Equity And Identities In Mathematics Education

1. Equity And Identities In Mathematics Education Dina Williams Los Angeles Unified School District Rachel Lambert The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

2. Dimensions of Learning Power Identity Access Achievement Rochelle Gutierrez

3. Rachel’s questions • How do kids come to understand themselves as math learners? • How does the way that they are positioned matter? Through race, class, gender, ethnicity, ability and disability? • How does pedagogy matter?

4. Identity as not what you are learning, but who you are learning to become in your mathematics class. (Wenger, 1999)

5. Conceptual Framework Individual Other

6. Individual Other discourse practices

7. Individual Other discourse practices

8. Individual Other discourse practices Social world

9. Individual Other discourse practices Figured world

10. Individual Other Discourses Practices

11. Identity as not what you are learning, but who you are learning to become in your mathematics class. (Wenger, 1999) Boaler (1997) found that not only do students learn different amounts of knowledge in different kinds of math classrooms, but they learn different kinds of knowledge. Boaler and Greeno (2000) found that not only do kids learn different kinds of knowledge (different practices), but they develop different relationships with mathematics.

12. Research Questions • In each mathematics classroom, how did figured worlds construct and display particular kinds of mathematical ability and disability? • Over two years, how did kids, both labeled as learning disabled and not, construct and enact understandings of themselves as math learners?

13. Research Questions • In each mathematics classroom, how did figured worlds construct and display particular kinds of mathematical ability and disability? • Over two years, how did kids, both labeled as learning disabled and not, construct and enact understandings of themselves as math learners? Ethnography of sixth and seventh grade classrooms Two interviews of nine focus kids

14. Participants Central Academy • Public middle school • 85% kids from low-income families • 96% Latino • 9% English Language Learners • 15% kids in special education • Seventh grade math test scores in the top 25% for the city

15. The seventh grade class • Ms. Marquez (Latina) • Ms. Alton (black) • 12 out of 24 kids in the class had I.E.P.s • Focus kids (9) • 6 girls, 3 boys • 6 had I.E.P.s • 2 kids with I.E.P.s also were E.L.L. • Hispanic (I speak Spanish but also English, I come from the Dominican Republic but I was born here, Dominican and American)

16. Data collection ETHNOGRAPHY • 25 visits in the seventh grade (90 minute class) • 12 videotaped • Analyzed using grounded theory INTERVIEWS • Multiple interviews • Analyzed using narrative analysis

17. Figured worlds

18. Figured worlds Discussion-based mathematics Multiple strategies, persistence in solving problems

19. Figured worlds Discussion-based mathematics Multiple strategies, persistence in solving problems Procedural mathematics Single strategies, memorized, quickly

20. Seventh grade year Fall Spring Procedural mathematics Discussion-based mathematics

21. Seventh grade year Fall Spring Tracked ability groups Procedural mathematics Discussion-based mathematics Heterogenous grouping No I.E.P.s Half I.E.P.s All I.E.P.s

22. How was ability and disability constructed? Discussion-based mathematics Multiple strategies, persistence in solving problems I’m the talking kind of math learner Procedural mathematics Single strategies, memorized, quickly get it fast or struggle Special education discourses Learn differently, need different methods, visual or not visual learners

23. Selected Findings Different math pedagogies differently constructed math ability and disability Kids took up different discourses from multiple sources to understand themselves as math learners As procedural math dominated, kids increasingly used a binary of get it fast or struggle slow to understand themselves. But some resisted.

24. Relationships with teachers, friends, and family were important in math class and how kids authored their experience. Mathematics was seen as separate from “our Dominican selves” and something only done in English. Kids took up (and resisted) narratives of ability and disability related to race, ethnicity and gender. Kids reported feelings of anxiety: panic, butterflies, blanking out, freaking out when asked to memorize in math class.

25. Desi Desi I don't know! They pay attention [gestures hands forward]. It is like they are a movie or a computer and they just suck it all in [gestures with hands around her brain] like a sponge until they absorb every little piece of it [gestures grabbing tiny pieces of something in front of her]” (Desi, First Interview) Desi I am the type that I would take a minimum at least the WHOLE DAY[stress on that phrase] to learn something like some sort of problem if it is something new and I would have to keep on reviewing and reviewing until it is finally stuck in my head. I just like to take it very slow (Desi, Second Interview) . . . Rachel What kind of math learner are you? Desi Slow

26. Clementine

27. I It takes me It takes me longer to understand math than others I do good in every other subject but math it takes me longer to understand it because um I get and sometimes I don’t Like that’s why me and my mom we whenever I have math homework she fights with me because um in math I don’t focus well I do focus but it takes me hard to like understand it she gets stressed out because like didn‘t we just go over this and um So So like when I was younger sometimes teachers would um They would keep me up from lunch and like finish the work because I didn’t understand it.

28. These kids need math and math needs these kids (Rochelle Gutiérrez, 2002) What can you do in your classroom to increase equity for all kids through access, identity, power and achievement?