Culturally Specific Pedagogy in the Mathematics Classroom: Strategies for Teachers and Students

by Jacqueline Leonard

Overview

Advocating for the use of culturally specific pedagogy to enhance the mathematics instruction of diverse students, this revised second edition offers a wide variety of conceptual and curricular resources for teaching mathematics in a way that combats and confronts the forms of oppression that students face today. Addressing stratification based on race, class, and gender, Leonard offers lesson templates that teachers can use with ethnically and culturally diverse students and makes the link between research and practice. Connecting cutting-edge and emerging technologies to culturally specific pedagogy, the second edition features new chapters on mathematics and social justice, robotics, and spatial visualization. Applying a more expansive focus, the new edition discusses current movements such as Black Lives Matter and incorporates examples of rural and tribal students to paint a broader picture of what culturally rich mathematics classrooms actually look like. The text builds on sociocultural theory and research on culture and mathematics cognition to extend the literature and better understand minority students’ goals and learning needs. Including new discussion questions and new examples, lessons, and vignettes of integrating culture in the mathematics classroom, this book employs pedagogical research to field-test new instructional methods for culturally diverse and female students.

Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351255813
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	306
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jacqueline Leonard is a professor of mathematics education and former director of the Science and Mathematics Teaching Center (2012–2016) at the University of Wyoming, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Tables List of Figures Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Bibliographical Note 1. Culture, Identity, and Mathematics Achievement 2. Cognition and Cultural Pedagogy 3. Cultural Pedagogy 4. Computational Thinking, Computer Scaffolding, and Game Design 5. Robotics, Spatial Ability, and Computational Thinking 6. Women in Aviation and Space: The Importance of Gender Role Models 7. Learning Mathematics for Empowerment in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms 8. Black Lives Matter: A Context for Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice 9. Race and Achievement In Mathematics: A Historical Prespective Appendix A: Computational Thinking Rubric Appendix B: Scratch Dance Party Tutorial Appendix C: Knex Data Collection Sheet Appendix D: Sculptris Bison Tutorial References

Editorial Reviews

"Many teachers are aware that they do not adequately address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students in their mathematics classrooms but are unaware of how to start correcting this issue. This book provides an excellent entry point for mathematics teachers to consider how culture and pedagogy intersect the concrete research-based examples."

—Erika Bullock, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

This new edition will certainly be welcomed by those mathematics educators, mathematics teachers, and teachers of mathematics who seek new ways of reaching students in their classrooms. Leonard’s concept of culturally specific pedagogy is based on the foundations of Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist Thought… A main tenet is that all students should know that mathematics is a part their history."

—From the Foreword by Martin L. Johnson, University of Maryland, USA

"In this updated and expanded edition, Leonard not only strengthens her argument for inextricably linking mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning to culture but also connects culturally specific mathematics to some of the most ‘talked about’ issues of the day. I am confident that this updated and expanded edition will become an invaluable resource for those mathematics educators who possess the will to ensure that every child has access to meaningful culturally specific learning experiences in mathematics classrooms."

—David W. Stinson, Georgia State University, USA, and Editor of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education

"This book provides pedagogical and theoretical frameworks that respond to traditional mathematics teaching practices by empowering teachers and learners to see the multiple purposes for learning mathematics, helping learners appreciate why mathematics is important in their lives, and allowing teachers to see that their practices are highly correlated with students’ understanding the relevance of mathematics to their lives. "

—Robert Berry, University of Virginia, USA

From the Publisher