"It Takes More Than a Curriculum": Examining Detroit Youths' Caring Agencies in Mathematics Instructional Contexts

• In Event: Moving Through/to Possibilities: Navigating Uncertainties, Pathologies, and Anxieties in Troubling Times

Abstract

Ecological dynamics between macro-level systems and micro-level classroom interactions include co-constructions of content, relationships, and community. Advancing social justice in educational research and practice requires more attention to the sociopolitical dimensions of care, including in the caring agencies that youth exercise in instructional interactions. Drawing upon interview and participant-observation data collected during two, six-week-long instantiations of a summer mathematics program in Detroit, this paper details how high school and middle school youth of color practiced care in instructional contexts inside the program. Findings include that youth leveraged implicit systemic critiques of mathematics education in their interpersonal caring practices and that youth negotiated dominant rhetorics of care and mathematical learning while enacting counter-stories of belonging and collectivity.

Author

• Carolyn Hetrick, University of Michigan