Students, their Math Teacher, and a Local Community Organization Working Towards Critical Mathematics

This case study offers a recounting and analysis of the experiences of one urban educator, in a public high school mathematics classroom setting, working to integrate critical mathematics curricula and pedagogy with youth and in collaboration with a community organization. This project helps to unveil complexities that teachers may experience when attempting to engage students with real-life mathematics contexts while simultaneously addressing issues of justice and power. The last thirty years of mathematics education research has seen an increase in the number of articles written about critical mathematics, culturally relevant mathematics pedagogy, social justice mathematics curricula and other related traditions. However, little of this research focuses on documenting a year-long effort by mathematics teachers in collaboration attempting to use critical mathematics pedagogical approaches with community organizations. This project examines the pedagogical strategies of a mathematics educator teaching a regular track Advanced Algebra with Trigonometry course and accompanying student work at El Poder High School. El Poder high school educators across various content areas engage students in rigorous learning tasks aimed at helping them gain a deeper understanding of socio-political issues relevant to their lives. Mathematics is no exception. Justicia Verde, the community organization involved in this research project, is grounded in local community struggles. Justicia Verde collaborated with the observed Advanced Algebra with Trigonometry class several times throughout the school year. This community organization has a documented history of fighting for environmental justice and it takes active political stands. This project explores opportunities students had to gain sociopolitical awareness in a mathematics classroom, as well as opportunities students had to take action to address injustices in their local community. In doing so, it examines the challenges, tensions and successes that came through this work. I observed the classroom of the participating mathematics teacher for 18 classroom sessions throughout the 2017-2018 school year. I utilized an observation protocol (see Appendix A) to broadly frame classroom observations. In particular, I observed students’ level of mathematical understanding, engagement, and incorporation of critical knowledge. I define critical knowledge and other pertinent terms for the purposes of this dissertation in the following chapter. I also observed the ways in which a community organization collaborated with the participating teacher to create mathematics lessons/activities used to engage students in substantive investigations of their lives. The participating teacher and I engaged in approximately 8 debrief sessions, each about 15 – 30 minutes in length throughout the academic school year. I utilized the aforementioned lesson and observation analysis tools to guide the reflection discussions. Debrief reflection questions are outlined in Appendix B. Lastly, I conducted two semi-structured interviews with the participating teacher, one at the beginning and one at the end of project. The purpose of the interviews was to better understand the teacher’s teaching philosophy, mathematics class learning goals, and teaching practice reflections. Interview questions are provided in Appendix C. I also collected de-identified student work to better understand the ways in which evidence of student learning supported or contradicted the math teacher’s stated learning goals. These artifacts included their classwork, assessments, and presentations. I analyzed the student work using the same categories outlined in the lesson analysis tool (Appendix A). Three sets of questions guided my analysis of the collected data. One set of questions is focused on the teacher and classroom features, another on student learning and reflections, and a final question on the role of the non-profit community organization that collaborated with the participating teacher. (1) What are the salient features of a high school mathematics classroom taught by a seasoned mathematics educator that self-aligns with social justice pedagogy? How did the observed lessons align to tenets of critical mathematics? (2) What learning goals did students achieve? How did student work and artifacts align to tenets of critical mathematics? What were student reflections? (3) How did a justice-centered community organization contribute to the enactment of classroom practices that align with tenets of critical mathematics? The findings indicate that collaboration between the participating mathematics teacher and Justicia Verde led to meaningful teaching and learning opportunities for students that were rooted in relevant socio-political contexts. The collaboration surfaced tensions between teaching social justice contexts and teaching dominant mathematics. Classroom practices that most readily apparent supported the critical mathematics goals were problem-posing pedagogy, reading and writing across mathematics lessons, and engagement in youth participatory action research. All in all, students learned dominant mathematics in socio-political contexts that contributed to increased levels of sociopolitical awareness and used critical consciousness to take actions at varying levels to transform issues they understood as injustice in their community.