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Social Justice Pedagogy for Whom? Developing Privileged Students’ Critical Mathematics Consciousness

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Abstract

Increasingly, teachers are using consciousness raising pedagogies such as culturally relevant, responsive, sustaining, and social justice pedagogies. However, little attention has been paid to teachers engaging in this work with students of privileged backgrounds (e.g., white, affluent students) and in mathematics. The present study addresses this gap by examining critical consciousness development with social justice pedagogy focusing on 10 students in one-sixth grade mathematics class in an independent social justice-oriented K-8 school in a large, urban city in the Bay Area, California. Analysis of student interviews, student work, and field note data indicate that eight of the 10 focus students gained critical mathematics consciousness, conceptualized as improving sociopolitical understanding, developing critical civic empathy, and taking action.

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Notes

  1. Dis/ability is used to disrupt the normalization of an individual’s “ability” or “disability” to perform tasks in culturally-defined ways (Annamma et al. 2013).

  2. This study focuses on students of dominant backgrounds (e.g., white, affluent), and it does not unpack whether or how Critical Mathematics Consciousness as represented in Fig. 1 and/or Gutstein’s (2006) or Mirra’s (2018) frameworks may be applied for study of students of other backgrounds (e.g., historically marginalized backgrounds). This is a worthwhile investigation for future research.

  3. Other work by Gutstein reports on his use of SJM 100% of the time (Gutstein 2006).

  4. I refer to students as they and their families identified their backgrounds on the optional demographic questions included in consent forms to participate in the study as indicated in Table 1. Some chose not to answer.

  5. I present students’ statements with the language they used in interviews and written work.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Maggie, her students, and Claremont Day School for their partnership with me for this research. I would also like to thank Donna-Marie Cole-Malott, Dan Reinholz, Leigh Patel, and Celine Liu for their helpful feedback on this article.

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  1. School of Education, Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leading, University of Pittsburgh, WWPH 230 South Bouquet St., Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Kari Kokka

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Correspondence to Kari Kokka.

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Appendix: Focus Student Coding Excerpts

Appendix: Focus Student Coding Excerpts

See Table 5.

Table 5 Representative focus student data related to CMC development
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Kokka, K. Social Justice Pedagogy for Whom? Developing Privileged Students’ Critical Mathematics Consciousness. Urban Rev 52, 778–803 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00578-8

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