Student Voices: Using Mathematics to Understand Our Communities and Our World

• In Event: 46.086 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 46.086-13 - Toward Social Justice in Mathematics Education: Bridging Multiple Perspectives to Advance Critical Mathematics Praxis

Abstract

In this paper, I highlight the experiences of students of color who participated in a rigorous study of real-world issues through mathematics. As 12th grade students, this experience of using a traditional discipline to learn about social issues was not an isolated incident. This class took place in a small school born out of a community struggle whose thematic focus was/is social justice; hence, students were accustomed to learning about social justice across disciplines. Moreover, the class was taught by an experienced teacher of TMfSJ with an extensive background in teacher education, critical pedagogy, and reform-based mathematics. In many ways, the conditions here were ideal for students to engage in such a class and as such, they reported illuminating findings. Students highlighted the ways in which the teacher, the curriculum, and environment supported their motivation and perseverance through challenging material. Many students also demonstrated productive dispositional shifts with regards to mathematics.

The teacher of the class drew primarily on Gutstein’s (2007) theoretical framing of TMfSJ as the intersection of three types of knowledge: Classical, Community, and Critical. Classical refers to the in-school mathematical knowledge students are expected to learn within a dominant framing of mathematics education. Community knowledge refers to the knowledge that students bring based in their familial, community, and social relationships whereas Critical knowledge is defined as “knowledge about the sociopolitical conditions of one’s immediate and broader existence...knowledge about...the historical, economical, political and cultural roots of various social phenomena” (p. 110). The instructor of the class drew on this framework to connect these three types of knowledges (not mutually exclusive of one another) by working with students beforehand to identify generative themes with students and throughout the class interweaving Classical, Critical, and Community knowledge.

I interviewed 15 participants from the class drawing on a narrative inquiry approach. I wanted students to tell me their mathematical story contextualized within their framing of who they desire to be in the world. I used a semi-structured protocol allowing me to pursue moments, events, and themes that the participant may have deemed important to who they are and how they experienced mathematics.

While my primary data sources were the interview transcriptions, I also drew on data that was collected during the course of the class. In particular, for these 15 students interviewed, I looked closely to their work, journals, surveys, and classroom interactions (classroom video) to inform the codes and relationships derived from my analysis.

At a research level, the majority of research studies based in TMfSJ classrooms focus on teacher perspectives as pre-service and in-service teachers engage in this growing field of work (Gregson, 2013). This study is significant to the field because the participant voices are not only lacking in the research but as subjects in this work, their perspective provides us with unique insight into some of the possibilities and the challenges to engaging in this work well.

Author

• Patricia Buenrostro, University of Illinois at Chicago