Mathematizing Perceptions: Preservice Teachers’ Use of Mathematics to Investigate Their Relationship with the Community
Downloads
Abstract
Preservice teachers often hold deficit views about the students they will teach and their communities. These limiting beliefs can result in lower expectations of and poor outcomes for the students, and need to be addressed in all areas of teacher education, including mathematics courses. In particular, mathematics content courses for preservice teachers offer numerous opportunities for investigating social justice issues and challenging preservice teachers’ beliefs. The assignment described in this manuscript provides an example of the work that can take place in mathematics content courses for preservice K-8 teachers. As part of the assignment, preservice teachers used mathematics to investigate negative perceptions that their campus community has of the surrounding neighborhood. They wrote reflections and created mathematical arguments about household income, poverty rates, educational attainment, crime, and diversity in the neighborhood. Through working on the assignment many preservice teachers began to question their stereotypes about the community. Because of the preservice teacher interest in the topic, and because some problematic beliefs were displayed in the reflections, there is a need for similar assignments in this and other courses, in order to help preservice teachers see the strengths of diverse communities, instead of just their shortcomings.Downloads
References
Ambrose, R. (2004). Initiating Change in Prospective Elementary School Teachers' Orientations to Mathematics Teaching by Building on Beliefs. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7(2), 91-119.
Google Scholar CrossrefCastro, A. J. (2014). Visionaries, reformers, saviors, and opportunists: Visions and metaphors for teaching in the urban schools. Education and Urban Society 46(1), 135-160.
Google Scholar CrossrefCastro, A. J. (2010). Themes in the research on preservice teachers’ views of cultural diversity: Implications for researching millennial preservice teachers. Educational Researcher 39(3), 198-210.
Google Scholar CrossrefCivil, M. (2007). Building on community knowledge: An avenue to equity in mathematics education. In N. Nassir & P. Cobb (Eds.), Improving access to mathematics: Diversity and equity in the classroom. (pp. 105-117). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefCruz, B. C. (1997). Walking the Talk: The Importance of Community Involvement in Preservice Urban Teacher Education. Urban Education, 32(3), 394-410.
Google Scholar CrossrefDunn, T.K. (2005). Engaging prospective teachers in critical reflection: Facilitating a disposition to teach mathematics for diversity. In A.J. Rodriguez & R.S. Kitchen (Eds.), Preparing mathematics and science teachers for diverse classrooms: Promising strategies for transformative pedagogy. (pp: 143-158). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar CrossrefFelton, M. (2010). Is math politically neutral? Teaching Children Mathematics, 17(2), 60-63.
Google Scholar CrossrefFrankenstein, M. (2009). Developing a critical mathematical numeracy through real real world word problems. In L. Verschaffel, B. Greer, W. Van Dooren & S. Mukhopadhyay (Eds.), Words and worlds: Modeling verbal descriptions of situations (pp. 111–130). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
Google Scholar CrossrefGay, G. (2010). Acting on beliefs in teacher education for cultural diversity. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 143-152.
Google Scholar CrossrefGay, G. (2000). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, & Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Google Scholar CrossrefGilbert, S. L. (1997). The “four commonplaces of teaching”: Prospective teachers’ beliefs about teaching in urban schools. The Urban Review 29(2), 81-96.
Google Scholar CrossrefGutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar CrossrefGutstein, E., & Peterson, B. (2013). Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Google Scholar CrossrefJoseph, G. G. (2000) The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin, 2000
Google Scholar CrossrefKitchen, R. S., Roy, F. C., Lee, O., & Secada, W. G. (2009). Comparing teachers’ conceptions of mathematics education and student diversity at highly effective and typical elementary schools. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 2(1), 52–80.
Google Scholar CrossrefLadson-Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159-165.
Google Scholar CrossrefLadson-Billings, G. (2000). Fighting for our lives: preparing teachers to teach African American students. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 206-214.
Google Scholar CrossrefLadson-Billings, G. (2006). It’s not the culture of poverty, it’s the poverty of culture: The problem with teacher education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 37(2), 104-109.
Google Scholar CrossrefNational Center for Education Statistics (2014). Projections of education statistics to 2022. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014051.pdf.
Google Scholar CrossrefNational Center for Education Statistics (2013). Racial/Ethnic enrollment in public schools. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cge.asp.
Google Scholar CrossrefNational Center for Education Statistics (2011). Schools and staffing survey (SASS). Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013314_t1s_001.asp.
Google Scholar CrossrefRodriguez, A.J. (2005). Teachers’ resistance to ideological and pedagogical change: Definitions, theoretical framework, and significance. In A.J. Rodriguez & R.S. Kitchen (Eds.), Preparing mathematics and science teachers for diverse classrooms: Promising strategies for transformative pedagogy. (pp: 1-16). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar CrossrefScull, W. R., & Peltier, G. L. (2007). Star power and the schools: studying popular films’ portrayal of educators. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 81(1), 13-17.
Google Scholar CrossrefSleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: Research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94-106.
Google Scholar CrossrefSouthern Education Foundation (2013). A new majority: Low income students in the South and Nation. Retrieved from http://www.southerneducation.org/getattachment/0bc70ce1-d375-4ff6-8340-f9b3452ee088/A-New-Majority-Low-Income-Students-in-the-South-an.aspx.
Google Scholar CrossrefTate, W. F. (1994). Race, retrenchment, and the reform of school mathematics. Phi Delta Kappan, 75(6), 477-480.
Google Scholar CrossrefVillegas, A.M. (2007) Dispositions in teacher education: A look at social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(5), 370-380.
Google Scholar CrossrefWest-Olatunji, C. A., Behar-Horenstein, L., Rant, J., & Cohen-Phillips, L. N. (2008). Enhancing cultural competence among teachers of African American children using mediated lesson study. The Journal o f N egro Education,7 7(1), 27-38.
Google Scholar CrossrefZeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the Connections between Campus Courses and Field Experiences in College- and University-Based Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 89-99.
Google Scholar CrossrefZumwalt, K., & Craig, E. (2005). Teachers’ characteristics: Research on the demographic profile. In M. C. Smith & K.M. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education (pp. 111-156). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Google Scholar CrossrefDownloads
Published
Almetric
Dimensions
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 REDIMAT - Journal of Research in Mathematics Education
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication but allow anyone to share: (unload, , reprint, distribute and/or copy) and adapt (remix, transform reuse, modify,) for any proposition, even commercial, always quoting the original source.
