Keynote Speakers
Robert Q Berry III
Dan Meyer
Eugenia Cheng
Keynote Abstracts
Robert Berry
Mathematics, Social Justice, & Actions
Teaching mathematics for social justice (TMSJ) creates the opportunities to situate mathematics content and concepts in contexts that allow students to use their cultural, social, and contextual resources to deepen their understanding of mathematics. Through deepening their understanding of mathematics, TMSJ provides students the opportunity to use mathematics to critique the world and advocate for social changes. In this way, TMSJ goes beyond merely stating the importance of connecting mathematics teaching and learning to lived experiences and interests; it positions learners as and to be actors in their world. TMSJ is critical for four reasons:
· Builds an informed society. Mathematics serves a role to inform both teachers and students about the lives of people, contexts, and conditions that may be different from their own.
· Connects mathematics with students' cultural and community histories. By connecting mathematics teaching and learning in students' cultural and community histories, TMSJ creates opportunities for deepening mathematical knowledge.
· Empowers students to confront and solve real-world challenges they face. Critical consciousness in mathematics teaching and learning supports identifying issues that are unjust and allows the use of mathematics as a tool to analyze, critique, and confront those unjust contexts.
· Helps students learn to use mathematics as a tool for social change. When teachers and students use mathematics to explore, understand, and respond to social injustices, they learn to use mathematics as a tool to transform inequities and create social change.
This session provides background on the purpose, strategies, and pedagogical tools for social justice as well as provide a framework for planning a Social Justice Mathematics Lessons (SJML). We will unpack a few SJML and discuss the social justice and mathematics objectives, and create a product and/or plan of action as a result of the lesson.
Dan Meyer
Math Without Mistakes
The math education community has worked to destigmatize mistakes in recent years, yet it continues to misdiagnose as a "mistake" what is very often purposeful student thinking. We'll learn about curriculum, technology, and pedagogy that celebrates that thinking instead, helping learners grow in their math identity and knowledge.
Eugenia Cheng
Inclusion-exclusion in mathematics: who stays in, who falls out, why it happens, and what we could do about it.
The question of why women and minorities are under-represented in mathematics is complex and there are no simple answers, only many contributing factors. I will focus on character traits, and argue that if we focus on this rather than gender we can have a more productive and less divisive conversation. To try and focus on characters rather than genders I will introduce gender-neutral character adjectives, "ingressive" and "congressive", as a new dimension to shift our focus away from masculine and feminine. I will share my experience of teaching congressive abstract mathematics to art students, in a congressive way, and the possible effects this could have for everyone in mathematics, not just women.