The Mediating Influence of a Young Black Girls’ Social Network in their Mathematics Learning

Using the classroom experiences of a group of young Black girls from the west side of Chicago, I provide portraits of how children’s social relationships and their interpersonal struggles for recognition, relevance, and fair treatment mediate mathematics learning and participation in the classroom community. Generally, children’s social relationships are framed as external to children’s mathematics content learning and participation. The girls’ portraits argue for considering children’s figured worlds (and their relationships within) as an important ecological space for understanding mathematics participation. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative social network analysis, as well as narrative identity analysis, I take an intersectional and emic view to the girls’ social network and describe how this social structure organizes positions and trajectories within their mathematics classroom.