Intersections of Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching and Disciplinary Literacy
It never fails; year after year secondary mathematics teachers hear the same questions from students: when am I ever going to use this and why do I need to know this? When we hear this same refrain repeated annually, it’s possible we may come to think of it as commonplace and unavoidable. But it may be worth asking ourselves what is behind that question. Let’s take this question at its face value and consider its foundations. What are students experiencing in their own day-to-day lives and why does the mathematical work they are doing in classrooms feel so disconnected? Perhaps this question continues to be at the forefront of students' minds because they truly don't see the connection or relevance to the mathematics content they are asked to complete. As mathematics teachers, we may realize the importance of determining if something is proportional or of being able to interpret data in a graph, but our students are telling us they don’t see the point. So what can we do as educators to help students see the importance that we see? How can we create opportunities for students to translate what they know and what they're learning to life experiences beyond the textbook?
As the research in education develops, longstanding theories for learning are beginning to merge. One such merge is in the understanding of culturally relevant and responsive teaching with long standing theories on building students as competent and independent problem solvers. As this video illustrates, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings highlights three components in her research: student achievement, cultural competence and critical consciousness. Dr. Geneva Gay’s work focuses on teachers’ strategies and practices that are intentionally teaching through the lens of ethnic, racial and cultural diversity relevant to the student population served. Lifting the connections between their respective frameworks, we find key ideas to consider how one might make mathematics instruction relevant and accessible to all students, including attending to students’ culture and identity, considering what assets students bring and contribute to the classroom, and understanding the ways in which students experience, explore, understand and analyze the world around them. Critical to including these components is teachers self reflection, lending us to ask ourselves, am I teaching math or am I teaching students? Am I ensuring students can create a graph or engaging students in the creation and interpretation of graphs that include data relevant to their lives? If we are teaching students, then connecting the math to who they are is imperative. Working in this manner presents an opportunity to acknowledge the genius of every student and to bring joy to those striving for academic achievement, while maintaining cultural integrity.
So, how does culturally relevant and responsive instruction connect to the teaching of mathematics? And what is the connection to disciplinary literacy? Being literate in a discipline goes beyond basic literacies like computation and fact fluencies; beyond determining the constant of proportionality or interpreting a graph. A literate mathematician is able to “ask and answer abstract and authentic questions about their community and individual lives, to address needs in their community or beyond, and to communicate with a specific audience” (Practice #1, Problem-Based Instruction, Disciplinary Literacy Essentials for Secondary Mathematics). Disciplinary literacy provides tools to support students in becoming mathematically literate. This first practice from the DLE document sets the stage for instruction that is situated within problems. It’s important we pause on that for a moment and think of it as instruction situated within a relevant problem, rather than in service of some future unknown problem. Disciplinary literacy asks that our instruction “establish relevant purposes for students to read, write, and communicate within mathematics.” Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves the question our students have been asking us, but in a slightly different way. Perhaps we ask, how can I help students see the mathematical work in their world? How can I help my students use mathematics to make sense of and ask questions about the world around them?
Considering how we might situate our instruction within problems, we provide some suggestions related to cultural relevance and responsiveness. Mathematics teaching allows us to ask particular questions, like “is this proportional?”; culturally relevant teaching allows us to ask a different kind of question, for example: “You work for 8 hours and get paid $100. Your friend works for 6 hours and gets paid $80. Is this fair? Why or why not?” And, culturally responsive teaching might ask another form of a question, like “What percent of people aged 30-60 own their own home and is the distribution proportional across different demographics?” Dr. Geneva Gay once said, “Caring about [someone] conveys feelings of concerns [...but] caring for [someone] is active engagement in doing something to positively affect it” (2010). We show care for our students when we tune in to their lives and eagerly ask mathematics questions that are situated within their lived experiences. Be a seeker of these moments in your students’ lives.
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