Orienting to Students as Mathematical Agents: New Possibilities or the Same Old Inequities?

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that mathematics instruction should foster positive disciplinary identities in students. As the National Research Council (2001) has pointed out, “see[ing] oneself as an effective learner and doer of mathematics” and believing in one’s own capacity to “figure it out” is a necessary support for the development of other strands of mathematical proficiency, such as conceptual understanding and strategic competence (p. 131). Fostering students’ sense of mathematical agency and authority over their own learning should therefore be a primary goal for teachers of mathematics, as Schoenfeld and colleagues (2016) have emphasized in their outline of the dimensions of powerful mathematics instruction.

Instruction that promotes student agency and authority has often been connected to equity issues in mathematics education. For example, the “Equity Principle” articulated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000) calls for “high expectations and worthwhile opportunities for all” (p. 12), where worthwhile opportunities include chances for students to “take control of their learning,” “tackle difficult problems,” and “figure things out on their own” (p. 21). For such opportunities to be available only to some students rather than “all” is clearly not equitable. Yet the idea of a generic “mathematics for all” has been criticized for its erasure of the associations between mathematics education and the marginalization of specific groups of people (e.g., via White supremacy, Martin, 2003; and via capitalism, Pais, 2012).

In the study I report on here, I investigate the affordances and limitations of a focus on agency and authority with respect to advancing equity in math education, with particular attention to how teachers engage with efforts to promote student agency and authority in mathematics.

Preliminary analyses show that teachers at all five focal schools are taking up the discourse of agency and authority and using it to both articulate overarching goals for their mathematics instruction and guide specific instructional decisions. Additionally, teacher teams at all of the schools are using their focus on agency and authority to build solidarity and camaraderie. Teachers are sharing their struggles to, in their words, “pull back” and give students a chance to “take more charge” of their own mathematical thinking. Their colleagues are responding with empathy and support, for example, acknowledging that “I struggle with that, too” and celebrating successes when students have and take up opportunities to generate their own understandings.

At the same time, however, hierarchies of mathematical ability persist. Teachers casually reference “high” and “low” students, using these labels and the ideology they represent to make sense of their work. For example, they present specific opportunities for agentic mathematical work as reasonable for “higher learners” but not “my low class,” and express surprise when a “very, very low” student proves capable of authoring an insightful mathematical idea—reinscribing rather than challenging hierarchies.

Author

• Nicole Louie, University of Wisconsin - Madison