Building Mathematics Community With Students of Color: The Successes and Struggles of One Urban Teacher

• In Event: Research Around Issues of Equity and in Equity-Sensitive Settings

Abstract

This paper peels back the layers of what it means to envision, establish, and continually refine mathematical community in a fifth grade classroom. The focus is on one teacher’s efforts to reclaim his mathematics community in order to increase engagement, participation, and cognitive challenge, among other objectives, for his urban students. We argue that the instructional and curricular structures he implements afford students many opportunities they did not previously have in his classroom, nor were they likely to have had in previous years. Through his consistent attention to the ways kids interact with mathematics, we trace the messages espoused about what it means to be mathematics “doers” and what it means to be good at mathematics.

Authors

• Craig J. Willey, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• Kari A Carr, Indiana University - Bloomington