Culture in the mathematics classroom
How are racial-ethnic identity and mathematics identity connected?
Melody Wilson grew up in a large, racially diverse city and attended public schools. Troubled by the fact that her classes had become increasingly segregated by race as she moved through middle and high school, she went on to study the relevance of culture in mathematics classrooms. Melody tells Annie Brookman-Byrne about her research into Black students’ racial and mathematical identities.
Annie Brookman-Byrne: What inspired you to conduct this research?
Melody Wilson: By the time I graduated from high school, my advanced classes were nearly all white and Asian, while the Black students in my school were placed in lower-track classes. There were unspoken stereotypes about Black students’ academic ability and motivation, especially in mathematics and science.
During my graduate studies I learned more about the racial dynamics in US schools, and was introduced to the perspectives of Black scholars on the Black community’s struggle for acceptance and freedom in educational spaces. I was drawn to scholars like Lisa Delpit, Danny Martin, Beverly Tatum, and Carla O’Connor. They described the need for a new civil rights movement in education that would give Black students access to advanced academic content, while simultaneously emphasizing these students’ need for a strong and affirming racial-ethnic identity.
I learned from Debbie Rivas-Drake that students of color with the strongest racial-ethnic identities tend to experience the greatest success in school. This finding ran directly counter to the stereotypes I had absorbed in my own childhood schools, where assimilation into mainstream, white culture was assumed to be synonymous with academic success.
“Students of color with the strongest racial-ethnic identities tend to experience the greatest success in school.”
Learning from Gloria Ladson-Billings and Maxine McKinney de Royston about culturally relevant pedagogy, I wondered whether this pedagogy was being implemented in US secondary mathematics classrooms. For my dissertation research I partnered with four Black high school mathematics teachers who were introducing a new mathematics pedagogy at their school in Detroit—a pedagogy grounded in real-world questions that were relevant to their community. I witnessed students’ enthusiastic response during their lessons, while also recognizing the difficulties these teachers had in applying the prescribed mathematics standards, which are often quite abstract, to meaningful real-world projects.
During this same period in my studies, I met my future co-author, Jamaal Sharif Matthews, who had recently collected data on Black students’ racial-mathematical identification as well as their perceptions of their schools and mathematics classrooms. His questionnaire about culturally affirming and critically conscious mathematics instruction in secondary classrooms was closely aligned with the kind of instruction I was witnessing in my own study. When he invited me to further analyze this important dataset, I jumped at the chance.
ABB: What are your key findings from that data?
MW: Black students’ racial-mathematical identities fell into three profiles. The students in the first group were least likely to value attainment in mathematics and to experience mastery in mathematics. As Debbie Rivas-Drake has found, students in this profile also felt the weakest connection with their racial group.
Another cluster of students valued mathematics attainment more, and were somewhat motivated to excel in mathematics as a form of resistance to racial oppression. We call this resistance motivation. The third group of students, the Resistors, had exceptionally high resistance motivation and a strong connection with their racial group, and they valued mathematics attainment highly.
We also found that students in academically selective schools with STEM-specialized curricula were far less likely to be Resistors than students who attended mostly Black neighborhood schools. This contradicts the common assumption that selective specialized schools provide a more challenging, academically motivating environment for Black students than their neighborhood schools. On the contrary, Black students in those specialized schools were more likely to feel racially stereotyped, and they reported that culturally affirming and critically conscious mathematics instruction was almost entirely absent in their classrooms.
ABB: How can teachers use your findings to improve Black students’ outcomes in mathematics?
MW: It is impossible for a mathematics classroom to be culture-free. While the home is where culture is first learned, schools and classrooms play a significant role as well, in that they may be either supportive or unsupportive of Black students’ cultural and academic identities. When schools support connections between Black students’ racial-ethnic identities and their mathematics identities, they help to motivate those students. Despite having more limited financial resources, the neighborhood schools in our sample were more successful at doing so.
“When schools support connections between Black students’ racial-ethnic identities and their mathematics identities, they help to motivate those students.”
This points to a need for Black community involvement in what happens in mathematics classrooms—especially in schools where Black students are in the minority. Parents of Black students might be invited to participate in idea-generating sessions, observe their children’s mathematics classes, and provide feedback and support for teachers who want to implement culturally affirming and critically conscious mathematics instruction but may not know how.
Mathematics teachers whose students do report the presence of this kind of mathematics instruction could be invited to offer demonstration lessons and mentor other teachers. These interventions should be specific to mathematics, a domain in which many Black students still feel particularly marginalized.
ABB: Has working on this topic impacted your own teaching practices?
MW: In part because of this research, I have chosen to teach mathematics in a college program that explicitly aims to support Black students’ racial and cultural identities in a predominantly white institution. This offers me the opportunity to develop culturally affirming and critically conscious mathematics lessons on many of the topics that are taught in high school and the first years of college in the US.
There is no blueprint for this work, but the four Black high school mathematics teachers who participated in my dissertation study have guided and inspired me in finding ways to put these ideas into practice. In the coming years I hope to partner with other researchers, parents, students, and teachers of mathematics at the secondary and tertiary levels. Together we will refine this vision and gather more data on what makes for a supportive and motivating mathematics classroom for Black students during these pivotal years of their identity formation.
Footnotes
Before beginning her studies on mathematics education in the US, Melody taught mathematics at the high school and college levels in rural Fiji. This experience highlighted the many connections that exist between students’ socio-political positioning and their mathematics learning. Later, she earned a master’s degree in Social Foundations of Education and then a PhD in Educational Studies with a joint focus on mathematics education and teacher education. She credits much of her learning to the four Black high school mathematics teachers who participated in her dissertation study aimed at developing a culturally affirming pedagogy for Black students.
Melody Wilson contributed to a special collection on understanding and addressing inequality in education in the journal npj Science of Learning. This interview is part of a series dedicated to sharing practical takeaways and personal insights from authors.
The interview has been edited for clarity.
Interviewee:
Interview by:
Partner
npj Science of Learning
