Social Justice Math in Precalculus at a Predominantly White Institution in an Urban Context

• In Event: Social Justice and Community Engagement in Math Education: Four Examples From New York and Utah

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Paradigms

Our vision for designing and enacting social justice mathematics in collegiate-level precalculus classes is to expand “what counts” as meaningful mathematics. We seek to provide students access to mathematics tasks that move beyond a skills and concepts focus toward humanizing students’ mathematical experiences in ways that connect directly to their lived experiences (Gutierrez, 2002), the geographic context of our teaching, and historically relevant and current social justice issues.

We center Gholdy Muhammad’s (2020) Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy model (CHRL) to frame mathematics literacy as including criticality, identity, skills, intellect, and joy. In Figure 2, we visualize provisional design conjectures to guide mathematics task development from Muhammad’s CHRL model.

[Figure 2]

Mode of Inquiry

Guided by a CHRL framing, we have engaged in cycles of action research (Segal, 2009) for 4 semesters over the past 2 years. We have designed, implemented, and performed thematic analyses (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of student responses to social justice mathematics tasks and surveys eliciting student reflection on their engagement with these tasks. The tasks are designed to start with learning about others and oneself in the city where students attend university (identity), using mathematics skills to make sense of change in population over time (skill) to become smarter about (intellect) and critique social decisions that impact marginalized communities (criticality). Our emergent, visual interpretation of how we leverage Muhammad’s CHRL model to guide task design is given in Figure 3.

[Figure 3]

Results

To date we have now developed two lessons: “Redlining, White Flight, and Linear Modeling” and “Lead Poisoning, Environmental Justice, Exponential Decay” (Authors, 2023). We have found that: (1) most students find the lessons meaningful to the; (2) inviting students to geographically situate themselves in the context of the lesson is an important design principle; and (3) attending to students’ desire to take action is one way to be responsive to students’ emotions about injustices.

Significance and Future Directions

At first, interweaving social justice mathematics topics in a “skills and concepts” focused college precalculus course was overwhelming. We have found that “starting small” by iterating a single lesson, and growing to two was an actionable way to make progress. Our work of incorporating social justice mathematics into collegiate level precalculus has paralleled the practitioner research of Authors 5 and 6 at the secondary level (Authors, Year). By working collaboratively across teaching contexts we have developed a support network to sustain and improve the work.
In the coming years, we will develop a social justice mathematics course, separate from the precalculus context, giving us greater creative freedom to situate students as investigators of social justice topics that matter to them. Consistent with Brantlinger’s (2013) recommendation, this design would offer students a choice to “opt in” to critical mathematics. In such a course, we imagine leveraging the model proposed by the Truth Seekers program wherein students are positioned as knowledge producers, setting the social, environmental, or racial justice topics of inquiry to explore what is most meaningful to them.

Authors

• Nicole L. Fonger, Syracuse University

• Stephen Lewis Caviness, Syracuse University