Nicole M. Joseph

Associate Professor, Mathematics Education, Department of Teaching and Learning Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

An expert in the barriers that Black women and girls face in the STEM field and STEM classroom.

Contact

Vanderbilt University

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Biography

Nicole M. Joseph is an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She is also an associate dean in the Peabody Office of Student Life. She directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab (JMEL), an intergenerational lab that focuses on training and mentoring its members on Black Feminist and intersectional epistemological orientations. Using critical perspectives, JMEL produces theoretical and methodological scholarship that challenges hegemonic notions of objectivity to emphasize more humanizing, empowering, and transformative research. Dr. Joseph’s research explores two lines of inquiry, (a) Black women and girls, their identity development, and their experiences in mathematics and (b) gendered anti-blackness, whiteness, white supremacy and how these systems of oppression shape Black girls’ learning, access, underrepresentation, and retention in mathematics across the pipeline. Her scholarship is published in top-tiered journals such as Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, and the Journal of Negro Education. Her latest book with Harvard Education Press is called Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A Black Feminist Vision of Transformative Teaching. She is also the founder and director of Black Girls Becoming Summer Research Institute, a two-week residential program at Vanderbilt for rising 7th and 8th grade Black girls focused on a holistic STEAM curriculum. Her most recent funded project includes co-designing and validating a measure of mathematics identity that includes intersectionality-barriers and intersectionality-assets. Dr. Joseph designed this measure with adolescent Black girls ages 8-13 and has worked to collaborate with districts to support the mathematics achievement and identity of all Black girls.

Areas of Expertise

Identity Development
White Supremacy
Gifted Education
Gender in Education
K-12 Education
Stem Careers
Black Women and Girls in STEM
Black Women and Girls in Mathematics
Mathematics
Black Girls and Schooling
Racism
Gifted Learners
Institutional Racism

Accomplishments

Charles A. Dana Center Mathematics Pathways

Leadership Fellow

Charles A. Dana Center Convening at U of Texas Austin

Equity in Mathematics Pathways

American Education Research Association Scholars of Color Contribution

Early Career Award

Education

University of Washington

Ph.D.

Pacific Oaks College Northwest

M.A.

Seattle University

B.A.

Selected Media Appearances

Encouraging Black Girls to Bring a Bold Voice to Mathematics

KQED  online

2023-01-26

One day, when Nicole M. Joseph was in the third grade, she raised her hand in class to answer a math question. The teacher did not call on her.

Her mother happened to be standing outside the door observing the classroom and was unhappy about what she saw. It seemed to her that Nicole, a Black girl, was being ignored by her teacher, a white woman. So she saw to it that her daughter moved to a different class — an advanced class.

That little girl went on to study math and economics in college, then became a math teacher and a teacher-coach. Today, Joseph is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University and the director of the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab.

EdSurge recently talked with Joseph about her new book, “Making Black Girls Count in Math Education.” It shares findings from her research about the experiences Black girls and women have when it comes to math education, and it lays out what she describes as “a Black feminist vision for transformative teaching.”

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Girls’ superb verbal skills may contribute to the gender gap in math

NOVA  

2019-07-15

“Society still feels like girls are not as smart, or should not be in math,” says Nicole Joseph, a mathematics education expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study.

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How Black Girls Benefit When Math has Social Interaction and Ways to Learn Together

KQED  online

2020-03-09

While these kinds of math experiences could happen to any student, for Black girls, they compound with other biases and barriers to creating an outsider status in the classroom, according to Nicole Joseph, a Vanderbilt University professor who specializes in Black girls’ education. She is also a former math teacher. She said for Black girls, “just being positioned as a mathematical thinker is difficult and very rare in your average public classroom across this country.”

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Selected Articles

Normalizing Black Girls' Humanity in Mathematics Classrooms

Harvard Educational Review

Nicole M Joseph, Meseret F Hailu, Jamaal Sharif Matthews

2019

In this article, Nicole Joseph, Meseret Hailu, and Jamaal Matthews argue that Black girls' oppression in the United States is largely related to the dehumanization of their personhood, which extends to various institutions, including secondary schools and, especially, mathematics classrooms.

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The sistah network: Enhancing the educational and social experiences of Black women in the academy

NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education

Evette L Allen, Nicole M Joseph

2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of women in the Sistah Network, an affinity group at a predominantly White institution, with mentoring goals to enhance the educational and social experiences of Black women in master’s and doctoral programs and their mentors.

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A Review of Cases for Mathematics Teacher Educators: Facilitating Conversations About Inequities in Mathematics Classrooms

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

Nicole M Joseph, Christopher C Jett, Jacqueline Leonard

2018

This book review analyzes Cases for Mathematics Teacher Educators: Facilitating Conversations About Inequities in Mathematics Classrooms, edited by Dorothy Y. White, Sandra Crespo, and Marta Civil.

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