Toward a Conceptual Framework for Urban Mathematics Education

• In Event: 66.078 - Considering the Social, Spatial, and Political: Conceptualizations of Research and Practice in Urban Mathematics Education

Abstract

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, Tate (2008) challenged scholars interested in urban mathematics education to “build theories and models that realistically reflect how geography and opportunity in mathematics education interact” (p. 7). In the spirit of addressing Tate’s challenge, the purpose of this paper is to broaden the discourse in mathematics education and toward new directions for urban mathematics education scholarship and practice. Our objective is to posit a new theoretical framing for scholarship in urban mathematics education—the first of its kind—situated in mathematics education scholarship and the interdisciplinary areas of urban sociology, critical geography, and urban education. We present a socio-spatial framing of urban mathematics education and argue for the dissolution of a fixed separation between urban-as-geographic-place and urban-as-social-space.
At the center of our framework are the interactions and participation among learners, among teachers, among learners and teachers, and other interactions permuted according to learners, teachers, and mathematics curriculum (Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, 2003). As Cohen and colleagues suggest, “Teaching is what teachers do, say, and think with learners, concerning content, in particular organizations and other environments, in time” (p. 124). This depiction of a triadic relationship is traceable to the works of John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, Theodore Sizer, and others (Cohen & Ball, 2000). In terms of the diagrammatic representation of the framework, the triad represents a kind of Cartesian-coordinate point with respect to the social, spatial, and mathematics-education “theory-moment” axes.
To inform the framework with respect to the social meanings that shape urban mathematics education, we draw on Leonardo and Hunter’s (2007) typology of significations that circumscribe urban education: urban-as-sophisticated (or cosmopolitan space), urban-as-problematic (or urban as “dirty, criminal, and dangerous”; p. 789), and urban-as-authentic (or involving politics of authenticity). We represent that typology as an axis of the framework that intersects with spatial considerations of urban, drawn from scholarship in critical geography (Soja, 1980), urban sociology (Johnson, 2012), and Milner’s (2012) place-based characterizations of urban education. The third axis represents Stinson and Bullock’s (2012) characterization of the shifting theoretical moments in mathematics education research—“process-product,” “constructivist-interpretivist,” “social turn,” and “sociopolitical turn”—, which are overlapping categorical periods of research, practice, and policy (Gutierrez, 2013b). The coordinate representation signals a socio-spatial dialectic regarding the urban--that is, that the social significations and spatial considerations necessarily intersect to determine meaning for urban.
The objective of this paper is to engage the task of conceptualizing urban mathematics education scholarship by offering a theoretical framing that pushes beyond traditional notions of “urban” in relation to education and mathematics education particularly. We hope to continue refining this framing toward application in research on mathematics learning, teaching, policy, and curriculum in urban spaces. We hope to deepen the collective discourse regarding the well-cited challenges of urban mathematics education while adhering to the “nonnegotiable belief” of developing the enterprise of mathematics education for all students.

Authors

• Erika C. Bullock, The University of Memphis

• Gregory V. Larnell, University of Illinois at Chicago