responses may be common. Objective: To specify the percentage of cases in the BRI-10 which include incoherent or contradictory responses and to test the extent to which the removal of these cases will improve the quality of the dataset. Method: The WVS data on the BFI-10, measuring the Big Five Personality (B5P), in South Africa (N=3 531), was used. Incoherent or contradictory responses were removed. Then the cases from the cleaned-up dataset were analysed for their theoretical validity. Results: Only 1 612 (45.7%) cases were identified as not including incoherent or contradictory responses. The cleaned-up data did not mirror the B5P- structure, as was envisaged. The test for common method bias was negative. Conclusion: In most cases the responses were incoherent. Cleaning up the data did not improve the psychometric properties of the BFI-10. This raises concerns about the quality of the WVS data, the BFI-10, and the universality of B5P-theory. Given these results, it would be unwise to use the BFI-10 in South Africa. Researchers are alerted to do a proper assessment of the psychometric properties of instruments before they use it, particularly in a cross-cultural setting

Leading Towards Voice and Innovation: The Role of Psychological Contract

Background: Empirical evidence generally suggests that psychological contract breach (PCB) leads to negative outcomes. However, some literature argues that, occasionally, PCB leads to positive outcomes. Aim: To empirically determine when these positive outcomes occur, focusing on the role of psychological contract (PC) and leadership style (LS), and outcomes such as employ voice (EV) and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Method: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, using reputable questionnaires on PC, PCB, EV, IWB, and leadership styles. Correlation analyses were used to test direct links within the model, while regression analyses were used to test for the moderation effects. Results: Data with acceptable psychometric properties were collected from 11 organisations (N=620). The results revealed that PCB does not lead to substantial changes in IWB. PCB correlated positively with prohibitive EV, but did not influence promotive EV, which was a significant driver of IWB. Leadership styles were weak predictors of EV and IWB, and LS only partially moderated the PCB-EV relationship. Conclusion: PCB did not lead to positive outcomes. Neither did LS influencing the relationships between PCB and EV or IWB. Further, LS only partially influenced the relationships between variables, and not in a manner which positively influence IWB