New Books In Mathematics

Students' success in mathematics at community colleges has been the subject of thorough quantitative research, which has reported poor overall results and described a range of explanations for them. Even as policies, course formats, and the composition of the student population have changed, success rates have remained dishearteningly low. The challenges confronted by community college students in developmental and higher-level math classes are historical, financial, social, and personal. Brian Cafarella's new book, which examines these challenges through the perspectives of the students themselves, is a welcome contribution to the topic. Breaking Barriers: Student Success in Community College Mathematics (CRC Press, 2021) is a qualitative study of the barriers faced, and the paths blazed through them, by more than 20 community college students who required developmental math at the starts of their programs and successfully completed college-level courses. From his interviews and exchanges with these students