Who Can Do Math and Science Deconstructing the Rhetoric and Reality of SoCalled Racial Achievement G

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Who Can Do Math and Science?Deconstructing the
Rhetoric and Reality of So-Called Racial
Achievement Gaps

• Danny Bernard Martin
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• dbmartin_at_uic.edu
• Prepared for
• 9th Annual Chicago Symposium Series
• Excellence in Teaching Mathematics and Science
• Research and Practice
• March 23, 2007

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a few disclaimers

• I understand that personal sensibilities are
  often challenged in discussions involving race
  but these conversations must take place. I offer
  no apologies.
• I have both a personal and scholarly commitment
  to challenging impoverished views of African
  American learners and I do not shy away from the
  fact that racism, including color-blind racism,
  is a major factor contributing to these
  impoverished views.
• I devote my energies to the study of race because
  of my commitment to quality mathematics education
  for African American children not for the
  reasons most often citedcourse enrollment and
  career opportunitiesbut for the purpose of
  liberation.

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my major claim. . .

• Within mathematics education, race remains
  undertheorized in relation to mathematics
  learning and participation. While race is
  characterized in the sociological and critical
  theory literatures as socially and politically
  constructed and with structural expressions, most
  studies of differential outcomes in mathematics
  education begin and end their analyses with
  static racial categories and group labels for the
  sole purpose of disaggregating data. One
  consequence is a widely accepted, and largely
  uncontested, racial hierarchy of mathematical
  ability. Rather than challenging and
  deconstructing this hierarchy, many math
  educators take it as their natural starting
  point. Disparities in achievement and persistence
  are then inadequately framed as reflecting race
  effects rather than as consequences of the
  racialized nature of students mathematical
  experiences.

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summary of my research

• A nearly 20-year combined program of teaching and
  research involving African American adults and
  adolescents in several San Francisco Bay area
  communities and schools. Significant attention
  has been paid to African American learners in the
  community college context.
• My focus is on understanding the salience of race
  and identity in African Americans struggle for
  mathematics literacy and in their
  self-constructions as doers of mathematics in
  school and non-school contexts. I focus on the
  co-construction of African American and
  mathematics identities.
• My work involves multiple levels of analysis
  sociohistorical, community, family, school, peer,
  and individual. Ethnographic and participant
  observation methods an interdisciplinary
  knowledge base focus on mathematically
  successful African American adolescents and
  parents.
• Beginning to extend this work into the Chicago
  context.

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supporting theory
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some research questions

• Why should African American children learn
  mathematics? Why should African American children
  learn mathematics?
• Within the context of their individual and
  collective experiences and subsequent narratives,
  how do African Americans frame their struggles
  for math literacy and what it means to be African
  American? What does it mean to be African
  American in the context of mathematics learning?
  What does it mean to be a learner of mathematics
  in African American contexts?
• What does it mean to say that mathematics
  learning and participation can be conceptualized
  as racialized forms of experience? And why are
  identitiesracial, mathematics, and otherwise
  important considerations?
• What are some implications of a perspective that
  takes race and identity into account for teacher
  selection and development?

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mathematics identity

• Mathematics identity encompasses the dispositions
  and deeply held beliefs that individuals develop
  about their ability to participate and perform
  effectively in mathematical contexts and to use
  mathematics to change the conditions of their
  lives.
• A mathematics identity encompasses a persons
  self understandings as well as how they
  constructed by others in the context of doing
  mathematics. Therefore, a mathematics identity is
  expressed in narrative form as a negotiated self,
  a negotiation between our own assertions and the
  external ascriptions of others. Math identities
  are always under construction.

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Race

• Race is an ideological construction, and not
  just a social construction, because the idea of
  race has never existed outside a framework of
  group interest. As part of a nineteenth
  pseudoscientific theory, as well as in
  contemporary popular thinking, the notion of
  race is inherently part of a model of
  asymmetrically organized races in which Whites
  rank higher than non-Whites. Furthermore,
  racism is a structure because racial and ethnic
  dominance exists in and is reproduced by the
  system through the formulation and applications
  of rules, laws, and regulations and through
  access to and the allocation of resources.
  Finally, racism is a process because structures
  and ideologies do not exist outside the everyday
  practices through which they are created and
  confirmed. These practices both adapt to and
  themselves contribute to changing social,
  economic, and political conditions in society
  (Essed, 2002, p. 185).

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Racialization

• Any process or situation wherein the idea of
  race is introduced to define and give meaning
  to some particular population, its
  characteristics, and actions. (Miles, 1988, p.
  246)

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a few papers

• Martin, D. (2006). Mathematics learning and
  participation as racialized forms of experience.
  Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 8(3),
  197-229.
• Martin, D.(in press). Mathematic learning and
  participation in African American context The
  co-construction of identity in two intersecting
  realms of experience. In N. Nasir P. Cobb
  (Eds.), Diversity, Equity, and Access to
  Mathematical Ideas. (pp. 146-158). New York
  Teachers College Press.
• Martin, D. McGee, E. (in press). Mathematics
  literacy and liberation Knowledge construction
  in African American contexts. To appear in B.
  Greer, S. Mukhophadhay, S. Nelson-Barber, A.
  Powell (Eds.), Culturally Responsive Mathematics
  Education. Mahwah, New Jersey Lawrence Erlbaum
  Associates.
• Martin, D. (2006). Researching race in
  mathematics education.
• Martin, D. (2006). Missionaries or cannibals Who
  should teach mathematics to African American
  children?

