Social Justice in the Clasrroom: New Understandings and Questions

The three articles this week provided different approaches for teaching for social justice. Each has clarified some issues for me and raised more questions.

I like the specific details that Gutstien provides (especially in Rethinking Mathematics 2006) and I am starting to gaining comfort to raising what could be controversial issues in my classes. The three ideas that stand out to me are (p 55):

- Students need a space to pose their own meaningful questions

- Students aren’t used to posing their own questions; teachers need to seed the process

- Students need the opportunity to name their own realities- I think this means to that students need to identify things in their own environment that hinder their success, so that the students can make informed choices and choose to act in ways that might bring more success.

Gutstein provides strong evidence that his students developed the critical questioning stance that he desires for his students but I wonder about other measures of success. For example his students discussed whether institutional racism results in a lesser rate of blacks and browns getting mortgages, and make the distinction between income and wealth, but does the class build the knowledge of what it takes to build wealth – ‘to play the banking game’- to meet the banks criteria for a mortgage?

One of my strongest impressions from working with Habitat for Humanity revitalising downtown neighbourhoods is seeing $40,000 cars in front of shacks or apartments with holes in the walls. Cars don’t build wealth. Many habitat affiliates now have classes helping families understand how to maintain houses and build a nest egg.

Also how do students do in future math classes- do they have the skills to take gate-keeper courses like Algebra 1?

The Davis and associates article, in contrast, provides evidence of greatly increased participation in college –prep math courses. I find it interesting that Bob Moses developed a program from his studies in philosophy that has many similarities to current research in cognitive psychology ( see for example http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11101&page=1): start where the kids are, give experiences and link those to the mathematical conventions.

I found this article big on the philosophy and big ideas. As a budding researcher, I really liked the idea of examining classrooms using different lenses, but as a teacher I found little concrete that I could use in my classroom- I did find many internet links to the Flagway Game – http://www.typp.org/flagwaycampaign & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD5KB7iK4CA but I still couldn’t use the activity in a classroom.

The Algebra Project chapter also talked about ways they use to engage students – technology, games, and helping students learn to work. This was reassuring because when we have streaming or segregation by neighbourhoods, these are real challenges, which are often glossed over in some articles. I was struck by the idea of presenting being culturally respected and perhaps a better motivator that working silently. I have little exposure to black culture. I wonder if that is a fair conclusion?

I also noted how they work within those presentations to build leadership skills. It reminded me of Lubienski’s assertion that low SES students may get the most out of classes that explicitly work on problem-solving and communication.

What I liked most about Marta Civil’s chapter is the respect for the parents/ communities knowledge. I remember as a student feeling like teachers’ had little respect for the local community and how people lived. However, I need to think about what incorporating family knowledge would look like in a secondary classroom in the community where I live.

Gutstein’s Pedagogy of Questioning

My favourite quote from this article: “No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?” (Freire, 1970/1998, p.67)” as stated in Gutstein’s article.
It applies not only in the classroom, but also in the school and the school board. I have previously wondered, how can one say we want the students to learn social justice, but yet not allow them to question what is happening in their class, school and school board or limit what they question?

A year ago a comment was made by a visiting professor, in my urban Ed. class, that if we as educators were not liberating our students then we were oppressing them. He stated that there were no in betweens it was one or the other. That reality seemed quite harsh and I wondered how could we allow people to realize the realities of their pedagogy without being so abrupt.

With Gutstein’s reference from Freire, an educator can easily think about their pedagogy and know whether they are allowing students to question why and then at least have a reference of to how to start to change their pedagogy towards a more liberating one.

Personally, this article will allow me to better organize that questioning that is already happening in my classroom. I am now able to see a bigger picture that will enable me to find ways to integrate that questioning into mathematics.
I was already integrating a lot of discourse in my mathematics pedagogy, but in the lower elementary grades that discourse was a lot of questioning, that I believed was not necessarily about the math at hand, as opposed to actual discussions. I had felt I was not getting anywhere with all this questioning I was allowing. Now, I can look at these questions with a different lens and better integrate them into mathematics with the confidence of knowing it’s a teaching tool towards social justice.

