By Julia Aguirre, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, Danny Martin 

 

Each teacher and student brings many identities to the classroom. What is their impact on the student’s learning and the teacher’s teaching of mathematics?

This book invites K–8 teachers to reflect on their own and their students’ multiple identities. Rich possibilities for learning result when teachers draw on these identities to offer high-quality, equity-based teaching to all students. Reflecting on identity and re-envisioning learning and teaching through this lens especially benefits students who have been marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, or gender. The authors encourage teachers to reframe instruction by using five equity-based mathematics teaching practices:

• Going deep with mathematics
• Leveraging multiple mathematical competencies
• Affirming mathematics learners’ identities
• Challenging spaces of marginality
• Drawing on multiple resources of knowledge

Special features of the book:

• Classroom vignettes, lessons, and assessments showing equity-based practices
• Tools for teachers’ self-reflection and professional development, including a mathematics learning autobiography and teacher identity activity at nctm.org/more4u
• Suggestions for partnering with parents and community organizations
• End-of-chapter discussion questions

About the Authors:
Julia Maria Aguirre is assistant professor of education at the University of Washington–Tacoma. Her work focuses on mathematics teaching and learning, teacher education, and culturally responsive mathematics pedagogy, with a primary goal of strengthening access and advancement in mathematics education for historically marginalized youth. The National Science Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and Spencer Foundation have funded her work.

Karen Mayfield-Ingram is associate director for the EQUALS programs at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on mathematics and equity professional development, teacher leadership, and parent involvement. She is the author ofThe Journey--Through Middle School Math (EQUALS, 2005) and co-editor of the EQUALS Middle School Investigationsseries.

Danny Bernard Martin is professor of education and mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on understanding the salience of race and identity in black children’s mathematical experiences. He is the author of Mathematics Success and Failure among African Youth (Erlbaum, 2000), editor of Mathematics Teaching, Learning, and Liberation in the Lives of Black Children(Routledge, 2009), and co-editor of The Brilliance of Black Children in Mathematics: Beyond the Numbers and Toward New Discourse(Information Age, 2013).