Teacher Knowledge Vol.2-775 STRIVING FOR EQUITY IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: LEARNING TO TEACH MATHEMATICS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

This study followed 8 secondary mathematics teachers as they collaboratively designed, implemented, observed, revised and re-taught mathematics lessons for social justice, tracing the conversations teachers had around what it means to teach mathematics for social justice and the challenges that they recognized that they faced in implementing these ideas into practice. Analyses revealed that although teachers ’ conversations of teaching mathematics for social justice were well-articulated and consistent with the literature on teaching for social justice, instantiating these ideas into practice proved difficult. Particularly, how to balance and integrate the social justice and mathematical pedagogical goals was challenging. Results suggest implications for professional development in this area. Education is intricately linked to differential patterns of economic, political, and social power structures in society that serve to perpetuate inequity and injustice in both schools and society (Kozol, 2005). The goal of increasing equity in mathematics education entails connecting schooling to these larger sociopolitical contexts of society (Gutstein, 2006) and shifting from preparing students to live within the world, as it currently exists, to preparing students to restructure those systems for the purpose of removing obstacles that women, minorities, the poor