SOCIAL JUSTICE through TEACHING MATHEMATICS
BY
JARA PORFIRIO
Embedded Files
Learners of Mathematics: High School Students' Perspectives of Culturally Relevant Mathematics Pedagogy
by Tarcia Lasha Hubert
In this article, the author shows the positive outcome of culturally relevant pedagogy in mathematics from the students' perspective. She points out that negative stereotype images of African-American students (such as black males are troublemakers and most likely to drop out of high school, or that they are academically inferior), have been lowering their self esteem and affecting their courage to learn mathematics.
She argues that culturally relevant pedagogy is the essential part of teaching and requires creating classrooms that resemble students' home and willingness to care and bond with the students. The author continues that CRP results in student's motivation and confidence.
To follow in Hubert's steps I would make my Math lessons culturally relevant through the topics of quadratic and exponential functions. These topics would include teen pregnancy, perinatal HIV, teen smoking, youth incarceration and saving money. By analyzing these data, students would get a bigger picture and understanding of the issues they deal in their own home environment on daily basis. I believe their interest in mathematics would increase, which would help them to succeed academically.
We, as future teachers, need to believe that all children are learners, no matter what race they are, or how much they struggle academically. Once we earn their trust through culturally relevant dialogue and openness, they will become achievers, they will maintain their cultural integrity, and they will be able to critique social inequities through mathematics.
#culturallysustaining/relevantpedagogy
#culturallysustaining/relevantpedagogy
Episode 4: Tonya Clarke, Ph.D., "Mathematics and Social Justice"
Dr. Tonya Clarke, the coordinator of K-12 Mathematics for a large public school system in the greater Atlanta area, speaks out about the importance of keeping math relevant for the students she serves. She is the founder of the I'm W.O.K.E. project, which stands for Widening Options through Knowledge and Empowerment. Through this project, she puts world problems into students hands, who then observe, investigate and analyze these issues.
I would use her idea of using the social issue of "Stop and Frisk" in my community over the time through the algebra 1, such as creating equations or graphing. The students would look at the facts, analyze the number of people that were stopped and the number of people that were actually innocent and how that changed over time. Through this investigation the students would see the disparities and the trends. I would also include teachers of history and social studies in my project, so the students could better understand connectives within this issue.
Another Clarke's project that I love and would use in my future classroom is how pandemic affected the lives of Americans financially, mentally and physically. I would achieve this in statistics. I would let students investigate spread, disparities and economic impact on our lives by creating graphs and tables and counting percentage.
I believe that author's teaching lessons are an excellent way of engaging students and promoting their motivation and critical thinking. It is important that students become aware and be able to address current issues of our society, so they can become agents of the change in the future.
https://soundcloud.com/mathsolutions/ep-4-tonya-clarke-phd-mathematics-social-justice
#inquiryandproblembasededucation
#inquiryandproblembasededucation
#realitypedagogy
#realitypedagogy
Whose Community Is This?
Mathematics of neighborhood displacement
by Eric (Rico) Gutstein
The article “Who’s Community Is This” by Eric (Rico) Gustein is an example of a lesson plan for high school Mathematics that targets social justice.
The strategy I would use from the author is to show the 12-graders real world examples, which affect their own communities through analyzing mortgage and credit card schedule and causes of Mexican migration to the United States.
By analyzing mortgage and interest rate through discrete dynamical system, the students will learn if their families can afford to buy the house and how much more the actual cost of a house is after 20-30 years of paying the mortgage. I would also show students the principle of subprime mortgages and their negative effect on consumers, which creates greedy and incomparable profit for the banks. This example shows the injustice of our banking system, which hurts the minority groups the most.
Another great example for my lesson plan from Gutstein article is analyzing migration of Mexican population to the United States. I would use the linear and quadratic regression to analyze the volume and rate of change of immigration over time and explain the reasons for this migration, such as how cheap US corn hurts Mexican farmers and thus forcing them to move to the United States, where they face racial and housing discrimination.
I am amazed by critical Mathematics and I will definitely practice it in my future classes. We, as the teachers, are responsible for our students’ future, we need to show them the social, political, cultural and economic contexts of oppression, because these can be comprehended through Mathematics and help the students to spot this injustice, which they can share with their families and the community and be part of the future change.
#mathforsocialjustice
#mathforsocialjustice
#realitypedagogy
#realitypedagogy
Reading the World with Mathematics
Developing Sociopolitical Consciousness
by Eric Gustein
The author Eric Gustein in his book Reading the World with Mathematics in chapter 3 talks about the detailed lesson plans that deal with the real world projects. The main purpose of these projects was on one hand to teach the students to use mathematics, but on the other hand to help them develop sociopolitical awareness. These calculations and analysis concentrated on racism in housing and mortgages, discovering that people of color are not minority, learning about wealth distribution throughout the world and within the United States, and investigating the racial profiling.
