As openly racist discourse and actions have become more prevalent in the past few years, culminating with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, helping future teachers understand how profoundly race shapes our society and students’ lives has become even more urgent. Teachers and their students live in and are influenced by the social milieu and prevailing discourses around race. The discourses influence the teachers’ beliefs about the academic abilities and competence of Black, Indigenous, and people of color,(BIPOC) students (Chavous et al., 2003; Steele, 1997). Further, teachers and school settings influence the racial identities of students, leading some to be empowered and others to be marginalized within mathematics classes (e.g., Shah, 2017; Berry, 2008; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Tate, 2006). Engaging in explorations and discussions around race is crucial for preservice teachers because most teachers in the United States continue to come from white middle-class backgrounds, and have experiences that are different from their BIPOC students (e.g. Castro, 2010; Delpit, 2006; Gay, 2009).
Mathematics also acts as a gatekeeper to sort and filter students (Martin et al., 2010). This issue further feeds into the school-to-prison pipeline, which has been the focus of study in mathematics classrooms to empower disenfranchised youth (Terry, 2010). To be prepared for their future teaching, it is important for preservice teachers to develop an understanding of racism and how it operates as a system to marginalize their students of color. Police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and countless other Black Americans, and the continued protests following these shootings highlight the negative impact of systemic racism on society and demonstrate that many in society are still a long way from having an understanding of racism as a system.
We are a cross-institutional team from UNC Charlotte, Pacific Lutheran University, and University of Houston, who are engaged in designing, testing, and refining two content modules with the goal of simultaneously developing Learners’1 understanding of systemic racism and statistical literacy, both of which are critical needs. The modules we share will engage Learners in using statistical software (CODAP) to analyze large publicly available datasets related to the contexts. Each module is associated with an instructor guide to help navigate the context, content, software, and discussions.
We invite mathematics teacher educators and teachers to use the materials and share their feedback. Currently, the modules have been used to engage middle and secondary (6-12) preservice teachers, and in service teachers. However, we also envision that the modules could be adapted for use with middle and secondary students, and with university students in general statistics courses.
1. Though we designed and tested the modules with preservice and in service teachers, we envision the materials could also be adapted for use by K-16 students.
Licensing
All of the materials shared here are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. This means you are welcome to adapt and share these materials! If you do, please make clear that your materials are adapted from this curriculum and link back to the original materials. We suggest the following language: “These materials are adapted by [Your Name] from the [Module Name] from the project Designing Modules to Support the Development of Mathematics Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Consciousness through Statistical Investigations of Systemic Racism. You can request the original unit here.”
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, grant # 2121364. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