Integrating the questioning of course would be the plan, but quoting Gutsteins again, “Doing all these within one classroom is a considerable challenge and raises implications for the preparation of teachers as well”. The reality is there is very little time to prepare these liberating and equity minded lessons and to change the students response/reaction to this different style of learning; little time to plan, think, prepare, implement, discuss, assess, record and report (not to mention defend).
When we as progressive educators take the time to learn, where do we get the time to teach in this liberating manner that requires much more effort, time and back lash from administrators and parents (as well as other teachers) who haven’t also learned how to liberate our students?

Transactions of mathematical knowledge in the algebra project

The type of education(project) I feel being described in this article resonates in me as project-based learning or problem based learning wherein students are allowed to construct their own meaning of an open ended problem and figure out a way to solve a problem with available resources and guidance. They rely on their prior knowledge base to assess what new knowledge they would need to tackle the problem at hand.

The focus of this article is however slightly different from the problem/project based learning as we know it since it explores the vision of math as a social construction. If the emphasis is on fostering meaning making based on personal social experiences, how would a teacher ensure that the student does not end up having any misconceptions and has a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts, rules and laws in mathematics? I feel this danger because math unlike other subjects has several laws, formulas and follows a certain logical pedagogy with respect what knowledge is taught when.

I like the five step curricular process but the difficulty in building lessons around this idea would be alienating students that lack the logical reasoning and have difficulty associating conventional mathematical notion with physical experiences. Translating everyday language into something that has mathematical value might be a difficult task for some students and might discourage them from exploring maths in the future.

The article mentions the issue with the project with respect to sustainability and facilitation in order to accommodate change. I feel that it might be very difficult to sustain a fully project based class as it would require a lot of resources as well as facilitators would have to have a sound understanding of various social constructions of various mathematical concepts to facilitate a class wherein they would be exposed to new ideas and would have direct the students to appropriate resources to develop their understanding.

As outlined in the article there might also be issue with the emphasis being on group activities whereby students might stray away from the “actual work” and engage in personal talk not pertaining to the task at hand. I also feel that certain students might be unable to express their ideas as there would be no right answer and they would feel opposed by competing ideas. Also, certain students might not be able to relate to other’s ideas and therefore might want to work in separate groups which would then lead to segregation of the class based on common ideas and beliefs.

These problems are prevalent in ideas that encourage students’ individual understanding while keeping the class together and creating a safe environment for everyone to contribute. Usually certain ideas are more popular than other and when students are young they tend to join the bandwagon either to retain friends or remain popular. I can also see how this might not successful with new immigrants and students with specific learning needs.

A question for Cobb and Hodge

Hopefully, you will have time to read and respond to this! I find the constructs of normative identity, core identity, and personal identity helpful, but I've always wondered about normative identity:
does this concept assume that there is always *one* normative identity? Do you believe this is always the case? Or could there be classroom spaces where there is more than one normative identity and different normative expectations for different students?

Some thoughts on culture, identity and gender

The theme of identity in the article by Cobbs and Hodge really struck a chord with me and made me think about how I identify myself. I agree with the view of culture as “a network of locally instantiated practices that are dynamic and improvisational” (pg 161). The “culture” that was passed down from my parents is much different than the school culture I grew up in, and those are much different than the social and work culture I find myself I now. There are so many different forms of culture that an individual can be part of, and each of these shapes their identity. I know that the way that I behave changes when I am around different people or put into different situations. When I was younger, I saw this as a result of not really knowing who I was. But “who you are” is a complicated idea. A person’s identity is much more than it seems from the outside - how we see someone is only part of their identity. And identity is always changing in response to new experiences.

The article by Boaler also gave me a new perspective meaning of gender. I understand sex as the physical features you are born with and gender as something you develop as you grow up, but I never really thought about how much gender is influenced by our environment and how, just like culture, it is always changing. Gender is a spectrum, not a neat little box you can check off, no matter how many boxes you’re given.

It does worry me that “the greatest differences in mathematics achievement and participation are found at the most advanced levels (Boaler, 28). Thinking back to my own university education, this does not surprise me. There were definitely more male students in my classes than female students, and of the female students, many of them planned to go on to teaching mathematics instead of perusing higher mathematics. However, when I look at my students, I don’t see the same difference. I don’t see the same difference in participation or achievement. This made me wonder if perhaps I was just looking all that closely, so I went back and looked at my students and their marks. Of the312 student to whom I’ve taught first semester math over the past two years, 167 were female and 145 were male. And when I compare their marks, the women have an average that is 4% higher than the men. I teach math to students in a science program, not a math program. They haven’t chosen to take math, they are required to do so. But the conclusion that I draw from these numbers is that, though girls may not choose to pursue math in higher education, they are just as capable of doing math. If the gender difference in higher education is cause by society sending the message that math is for boys, we as educators need to do something to change that.

