There were many aspects of the Gutierrez's chapter with which I identified and I found myself nodding my head in agreement quite often.
I have seen that equity is becoming a popular topic for companies and schools to tap into, but my concern is that this can often be a label that they wear on their website in name only. There would be much greater equity already if it were as easy as having a diversity committee or a logo. I know that at my school, we have faced some challenges bringing new equity and diversity initiatives forward because there is a concern that parents may be upset.
My favourite part of the reading was the quote by Gutierrez that said “the assumption is that certain people will gain from having mathematics in their lives, as opposed to the idea that the field of mathematics will gain from having these people participate” (37). I love when a quote turns my understanding on its head! I had never thought of learning math in this way and I think it’s such an empowering notion. It says that we expect students to have power and influence in the mathematics community.
I got the sense that Gutierrez was looking for students to achieve their personal best regardless of the other outside factors and I think this is a great way to approach the problem. As an educator, I need to look at power issues and question structures, but I also need to teach my students to do the same. Today I talked to a student in one of my classes and suggested that she take on an equity issue for the open-ended project that I do in that class and she was excited to find a good topic. I’m hoping to use her interest in this area to help her see the relevance of math in her life and what she can do with it.
Although I often struggle with the lack of diversity at my school (SES, race, cultural), there is still a lot that I can be doing to have my students examine the way things are and ask questions. Some of them see the economic and political capital that they have, but most of them are in their own bubble about the way other people live.
Hi Beth,
ReplyDeleteI also really loved the quote by Gutierrez about how "the field of mathematics will gain from having these people participate” (37).
In fact, there were a few quotes in the article that really made the stop and think. One in particular that made me think about my own teaching was on page 38. I often struggle with the ideal of excellence versus equity. Gutierrez talks about how debates about equality revolve around the idea that “we cannot enable our highest-performing students to excel while simultaneously bringing our lowest-performing students up to a higher level”. Though I know that it is possible to do both in the same classroom, I often have difficulty finding creative ways to do it. I teach a very diverse group of students, in terms of background as well as mathematical ability, and they all come with different strengths and weaknesses. When I put up an open ended math problem, some students can attack it right away, and I really want to give them to the chance to explore their ideas. But other students get stuck and don’t know how to proceed, and this often results in students being frustrated and discouraged. If there are a few of these students, then I can go around and try to help (and even then I wonder if giving them hints is stopping them from being forced to think critically) but if there are many students then I often end up talking to the entire class, helping them start the problem. This is as much due to time restrictions as it is to prevent students from getting frustrated. But from the perspective of the stronger student, I wonder if this discourages them from actively trying to solve the problem. If they know that I am just going to walk them through it in the end, then what’s the point of trying?
I often find that one way to help both high and low performing students simultaneously is to force them to work together. The high performing students get the chance to share their ideas with someone, and the lower performing students learn from someone who knows. Ideally, everyone learns something. But I wish I had more ways of challenging the stronger students without discouraging the weaker ones.
Rohini
I also really liked that quote. The idea that diversity makes communities stronger or richer in some way seems to be becoming fairly mainstream, but maybe this idea is less often applied to academic fields. And I would guess it's even less often applied to a field like mathematics that people often think of as removed from people and communities.
ReplyDeleteI also liked her distinction between dominant and critical mathematics. I think that all education should be critical, and it's important to remember that learning mathematics does not encourage critical thinking if we are just reproducing dominant mathematics. She brings up and interesting circular problem, that "learning dominant mathematics may be necessary if students are to critically analyze the world; and being able to critically analyze the world with mathematics may be an entrance for students to engage in dominant mathematics" (40). I think the solution might be in teaching dominant mathematics critically. We would be giving students power or privilege in a world that might otherwise oppress them, and in doing that we would create more people engaging with dominant mathematics who are more likely to be critical of it.