In the article titled The Sociopolitical Turn in Mathematics Education, Rochelle Gutiérrez argues that in recent years, many organizations and researchers have begun to carefully consider and critique the way in which mathematics classrooms and research have tried to work together to build equality, without considering the framing of such efforts, including cultures, ethnicities, gender and background both of the students and of the society creating the math in the first place. Overall, the article wants to highlight the sociopolitical turns and how they could be helpful as well as hinder.
She mentions several theories, many of which centre upon the idea of "success" and who defines what that word means. "The idea that others will be judging you to see how your students measure up on standardized tests causes many teachers to go against their better judgments of focusing on relationships and broader notions of learning to focusing on test preparation." (p. 43) Many of the theories mentioned, such as LatCrit Theory and Post-structuralism, question the relationship of knowledge and power and how it is used against marginalized and minority groups.
"The important point is that a sociopolitical perspective challenges whether the identities presented in the research project align with the ways in which educators and/or learners who are participants in the project would choose to describe themselves." (p. 45)
Gutiérrez also mentions the downsides to the sociopolitical turn and points out that it could be easy to begin to analyze and "fix" power and identity in a mathematics classroom, and lose track of the mathematics itself. "In the same way that I highlighted the importance of not focusing too strictly on mathematics so that social relations and advocacy disappear, we must also be cautious of not focusing on discourse to the point where mathematics disappears." (p. 56)
I agree with Gutiérrez when she points out that mathematics is in itself a subject that holds power over marginalized and minority groups, as the knowledge it imparted in educational institutions that not all members of society have access to. I also agree with her concern that often in the classroom it is easy to focus too much on the mathematics and neglect the relationships and culture held therein.
One of my thoughts when reading this article is that, looking back over the past few decades, education has had many “movements”, such as in the United States’ “No Child Left Behind” program, BC’s failed attempt at mathematics reform in the early 2000s, phonics vs. whole language learning, and others, that the sociopolitical perspective could be another. What I have observed in years past is that teachers and administrators will take on the new program or new ideology and focus all attention on it, leading to the neglect of other subjects or learning initiatives. The process reminds me of a see saw: we focus so hard on one topic that we ignore all others until there is a crisis, then we rush over to fix that, only to create yet another crisis in another area.
Do you think the sociopolitical perspective is a theory that you could easily integrate into your classroom and with your students? Or, would you want to? Do you find that you are frequently dealing with issues of power and identity in your classroom?
I agree that in many education reform movements, people tend to oversimplify previous practices as being either ineffective or incorrect and do a complete 180. Stocker asserted in “talking teaching mathematics for social justice” that students receive barely anything connected to social justice from K-12. I value your concern that we have been out of balance during the transitions in the last decade; Stocker compared the “balance” in social justice teaching to a scale with an elephant on the one side and a pea on the other. Do I think the sociopolitical perspective is a theory that could be easily integrated into classrooms? I think it is a challenge but it is possible. Stocker suggested that mathematics teachers are playing a causative role in educating social justice. However, the question I am concerned with is how do we keep the teaching balanced? One perspective is to connect math with social issues rather than teaching math for the purpose of social justice. Another side is concerned with developing new programs rather than flipping existing programs.
ReplyDeleteI almost agree with the author’s idea and mathematics education involving sociopolitical perspectives sounds interesting to me. But my question is that if we really need to involve sociopolitical perspective in mathematics classroom. Although I acknowledge some benefits of it such as understanding relationship between math and real life and improving the motivations for mathematics learning, the place to identify yourself or recover your self-esteem can be dealt in other than mathematics classroom. Unless the sociopolitical topic is regarding to mathematics, I cannot easily agree with including sociopolitical perspectives in my class.
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