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Thank You!
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(No Transcript)
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Workshop slides
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RaheemFraming African American Identity

• I grew up in North Richmond, and Im not sure if
  you are familiar with North Richmond, it is
  considered the most depressed area in the city of
  Richmond. And I went to the elementary school in
  the neighborhood as well. . . . I didnt see
  Black people in positions of power, authority.
  You know. I grew up seeing the Brady Bunch on
  television, Leave It to Beaver on the
  television, Happy Days, the Partridge Family.
  So I grew up looking at the images of families
  that were pretty much intact and had more going
  for them than I saw in my community. So that was
  sort of like my contrast there. Seeing that, Id
  be honest, I used to think that White people just
  naturally had it better than we did, and that was
  the way it was meant to be. . . . But I have to
  admit getting some factual things about Black
  history has demonstrated to me that we did
  accomplish things, that we werent always in the
  condition were in, where we were slaves. Now we
  are sort of like growing up in communities that
  are plagued with all types of problems, but for
  the first time I started seeing that there was a
  different side to being Black. . . . .

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RaheemFraming African American Identity

• I tell you man it blew me away. I mean until this
  day, its given me a confidence that I know a lot
  of brothers and sisters that I deal with dont
  have. . . . So you know, Im thankful that I got
  that information at a young age and didnt grow
  up thinking the way I was thinking. Ill be
  honest, I thought that Black people were inferior
  and White people were superior because of what I
  saw in the world around me. And then also as a
  child growing up, I can count on just about one
  hand the Black teachers that I had. I look back
  and reflect on the way I thought, in the way I
  perceived things. That had an impact on the way I
  felt about my own people. I saw people that were
  not Black as my teachers. So that made me
  self-consciously come on with the thought that
  Black people are just not that smart. White
  people are smarter than us. Thats why most of my
  teachers are White.

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RaheemFraming Mathematics Learning and
Participation as Racialized Forms of Experience

• I always liked math. I was in 3rd grade class and
  I was running circles around other students in
  math. I was just taking tests and getting As
  like it wasnt nothing. . . . I was in a math
  class, a regular math class in the 7th grade, and
  I got a B the fist quarter and all As the other
  3 quarters in math. And not only that, but
  whenever Ms. Berks asked a question in the
  classroom, my hand was usually the first hand to
  go up and it was so obvious that Ms. Berks would
  call on the other students first to give them a
  chance to answer. If they didnt get it, then she
  would come to me and let me give the correct
  answer. And the only other student in the
  classroom whom I thought of was Bruce. He was a
  White student who wore braces and he got an A all
  4 quarters. But Bruce hardly ever answered
  questions. Even if he did answer questions he
  never beat me with raising my hand. Part of it
  was I was always very competitive so I liked to
  show what I could do. So anyway I remember Ms.
  Berks at the end of the school year telling me
  that she made a mistake not putting me in the
  algebra class in the 8th grade. And I remember
  her telling me this and not realizing what
  algebra was and I was just Oh well, no big deal
  to me.

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RaheemFraming Mathematics Learning and
Participation as Racialized Forms of Experience

• But she put Bruce in algebra, I remember she said
  she should have put me in algebra also. I thought
  she was saying that because I used to raise my
  hand all the time and because I got the As the
  rest of the 3 quarters. But the first time I
  really found out why she made that decision was
  when I requested my school records this past
  summer. When I requested my school records, I
  found out that in the 7th grade, I scored in the
  90th percentile for mathematics. And this is the
  7th grade. So Ms. Berks as a teacher should have
  seen this. And when I read that and saw that I
  got in the 90th percentile, I was angry. I was
  like Man, I should have been further. I should
  have been pushed further along in math than what
  I was. And I tell you man, no way in hell I
  should I have been put in a regular math class. .
  . . But anyway thats to me an example of the
  fact that Black children, even when you do well,
  your educational future is not planned out
  properly for you. . . . When I took math in the
  8th grade, because it was a regular math class, I
  got all Bs that year. And part of the reason why
  I got all Bs, I was bored as hell in that class.
  It was the first time I ever remember hating
  math. . . . I mean it was a pain to sit there
  through that. Not only was it the same work that
  I did already and knew how to do, the teacher
  didnt do much for me. I cant remember his name,
  but I do know he was a White male and me and him,
  I dont recall really hitting it off and he
  didnt give me any interest in math. But by the
  time I got to algebra in the 9th grade, I had
  kinda lost interest in math.