Examining Institutional Racism Within Mathematics Instruction

critical realism;critical race theory;institutional racism;teaching practices;Education;Social Sciences;Educational Studies

Bobsin Salazar, SabrinaGholson, Maisie Lee ;

University of Michigan

关键词: critical realism;    critical race theory;    institutional racism;    teaching practices;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Educational Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/149996/ssabrina_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

In this work I investigate the connection between teaching practices and institutional racism. I combine concepts from critical realism and critical race theory to develop a theory to better describe how local social interactions that occur in a mathematics classroom can disrupt common interactions that lead to the reproduction of the racial structure that permeates contemporary U. S. society. Drawing primarily on the concept of norm circles, I discuss how specific mathematical instructional practices supported the creation of a conflictive normative spaces inside of a classroom in which local disruption of racism are more likely to occur.I apply the theory in an empirical experiment to refine and improve it. I analyzed episodes of instruction from an elementary mathematics laboratory classroom. The application of the theoretical framework consisted first of identifying instances in which the teacher enacted a teaching practice that counter an expected action. The expected action was guided by the literature review on teaching Black children and positioning Black girls in a classroom. Then I checked the normativity of the teacher action to confirm it as a regular instructional practice in this classroom. I also checked the norm circle the endorsed such practice by identifying the members of the circle and how the teaching practice was reinforced.I identified four instructional practices that locally disrupted racism: (1) regulating student seating; (2) keeping the focus on mathematics; (3) regulating speaker and audience participation; and (4) responding to student’s thinking. All these practices, in connection with the conception of mathematics endorsed in this classroom, supported the creation of intersectional normative spaces in which Black children were more likely to engage in doing mathematics and to expect and be expected to do so. In these spaces, they were also less likely to be disciplined or have their thinking immediately evaluated and corrected. In these spaces, Black children, in particular Black girls, were often actively and deliberately being positioned as academically and mathematically smart. A second set of findings from this work center on the methodological operationalization of the framework. The strength of the framework rests in the normativity of the teaching practice, therefore the necessity of verifying the norm circle that locally endorses each instructional practice.This dissertation contributes to theory and method related to the study of how racism permeates teaching practice. Connecting analyses of institutional racism to classroom micro-interactions, this study tests and articulates a theoretical framework that also offers practical leverage for developing approaches to disrupting racist patterns in instruction.