Culturally Competent Mathematics for Black Children: A Review of School-Wide, Classroom-Wide, and Home-Based Practices

• In Event: Fly Me to the Moon: Family, School, and Community Partnerships Support STEM Learning

Abstract

Objective
Strong foundations in mathematics underlie academic, cognitive, and social success from kindergarten to college. However, African American students and their families have faced a variety of historical and contextual challenges to achieve success in mathematics, including the association of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status with institutional racism and prejudice. The purpose of this presentation is to focus on culturally competent strategies to build the capacity of African American families, and the practitioners who work with them, to improve math outcomes in African American children.

Perspectives
African American families, communities, and the schools that serve this population must pay particular care to implement effective practices for math instruction and intervention. Because these practices need to be implemented across contexts – including the home, school, and classroom – we adopt three inter-related perspectives to guide our understanding of the topic. First, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is valuable because it frames the child in the center of several systems which interact with each other, and situates mathematical practices in the context of family, culture, and community. Second, Response to Intervention (RTI; e.g. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006) is commonly viewed as a best practice to determine the most effective interventions based on students’ academic competencies, and, in turn, provides scaffolded support at various levels of skill so that all students have opportunities to meaningfully engage in instructional content. Third, stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995) refers to the demonstrated effect that some ethnic minorities and females show worse performance in academic domains, including math, when these identities are made salient.

Methods and Data Sources
Data for this paper come from an in-depth literature review on the topic as part of a large-scale project on understanding the development of African American children.

Results
• School leadership is critical to meeting the mathematical needs of African American children and families, through the different curriculum, interventions, and professional development opportunities provided.
• Classrooms that provide communal learning contexts and incorporate mathematics into daily classroom routines increase the efficacy of mathematics teaching.
• Broad strategies adopted by African American families in the home environment – including maintaining high expectations for learning, linking children to out-of-school supports, and communicating with teachers – contribute positively to their children’s mathematical achievement.

Significance
This presentation sheds light on an extremely important yet understudied area – family engagement in the teaching and learning of mathematics of African American students. Symposium participants will come away with culturally competent ideas for supporting multicultural families in their children’s mathematics education and how to implement more successful interventions to develop African American children’s mathematical competency.

References:
Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., & Malone, A. S. (2016). Multilevel response-to-intervention prevention systems: Mathematics intervention at tier 2. In S. R. Jimerson, M. K. Burns & A. M. Van Der Heyden (Eds.), 2nd ed.; handbook of response to intervention. Springer Science + Business Media, New York, NY.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811.

Authors

• Jeffrey Brown, Minnesota State University - Mankato

• Cassandra Schreiber