UW–Madison’s Kelly Wickersham has co-authored an article in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice with UW–Madison alumnus Brett Nachman. The article is titled, “’I Never Learned More in My Life in Such a Short Period of Time’: Math Contextualization as Momentum Toward Community College Student Success.”
Wickersham is a research associate in the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, and she received her PhD from the School’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) in 2017. Nachman received his PhD from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in 2021, and is currently a postdoctoral research scholar at the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research at North Carolina State University.
Wickersham and Nachman’s study explores community college students’ learning experiences in contextualized math classes, and how those experiences shape students’ success. They used a narrative inquiry approach to complete their study, drawing upon the stories of six students enrolled in two contextualized math courses at a two-year college in the Midwest.
The study offers empirical evidence on the potential of contextualization to enhance community college students’ learning experiences and success in math, particularly across college-level math courses and various program areas.
Nachman is also a co-author of another recent article, with Jonathan T. Pryor (California State University, Fresno), that was published in Innovative Higher Education.
This article, titled “Conceptualizing Digital Campus Climate within LGBTQ+ Resource Center Websites: A Critical Discourse Approach,” explores how three institutions represent their LGBTQ+ resources through their university-sponsored webpages. The authors leveraged the Campus Pride Index as a lens for understanding how institutional webpages align with best practices and convey understanding of digital campus climate.
Learn more about these recently published articles, here and here.