Section 1.1 Getting Started
If you’re new to incorporating social justice issues into math classes, I’d encourage you to start by reading or skimming Jonathan Osler’s “A Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum” 3 , made by a high-school educator but equally relevant in the postsecondary context. Next, Drew Winter’s “Infusing Mathematics with Culture” 4 offers a valuable framework for thinking about the relationship between mathematical content and social justice issues, as well as an emphasis on connecting to student activism and interests.
This book is meant to be used as a workbook for students in a quantitative reasoning (QR) course framed around issues of social justice (SJ). This course developed out of my resource folder for open-access SJ math resources 5 ; feel free to mix and match chapters from this book and resources from the folder to plug into existing courses as well as to "remix" your own full course.
Subsection 1.1.1 Why Teach Postsecondary Math for Social Justice?
Culturally relevant teaching practices contribute to educational equity and social justice (McGee 2014)
Teaching math with a social justice frame increases student learning and achievement (Gutstein 2003; Moses & Cobb 2001; Winter 2007)
Math is already political. What assumptions do our algorithms and databases inherit (O'Neill 2016)? What do we think is "worthy" of mathematical inquiry? Math with applications to petroleum engineering or fracking (Hendrickson 2015) 6 ? Statistical analyses of police stops by race (Khadjavi 2013 7 , Ince 2021 8 )?
See this literature review (Ince 2015) 9 for an investigation of what the research shows about teaching math for social justice.
Subsection 1.1.2 Other Texts for a Math for Social Justice Course
Resources are beginning to be developed for full postsecondary courses, largely in quantitative reasoning, for social justice. A few of the exciting new resources are described in the table below; please fill out this form 10 if you know of any postsecondary-level resources I’m missing!
| Resource Type | Authors | Name and Links to Resource(s) | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Complete lesson plan collections | Gizem Karaali, Lily Khadjavi | Mathematics for Social Justice 11 and Focusing on Quantitative Reasoning and Statistics 12 | ~$60 each |
| Lesson plan collection in development | Mark Branson, Whitney George | Math for the People 13 | Free |
| Complete PDF book; not always SJ-focused | David Lippman | Math in Society 14 | Free |
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tz6Tc0Ug44OyAN_WFRODFT-LNRRQBCnS/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hui9iITN5yD8D32aniSSDH73PvOoS8GQ/view?usp=sharinghttps://kenanince.org/OER4SJhttps://nagt.org/nagt/publications/trenches/articles/v5n3-5.htmlhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2006.10722786?journalCode=ucha20&journalCode=ucha20https://rpubs.com/kaince/SLCPDhttps://www.kenanince.org/literature-review-teaching-math-for-equity-social-justicehttps://forms.gle/Sfm9fvngRipEjneq9https://bookstore.ams.org/clrm-60https://bookstore.ams.org/cdn-1630595793631/clrm-66/https://www1.rebus.community/#/project/8825e826-1c44-4900-95e4-ef14b4704be2http://www.opentextbookstore.com/mathinsociety/index.html