Jordanna Barteles
The mathematics education research community has increased its use of sociocultural perspectives to comprehend and investigate teaching and learning over the past ten years. However, researchers who have focused on anti-racism and social justice issues in mathematics for a long time have moved beyond this sociocultural perspective and advocated sociopolitical concepts and theories that emphasize identity and power. This article argues that taking the sociopolitical turn is important for both researchers and practitioners and highlights some promising conceptual tools from critical theory (including critical race theory/Latcrit theory) and post-structuralism. This turn's potential advantages and drawbacks are also discussed.
Niral Shah examines how the narrative that "Asians are good at math" portrays Asian people as racial subjects in this conceptual article. The narrative that "Asians are good at math" is prevalent in STEM education and is also well-known to the general public, despite the fact that it is false. Shah employs poststructural race theory and Mills' concept of the racial contract to examine the discursive impact of the narrative on Asian personhood, focusing on the interaction between STEM and racial discourses. Shah argues that the narrative's mathematical success dehumanizes Asian people and perpetuates White supremacy, and that racial equity and justice work in STEM education should take ontological questions about personhood into account in addition to traditional concerns about academic content learning and economic access to STEM careers.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.tcnj.edu/10.17763/1943-5045-89.4.661
It is generally agreed that a student's success and mastery of mathematics in high school are crucial to their prospects for and participation in postsecondary education. As a result, numerous educators have attempted to implement equity-geared reforms, such as detracking, that affect how high school mathematics is organized and taught. Schools with successful detracked mathematics programs share four characteristics, according to this article: a) a perspective on the subject that emphasizes connections and meaning; b) a curriculum that emphasizes important mathematical concepts; c) a balance between professional discretion for teaching decisions and coordination; and d) clear distinctions between doing math and school in the classroom structures and the evaluation of students' thinking. This analysis may assist other schools in their efforts to divert students from mathematics.
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4501_10
The number of eighth-grade students enrolled in algebra or a more advanced course nearly doubled to 65% in California between 2003 and 2013. The organizational processes that accompanied this curricular intensification are the focus of this article. Schools in California responded to the algebra-for-all initiative in a variety of ways, each responding to a unique set of institutional, technical/functional, accountability, and internal political pressures. While some schools "detracked" by enrolling all eighth-graders in algebra, others "tracked up," providing opportunities for more advanced geometry while increasing enrollment in algebra. A new, differentiated course structure was created as a result of these responses, likely to benefit advantaged students. We find that "tracking up" and "detracking" occurred primarily in schools with advantages, which is consistent with the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis.
There are still gender inequalities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and there have been calls for ongoing efforts to combat systemic sexism in STEM. In response to these requests, we investigated the perspectives of undergraduate and graduate STEM students who took part in a gender and sexism in STEM intergroup dialogue (IGD). We see IGD as a kind of "justice-centered" STEM education that aims to bring together people from different social identity groups that have a history of conflict (in this case, women and men in STEM) for long-term, in-person communication. The dialogue had three main objectives: (1) promoting capacities to work toward gender equity in STEM, (2) developing a critical awareness of male privilege and systemic oppression (i.e., sexism), and (3) building relationships and understanding across genders. A modified version of an empirically validated IGD model was used in the conversation. Both the IGD and the post-IGD interviews were attended by eight students. These interviews were analyzed using grounded theory, and four themes emerged: Cognitive and Attitudinal Outcomes, Behavioral Outcomes, Barriers to Dialogue, and Facilitative Factors. In the end, in order to characterize the experiences of these young scientists in IGD, we engaged in theoretical integration around a fundamental theme of perspective-taking. We conclude that IGD on gender, sexism, and intersecting forms of privilege and oppression in STEM has the potential to challenge inequitable cultures. We also investigate the implications of IGD for STEM education, research, and practice.
The majority of teachers struggle with reflective questions in this essay. Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics by Eric Gutstein and Rethinking Mathematics by Gutstein and Peterson, both of which advocate for the inclusion of social justice pedagogy in mathematics curriculum, provide the framework for these self-analytic questions. This essay discusses the relationship between social justice educators and their students across all subject areas, not just mathematics. Using the discussion in both books, I argue that the families and communities of our students need to be actively involved in our efforts to connect academic knowledge with social justice and that who we are teaching matters in how we combine social justice and academics in the classroom. I base my argument on the writings of Paolo Freire as well as contemporary U.S. critical theorists studying the relationship between pedagogy, critical theory, and social justice.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487108324328
Issues of worldwide and neighborhood significance, for example, environmental change and vagrancy require basic points of view across different disciplines including science, innovation, designing and arithmetic (STEM). The experiences of learning to teach are examined in our paper alongside critical mathematics education, social justice education, and STEM education. We put a special emphasis on developing our teaching skills through the creation of social justice and STEM-related math problems. We are a group of researchers working together from five nations with a variety of cultural experiences, teaching experiences, and academic paths. Students can interpret and transform the world by examining experiences of creating problems using the dialogue method. 26 developed problems, seven interviews with 12 students, and 46 hours of audio-recorded dialogue meetings comprised the collected data. According to the findings, generating mathematical problems in or for STEM necessitated negotiating the intersection of mathematics, social justice, and STEM at all educational levels, and it was aided by critical dialogue involving a variety of cultural perspectives, experiences, and expertise. Challenges faced include questioning the content of mathematics and STEM subjects, expanding our own knowledge to take into account both local and global problem contexts, and asking who benefits from such issues. Our research emphasizes the importance of maintaining a collaborative dialogue that includes students as co-creators of mathematics problems that have the potential to alter students' perspectives on the world and brings together educators from various fields.
https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.tcnj.edu/article/10.1007/s11858-019-01065-5