We are excited to announce our keynote speaker for this year’s 6th annual Creating Balance in an Unjust World Conference on Mathematics Education and Social Justice. Dr. Jane Margolis is a Senior Researcher at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her research focuses on equity in education and how fields become segregated. She is the lead author of two award-winning books about how these issues are manifested in computer science education: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (MIT Press, 2002) and Stuck in the Shallow End: Education Race, and Computing (MIT Press, 2008).
This year’s conference theme focuses on equity in technology access as it relates to mathematics education. The past five conferences have addressed mathematics education and social justice, and we broaden our lens this year to explore the interaction of social justice and mathematics education, computer science education, and access to innovative technological tools. As current education initiatives turn to technology (e.g. online courses, individual tablet/iPad use in the classroom, and internet tutors) the danger of further increasing existing inequities looms large. Dr. Margolis’s collaborative work with researchers, teachers, and students is timely and critical to our current education landscape.