Rohini

Beginning thoughts, but need more reflection...

I wanted to get started with my blog, so I have gather some beginning thoughts here:

With respect to Boaler, I was not too surprised by the information that she provided in this chapter. I have often been told that we need to be aware of learning styles of boys and girls, and to ensure that we address them appropriately such that they both will achieve success in the math classroom. I will say that I was happy (and surprised) to see that there was little difference in achievement success between the two sexes, and felt that perhaps this kind of data needs to go out to news agency such as 20/20 or the New York Times so that they can stop perpetuating the doom and gloom regarding girls and mathematics. As Boaler stated eloquently an behalf of equity researchers that they“bear an enormous responsibility for considering the ways in which they are interpreting and framing their data, as well as the “mythologies” of inadequacy they may be constructed” (pp.35); perhaps these news agencies should also think more thoughtfully before presenting the findings that they do. I would hate for anyone to believe that they cannot learn mathematics because the ‘researchers’ have proven ‘it’ to be true.

What Nasir presented in the chapter, I would hope is what teachers strive for in the classroom. The information provided regarding identity, goals and learning seem so logical, that I could not imagine that it doesn’t happen, and yet reflecting on what I have seen and participated in myself, I can see how and where I would need to improve for the future in my classroom. There seems to be so much external pressures that I wonder how effective we can be to ensure that everyone child in math has the opportunity to set goals and develop the identity that allows them to achieve those goals, in a seamless and intertwining way that was shown in the basketball analogy. Nasir states, “the key question then becomes how to structure this successive set of activities in a way that maximizes learning and cognitive developmental outcomes” (pp. 144). This is truly a challenging question to answer. We understand that mathematics will become more meaningful for students if they can see or discover themselves the concepts, and if they can relate it to their own lives/experiences. Yet we often hear of our battle against time; time to complete the curriculum. I believe there would have to be a fundamental shift in thought process and expectations by students, parents, teachers and universities, that would allow for more opportunities as suggested by both Boaler and Nasir that open-ended problems, with or without defined solutions, be presented for students to discover their own route to solutions and rules. Perhaps my first step would be to take the first step, in a small way, that allows students to fully realise (conceptualise) the intertwining nature as Nasir presented of goals, identity and learning.

Although I did appreciate the idea of setting goals and can certainly understand the importance of doing so. I did think the following when reading about goal setting in Nasir’s chapter: When students set goals, how much of it is due to personal gains, e.g. want to improve a particular grade because they feel they can do so, versus future gains, e.g. setting a goal to get a particular grade for future success? Is the latter goal influenced mostly (or perhaps strictly) by social context (peer or family pressure to be successful in the future)?

The many meanings of identity...

When I began this post, I thought that I wouldn’t have much to say about the readings, but as I started to outline my thoughts, I had to eliminate some points so that it didn’t get out of control.

The first thing that I want to address is from the article by Boaler. She mentions the idea that gender is a social construct rather than a biological fact (25). I have been reflecting all week about why I find this so difficult to accept. When culture is introduced in the other articles as a response to social setting, I can totally see how children change their behaviour to fit the cultural norms. I can also see that there are cultural groups that are not bounded by racial background, so maybe that is why I see biology as a less dominant factor. It may just be that gender as a response to conditions is just a newer idea to me, so I’m still working to understand it. Any thoughts that could help me through this process?

I also found it very interesting in this article that so few females go in math in university and at the graduate level. I’ve brought this up with colleagues several times this week and they were all shocked by the changes in numbers.

In the article by Cobb and Hodge, the quote “students’ development of new personal identities in particular settings can involve changes in their core identity” (167) speaks to the power of teachers. How many times have you heard people say they can’t do math? I bet many of them can remember a certain teacher or classmate or test that told them they weren’t good at math. As a teacher, I don’t want to limit my students’ expectations about what they can become.

My final thought is about Nasir’s comment that “learning is about becoming as well as knowing” (135). I love this quote because it acknowledges that learning is a process and is deeply linked to identity. I have seen my students grappling with their identities as they find their place in the social network at the school. I have also seen the different cultures that have developed within the different social groups and at different grade levels.