Despite how math curricula tend to present real-world challenges as universal and neutral, representations of reality in these problems are based on #mathed#mtbos 🧵
particular
though oftentimes implicit
assumptions, social values, and priorities
💰❤️🩹 🌎
Q: How well do conventional views of mathematical literacy (and translations of those
visions to curricula) take up girls and women – their experiences, promise, knowledge and ways of knowing? #Feminism
Example: so many real-world problem contexts pertain to human mobility 🚶🏼
(distance-rate-time stories, related rates situations, so many others)
In school mathematics, human mobility is taken
up in ways that assume universality and neutrality of experience, even though...
women are forced to navigate mobility relative to violence, harassment, and fear of such assaults.
(it's not only women of course)
AND have developed survival strategies in the face of this precarity
So school mathematics can be understood to doubly exclude women – through a curriculum that ignores the need to negotiate precarity and that overlooks the expertise women have developed in the face of precarity
This double exclusion is ethically stilted and implies that the mathematical literacy being promoted will, by design, reinforce patterns of exclusion and
inequality
critical thinking:
what do we know and how do we know it?
is this answer right?
does an argument make sense?
do we have enough evidence?
are these data reliable?
are there other interpretations or solutions?
critical mathematics:
how can we use mathematics to reveal or document or analyze various forms of oppression?
how can we use mathematics to transform unjust systems?
how is mathematics used and who benefits from looking at or solving a problem this way? (cont.) #iteachmath
this week's letter from Biden's Dept of Education @usedgov to state ed officers makes a set of statements that I would like to challenge, together with your help 🧵
1) "To be successful once schools have re-opened, we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning"
This reminds me of math teachers who start the year by giving a test on the 1st day of school, w same type of rationale. 🗯️
Teacher Ed 101, this is a cruel practice. How about we assume that COVID has had a devastating impact and spend our energy and money working to respond to that? We don't need tests to tell us what we already know, or can assume.
#disrupttexts activism, led by teachers, pertains to school literature. Math ppl might feel like this discussion is tangential to our work as math teachers.
i'm going to try to explain here how this is centrally related to math education, using their principles.
1) "We have been socialized in certain values, attitudes, and beliefs that inform the way we read and teach texts, and the way we interact with our students. How are my biases affecting the way I’m teaching this text and engaging with my students?"
Math teachers, for us too.
2) "Literature study in U.S. largely focuses on White (and male) dominated society, as perpetuated through a traditional, Euro-centric canon. Ask: What voices—authors or characters—are marginalized or missing in our study?"
Q: "We value the journey in so many subjects in school. Why are we so focused on answers in math?"
My Answer: Math functions as a gatekeeper, and so focuses on who answers correctly and quickest. if you change that approach to math, then you might open the gates.