I was invited to give a keynote speech at the University of Northampton’s MA Conference, as an alumnus of the their MA Education programme. This year’s theme was Equity Now! Education for the Changing World. I titled my speech Equity Then! Mathematics Through a Changing World, and described my journey from my MA thesis project, completed in 2022, through to my recently published paper. This journey included the realisation that society’s habit of leaving mathematics education entirely to maths teachers in maths classroom neatly sidesteps the fact that students’ extracurricular lives affect their attitudes to and feelings about the subject, and that this represents an underlying – and under-explored – equity issue relating to mathematics education: just one reason why increasing opportunities to encounter maths through other pathways (such as heritage and history, via museums) is very important.
My tutor whilst completing my MA in Education, Dr Helen Caldwell, posted about the event on LinkedIn.