I can see myself using the author's idea in Statistics class where my students would be generating different data and discussing and analyzing averages of cost of living, taxes, income, employment and education in comparison with one's race and social class. I would also use Gustein's idea of showing students the distribution of wealth between each continent. I would divide the class into groups (representing continents) by the percentage of people in each continent and then distribute wealth (cookies) to each continent according to the continent’s share of world wealth. By deriving to Mariol's measure of central tendency, students would realize that the data for the continent did not reveal wealth distribution within the continent, so the next lesson would be analyzing the financial wealth within the United States. After this project the students would be able to raise their own questions about the genesis of the inequalities and become more conscious about socio-political issue within our society.
This book is an eye opener for every future teacher. I have realized that there are a lot of stories that can be told from the numbers and facts. We can really read the world through the mathematics. Although it might takes some time to come up with our own conclusions and opinions, through the analyzing, investigating and talking, students can find and understand the connectives between numbers and social justice.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UZ4NkJDajfGratAQylDN_ptG2QzSAUvc/view?usp=sharing
#mathforsocialjustice
#mathforsocialjustice
#realitypedagogy
#realitypedagogy
High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice
High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice
by
Robert Q. Berry III - University of Virginia, United States
Basil M. Conway IV - Columbus State University, Columbus, GA
Brian R. Lawler - Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA
John W. Staley - Baltimore County Public Schools, Maryland
This book is a collection of mathematical lessons that are tied to both the essential concepts of mathematics on one hand and the issues of social concern and injustice on the other hand. These lessons are personal experiences of a diverse group of authors, who implemented the lessons in their secondary mathematics or preservice mathematics teacher classrooms.
This book really inspired me and I recommend it to any future or current teacher of mathematics on the secondary level. There are so many strategies, including detailed lesson plans on how to incorporate social justice in different areas of math curriculum, such as number and quantity, algebra and functions, statistics and probability, and even geometry.
One of my favorite lesson plans in this book is teaching students Number and Quantity by showing them injustice in tracking. The students would analyze the data including the odds of black and the odds of white students being placed in the advanced courses from the research, which would create the deeper understanding of unit measures, such as part-to-part and part-to whole. Then by moving to statistics the students would sample the race of students in AP classes in their own school and counting the margin of error. Finally, students would make conclusions, which would result in dialogue, critical thinking and better understanding of the connection between mathematics and social justice.
Berry, Robert Q, III; Conway, Basil M., IV; Lawler, Brian R.; Staley, John W. High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice (Corwin Mathematics Series) (p. 209). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition
#mathforsocialjustice
#mathforsocialjustice
#inquiryandproblembasededucation
#inquiryandproblembasededucation
#realitypedagogy
#realitypedagogy
#culturallysustaining/relevantpedagogy
#culturallysustaining/relevantpedagogy
Other topics for my future Mathematics lessons inspired by Berry III and others:
Other topics for my future Mathematics lessons inspired by Berry III and others:
Number and quantity:
Resistance and oppression - by using the coordinate plane, plotting points, understanding of each quadrant, students examine how resistance can be fueled by motivation for social justice and by the critique of social oppression
Gender and sexual identity - students collect data and calculate the number of students in their own school who experience harassment and assault, especially the students who identify as LGBTQ+ by constructing a matrix from a data set
Economic inequality - students use graphs to provide models and illustration of unequal wealth distribution throughout the world and within our country
Algebra and function:
Immigration - students research data about policies that enforce the separation of children from their families at the US/Mexican border by analyzing relationships between values, describing tables and graphs and using critical reasoning
Environment issues in Alaska - students create a relationship between ice breaks in specific calendar years with the break time each year and find the pattern from a scatterplot and try to make prediction for the future
Cost of globalization - this lessons engages students to use hidden cost of an iPhone by considering the environmental factors, such as fuel emissions by creating linear and nonlinear functions and thinking about equations that represent this model.
Geometry:
Health inequality - Students use their knowledge of triangle centers to analyze regions and determine possible locations for a healthy food market.
Civil rights and governmental laws - students use percentages and ratios as evidence in their arguments as they determine if a district is gerrymandered. They also use spatial reasoning, area, and perimeter to calculate numerical measures of voting inequality
Statistics and Probability :
Drug tests - students use basic conditional probability to analyze the effectiveness of drug tests and then consider some of the social issues and implications, such as racial profiling by requiring preemployment drug testing for jobs that have a high percentage of Black employment or random drug testing of (Black) NFL players who chose to kneel during the national anthem.
CITATION:
Berry, Robert Q, III; Conway, Basil M., IV; Lawler, Brian R.; Staley, John W. High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice (Corwin Mathematics Series) (p. 209). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Page updated
Report abuse