Abstract
This chapter draws on critical race and sociocultural theories of learning and identity to center and privilege the racialized narratives of six girls of color who were enrolled in an AP Statistics classroom, characterized by high-quality implementation of ambitious and equity-oriented instruction. Data includes interviews with focal students, an interview with the teacher, and 6 months of classroom observations. The purpose of this chapter is to look closely within this mathematics classroom context to understand and uncover some ways in which a classroom teacher can support students to negotiate and navigate their racial identities while learning mathematics. Findings indicate that even within a classroom context that reflects equity-oriented instruction and is organized to support students’ academic identities and mathematics learning, this classroom persists to be a site of racialized discourse on how students are positioned as doers of mathematics in relation to how they racially identify or are identified by others. These findings are discussed, paying close attention to the implications for teachers and teacher educators. Particularly, I suggest that as teachers, it is necessary but not sufficient that we adopt many of this classroom teacher’s practices in support of students. At the same time, as teacher educators, we need to support teachers to inquire into their own identities vis-à-vis their students’, and the salience of race and racism for mathematics teaching and learning, to engage with students in conversations around race and racism, and to disrupt assumptions regarding ability in mathematics.
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Notes
- 1.
AP stands for Advanced Placement and is a program in the United States and Canada that offers college level course curriculum and examinations for high school students. Often, upon successful completion of the AP exam, students are able to apply course credit(s) toward their college degree.
- 2.
All names are pseudonyms to protect participants’ anonymity.
- 3.
To be consistent, I chose to capitalize the word “White” in instances where it marks one’s racial identity . For example, “Ms. Williams is a White woman teacher.” In other instances, where it is used as a noun or adjective, I do not capitalize it. For example, “Neoliberalism and Institutional racism support white supremacy and white hegemony by leaving whiteness as unmarked.”
- 4.
The AP Calculus classrooms at this school were racially diverse as well, but in different ways. Briefly speaking, there were a large number of African American or Black and Pacific Islander identifying students in this AP Statistics classroom, unlike the AP Calculus that had a large number of East Asian identifying students in addition to a much larger number of White students.
- 5.
In the United States, “magnet” schools attract students, across regular boundaries or school zones, through providing specialized courses or curricula. In this particular case, the specialized curriculum was in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
- 6.
A limitation of this study is that I did not engage in a full treatment of the teacher’s racial identity. I expect that other work, and future research in mathematics education, takes up issues associated with teachers’ racialized identities.
- 7.
This is another instance where class appeared to be a salient social marker for students. Gena and I had a conversation where I was suggesting that there could be factors and circumstances that, along with race, predict sleeping patterns. She seemed willing to listen to my suggestion but still seemed to see the contrast between her and her girlfriend as strictly racialized.
- 8.
While Martin’s (2009) racial hierarchy of mathematics refers to Native American students, an unfortunate shortcoming of much of the important work around race and racialization in mathematics education (and educational research in general) is the omission of Native American and Aboriginal Peoples. I recognize that Native American and Aboriginal Peoples have been the most underserved populations in this county’s educational system. While it is not within the scope of this chapter to attend to these populations of students, I want to be explicit that I recognize how ignored and made invisible these groups have been both historically and presently. Future research will tend to this shortcoming more carefully.
- 9.
While gender is not a focus of this chapter, it is important to note that all six focal students are girls of color, and the only two White students in the class are boys, making it difficult at times to separate out racialized and gendered identities.
- 10.
- 11.
While intersectionality has not been the framing or focus in this work, I still wish to assert that our identities are complex and intersectional in nature.
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Nazemi, M. (2020). Persisting Racialized Discourses Pose New Equity Demands for Teacher Education. In: Radakovic, N., Jao, L. (eds) Borders in Mathematics Pre-Service Teacher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44292-7_12
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