TABLE OF CONTENTS
Changing the Discourse on Equity and Math and Science for All - Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Erin E. Turner, Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0001
[math education, science, urban learners, equity, contemporary society]
Math and science hold uniquely powerful places in contemporary society. These domains open doors to high-paying professions; provide a knowledge base for more informed conversations with health care workers, educators, and business and community leaders; and demystify issues of global importance, such as air and water quality standards, population density, toxic dumping, and the economy. Schools play a crucial role in mediating access to math and science. The call to make equitable math and science instruction has tended to reside in the policy sector with extension into curricula, rather than in any systematic line of inquiry into what this should look like and why. This chapter sheds light on specific needs of urban learners in the effort to promote science and math for all. High-quality science and math education is a civil right for all students, one which is especially significant for those from non-dominant groups. Studies of equal treatment and equal outcome have played, and continue to play, powerful and historically important roles. Most researchers are generally familiar with the chilling statistics that describe high-poverty and minority urban and rural students' differential access to resources in US schools, and are aware that these trends have changed little in the past three decades. (pages 1 - 18)
This chapter is available at:
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Empowering Teaching and Learning in Math and Science Education - Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Erin E. Turner, Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0002
[empowering, math, science, hybridity, third space, counterscripts]
Empowering math and science education supports youth in appropriating canonical knowledge and practices of science and math, but also provides opportunities to question, challenge, and reconstruct knowledge, practice, and the contexts in which youth live and learn. This chapter provides a brief overview on the theory of constructing hybrid spaces in learning. The gap between script and counterscript can be bridged by building “third spaces,” or hybrid spaces, in classrooms. Third spaces—places where the script and counterscript productively intersect, creating the potential for authentic interaction to occur—are important because they connect the world of youth with the world of school learning through social heteroglossia. Discourses and forms of participation and activity, as mediated by “the tools of talk and interaction” of the classroom, are socioculturally situated and imbued with relationships of power. It matters whether the discourses and practices of youth in schools run counter to the teacher and the social institutions of schooling, and it is often the case that the local knowledge and resources of youth are not recognized or valued in the classroom. The idea of third space has its history in hybridity theory, which “recognizes the complexity of examining people's everyday spaces and literacies, particularly in a globalized world.” (pages 19 - 50)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Critical Mathematical Agency in the Overcrowding at Francis Middle School Project - Erin E. Turner
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0003
[overcrowding, critical mathematical agency, Francis, mathematical learning, school space]
Critical reflections about disparities in the space and resources allotted to different schools prompted an extended mathematical investigation of overcrowding at Francis. The project provided ongoing opportunities for students to critically reflect on conditions at their school, to use math to better understand and argue against the overcrowding, and to collectively work toward change. Comparing data from Francis with data from Longmore was a central part of many students' analyses. This chapter highlights how students participated in ways that evidenced a sense of critical mathematical agency, and discusses aspects of Ms. Font's pedagogy that seemed to foster students' agency, and the potential impact of agency-enhancing learning environments on students' mathematical learning and identities. In the Overcrowding at Francis Middle School project, students enacted critical mathematical agency through acts of authoring as they contributed (authored) their own unique perspectives about overcrowding at their school, and as they imagined (authored) more just and equitable ways to allocate the school space, among others. (pages 51 - 76)
This chapter is available at:
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A Narrative Pedagogy for Critical Science Literacy - Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Erin E. Turner, Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0004
[narrative pedagogy, science, economic pressures, stories, western school]
This chapter presents a case study of Mrs. Davis' teaching of a unit on dynamic equilibrium in the human body: energy in and energy out. It explains that making food and activity choices are deeply rooted in culture and routine, and are shaped by larger societal and economic pressures. Storytelling as a pedagogical practice in families and communities has been in existence as long as the spoken word. Stories have played only a peripheral role in the teaching of science or math in the prototypical Western school. Stories or personal narrative are described as the “precursor” to talking and doing “real” or “paradigmatic” science, providing both the space and the opportunity. “Narrative pedagogy” refers to an approach to teaching that is built with and through the telling of stories. The chapter describes how a narrative pedagogy frames inter-subjective meaning making and embodied knowing as central features of coming to know and be in science and of building epistemological and ontological ties among teachers, students, and science. It suggests how a narrative pedagogy allows the learning community to re-imagine the world (of science) and one's position in it, as one considers how to use both epistemological and ontological positioning to enact change. (pages 77 - 108)
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Becoming an Expert: Critical Engagement with Science and the Community - Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Erin E. Turner, Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0005
[agency, science, cultural politics, global sustainability, math]
The purpose of this chapter is to delve into how youth practice their content knowledge expertise and their agency in a community setting. It helps to rethink the connections between learning, critical engagement with math and science, and agency. The idea that identity work involves the participation of others and the social worlds they inhabit signals how youth may grapple with the sociohistorical and cultural politics that motivate identity work and frame participation within and across figured worlds. The culturally situated approach to agency suggests that how individuals value activity depends, in part, upon the purposes and goals of that activity, its relationship to local knowledge and resources, and the relative positions of power of the agents within that setting. The agency with and in science involves a critical awareness of the role science plays in the world and a critical awareness of the world itself, alongside understandings of scientific ideas and ways of thinking that can be used toward making a difference in the world. The vignette reveals how youth take seriously their commitment to developing and sharing an understanding of the urban heat island effect and its impact on human and environmental health and global sustainability. (pages 109 - 144)
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Community Spaces as a Part of Hybrid Math Learning Spaces: Integrating Multiple Funds of Knowledge - Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0006
[knowledge, learning space, math education, hybrid learning, communities]
This chapter outlines the evolution of one of the counterarguments generated by the girls in order to illustrate how multiple knowledge bases (knowledge about the needs of the community, knowledge about math, and knowledge about ways to critique the district) interacted within this hybrid math learning space. A distinguishing characteristic of this particular space was the fluid movement between space in the math club and the community context of the investigations. This movement between spaces supported the interaction amongst knowledge bases, as knowledge bases are often tied to particular spaces. Ultimately, this hybrid learning space fostered an alternative kind of mathematical activity that challenged the often exclusionary, yet dangerously portrayed as neutral, role of the discipline of math, and opened up entry points for the collective development of mathematical and critical knowledge for the students. Statistics on educational attainment and achievement suggest that the disconnect between students' school experiences and their lives outside of school can have devastating consequences. Math education should not only empower students with the skills and understandings to succeed academically, but also prepare them to critically investigate, challenge, and act upon issues in their lives and communities. (pages 145 - 165)
This chapter is available at:
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Hybrid Spaces for Empowering Learning in Math and Science - Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Erin E. Turner, Maura Varley Gutiérrez
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037998.003.0007
[math learning, hybrid spaces, knowledge, empowering, science literacies]
Science and math learning environments ought to support students in developing and using their math and science knowledge and practices in authentic contexts in addition to providing equitable access to resources, so that all students (especially underrepresented minority students) can be bona fide beneficiaries of science and math education policy initiatives. It is through the collective creation of hybrid spaces that students were able to engage in critical math and science literacies and to translate such critical knowledge into authentic, real world action, thereby exhibiting their critical math and science agencies. This chapter concerns these hybrid spaces and discusses how they are crucial to breaking down the inequitable opportunities that exist and to furthering the cause of science and math for all. It shows cross-cutting themes that reverberate through these hybrid spaces and considers their implications for science and math education. Hybrid spaces allow the coalescence of multiple discourses, perspectives, and resources, leading to a transformation of the learning environment that is at once equitable and empowering. (pages 166 - 184)
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References
Index
