Questions for Exploration

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I wanted the focus of my Community Inquiry Project to be Social Justice Math. In particular, I wanted to create tools that would help me implement Social Justice Math or elements of it as necessary in my professional career as a teacher of math. Admittedly, I know little of Social Justice Math. The little that I do know has been gleaned from two math adjuncts at Montclair State —Eliza Leszczynski and Brian Miller. I also know a little of critical pedagogy and the work of Paolo Freire by performing research for Dr. Fernando Naiditch, the professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching for whom I GA.

From what I can tell, Social Justice Math seems to be the application of critical pedagogy to mathematics education. Having researched extensively on other applications of critical pedagogy, I am rather interested in following whatever leads I can on social justice math and how it can be applied to the classroom.
In particular, I am hoping to answer the following queries: What is Social Justice Math? Is it, as some critics indicate, an attempt by the far-left to indoctrinate our youth to socialism, or is in fact a valid educational tool that will aid in the establishment of a more democratic society? What materials exist to help teachers formulate lessons that follow the social justice math ideology? Also, is there research to show that social justice math helps to create its goal — that of a more democratic society, or is it merely academic posturing? Further, by providing students with a context by which to explore math, does this form motivate students to learn and value math as a social tool or is this exploration of math mostly lost on students?

Over the course of this investigation into social justice math, I would also like to interview teaching professionals —both teachers and teacher educators— to get a more immediate understanding of social justice math, how it has been effective/ineffective in the classroom, and what has/hasn’t worked. I am also curious to know if social justice math as a topic works well with all students, or merely with students of certain backgrounds/classes. Are students from low-income families more willing to dig deeper than students from more affluent communities? Or is it something that students from all backgrounds embrace? Also, is social justice math more applicable to certain levels of math, or is it something that can be addressed in lessons for a range of grades?

By answering these and more questions, it is my hope and goal to garner a clearer and better understanding of social justice math. Should my research prove useful, and a boon to others in the teaching community, I would also like to develop those discoveries into tools that I can share with others that would enable us to effectively incorporate elements of social justice math into our practice and become better teachers of math.