Orienting to Justice: Unapologetic, Underground, or Somewhere In Between?

• In Event: Exploring Tensions in Participatory Approaches to Research in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Each of Osibodu and colleagues’ (2023) five commitments reflects an explicit commitment to justice. Strict adherence to these commitments, however, “strays from the central idea that participatory research is what the participants make of it.” (p. 226). As a white PI and facilitator of participatory research with a majority BIPOC group of teachers, I have understood my role as twofold: (1) to guide explicitly justice-oriented work that includes analyses of power (Commitments 3 and 5), and (2) to honor the needs and desires of the group (Commitments 1 and 2). These two goals, however, have not always easily aligned.

Research Context and Participants

The [Blinded For Review] Collaborative, conceived as a social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) and space of teacher inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2015), explores the civic mission of schooling (Dewey, 1923) and the liberatory potential of education (hooks, 1994) across different content areas and school sites. Following a convening of teachers leaders around quantitative civic reasoning in mathematics and ELA (AuthorX and colleagues, 2020), teachers desired to continue working together through co-design research. Each teacher invited a school-based colleague such that we now include teachers both experienced and novice, elementary and secondary, teaching mathematics (4), science/STEAM (2), ELA & social studies (2), and American Sign Language (1). We are majority BIPOC and Queer with diverse experiences of immigration, citizenship, and disability.

The Challenge

To launch our work, we developed a shared student-facing “Big Essential Question.” Each teacher, or team, co-designed for their classroom with that question in mind. After two hours of deliberation, we wrote this question: “How can we leverage our individual assets and identities to collaboratively imagine, create and sustain thriving communities?” Other modifiers of community considered and rejected included “just”, “diverse”, “inclusive”, “healthy”, “democratic”, and “equitable.” At one point, seeking to make explicit a commitment to justice-driven work, I suggested “just and thriving.” A Texas-based mathematics teacher quickly responded, “And we’re out!” His colleague explained that such language might get a project shut down before it could launch. She suggested instead that we trust students to make the connection between thriving and justice, “If I asked my kids what thriving would mean, they'd be like, ‘Well, thriving means it is just,’ ... It might not be the first word, but ... they would hit it as we broke it down.”

Discussion and Significance

The language of “thriving” shaped co-designed classroom activities that at times oriented to intrapersonal wellness (such as mental health) or interpersonal wellness (such as collaborative group dynamics) rather than explicit social justice issues. Teachers developed diverse, if not convergent, approaches to supporting civic learning, allowing for four different mathematics teachers in distinct geopolitical contexts (Texas, California, Pennsylvania) to come to see themselves as civic educators. In insisting on naming a justice-oriented stance, I could have pushed teachers out of the project. In not doing so, I may have risked allowing white supremacist ideologies to persist where they need to be challenged. I bring these tensions to the session.

Author

• Emma Carene Gargroetzi, University of Texas at Austin