About the Book
Empower your students as they reimagine the world around them through mathematics
Culturally relevant mathematics teaching engages students by helping them learn and understand math more deeply, and make connections to themselves, their communities, and the world around them. The mathematics task provides opportunities for a direct pathway to this goal. But many teachers ask, how can you find, adapt, and implement math tasks that build powerful learners?
Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks helps teachers to design and refine inspiring mathematics learning experiences driven by the kind of high-quality and culturally relevant mathematics tasks that connect students to their world. With the goal of inspiring all students to see themselves as doers of mathematics, this book provides intensive, in-the-moment guidance and practical classroom tools that empower educators to shape culturally relevant experiences while systematically building tasks that are standards-based. It includes
A pathway for moving through the process of asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving culturally relevant math tasks.
Tools and strategies for designing culturally relevant math tasks that preservice, novice, and veteran teachers can use to grow their practice day by day.
Research-based teaching practices seen through the lens of culturally relevant instruction that help students develop deep conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, fluency, and application in 6-12 mathematical content.
Examples, milestones, opportunities for reflection, and discussion questions guide educators to strengthen their classroom practices, and to reimagine math instruction in response. This book is for any educator who wants to teach mathematics in a more authentic, inclusive, and meaningful way, and it is especially beneficial for teachers whose students are culturally different from them.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Part I: Building a Foundation for Culturally Relevant Mathematics Teaching
Chapter 1: What is Culturally Relevant Mathematics Teaching
Chapter 2: Imagining Culturally Relevant Teaching through Mathematics Practices and Tasks
Chapter 3: Creating and Assessing Culturally Relevant Mathematics Tasks
PART II: Practical Approaches for Planning and Creating Culturally Relevant Mathematics Tasks
Chapter 4: Planning with Intention and Hope
Chapter 5: Creating Contexts for Cultural Inquiry
Chapter 6: Creating Contexts for Empathy, Agency, and Action
PART III: Refining Our Notions and Experiences
Chapter 7: The Journey—Improving Culturally Relevant Mathematics Teaching
Chapter 8: The Flow—Implementing and Refining Culturally Relevant Tasks, Lessons, and Units
Chapter 9: Continuing the Journey
Resources
Appendices
About the Author :
Dr. Lou Edward Mathews is a global mathematics creative and founder of InspireMath committed to building inspiring, sustainable mathematics platforms and culturally relevant education experiences in communities around the world. As Director of Mathematics and Science at Urban Teachers, a national teacher residency program with Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Lou supports the recruitment, coaching and deployment of culturally competent mathematics teachers in Baltimore, Washington DC and Dallas.
In response to the global crisis of racial injustice and COVID19 pandemic, Dr. Lou created Pi Before Dinner, a virtual space and media channel for amplifying and illuminating the voices and images of Black children, families and community in mathematics. The podcast is in its second season on Facebook Live and Youtube and has spawned a website media page and online network of educators and allies.
Dr. Lou has served the mathematics community as a leading equity and racial justice advocate, speaker and scholar. As a mathematics scholar, he has authored studies, book chapters, blogs and videos on culturally relevant mathematics teaching in mathematics. Dr. Matthews led the creation of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education in 2008. The journal was established to increase the presence and voice of scholars in urban mathematics.
Born in Bermuda, Dr. Lou is currently based in the DC area and has been actively involved in national and international initiatives in the United States, Caribbean, and Africa for the past two decades. He has recently established the Inspire Math Foundation and is a past president of the Benjamin Banneker Association and former acting Commission of Education of Bermuda Public Schools
Dr. Lou is an avid mountain biker and committed to various community and social issues such as ADHD, anti-racism, gentrification and affordable housing.
Dr. Shelly M. Jones is a Professor of Mathematics Education at Central Connecticut State University. She teaches undergraduate mathematics content and methods courses for pre-service teachers as well as graduate level mathematics content, curriculum and STEM courses for in-service teachers. Before joining the CCSU faculty, Dr. Jones was a middle school Mathematics Teacher and a K-12 Mathematics Administrator. She provides mathematics professional development nationally and internationally. She has been an educator for 30 years.
Dr. Jones serves her community by working with various professional and community organizations. You can see her CCSU TEDx talk on YouTube where she talks about culturally relevant mathematics. She is a contributing author for the book entitled, The Brilliance of Black Children in Mathematics: Beyond the Numbers and Toward a New Discourse and the author of Women Who Count: Honoring African American Women Mathematicians.
Dr. Yolanda A. Parker has been an educator for over 25 years and has been full-time faculty at Tarrant County College-South Campus for over 10 years in the Mathematics Department where she primarily teaches Statistics and Math for Teachers courses. She has a B.S. in Applied Math from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX; M.A. in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH; and Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from Illinois State University in Normal, IL.
She was honored as one of the 2017 “Hidden Figures of Dallas: Top Women of Color in S.T.E.M.” by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Dallas/Fort Worth Professionals chapter and has been featured in Women Who Count: Honoring African American Women Mathematicians. She was also recognized as the campus recipient of the 2017 Tarrant County College “Chancellor’s Award for Exemplary Teaching”, the highest award a TCC faculty can receive. Her research interests include the effectiveness of mathematics manipulatives with adult learners, algebra teacher self-efficacy and culturally relevant cognitively demanding mathematics tasks.
Review :
The book is a great resource and provides a deep dive into culturally responsive and relevant mathematics practices. It includes rich examples
and tasks that can be used during instruction, professional development, and research initiatives in mathematics education that seek to embrace
culture and emphasize the relevance of mathematics in our everyday lives. Notably, the culturally relevant mathematics task-building framework
provides clear guidance for creating cognitively demanding tasks that draw on the knowledge and experiences of individuals’ communities and
empower them to address existing inequities.
This phenomenal book provides practical approaches to analyze, identify, and create culturally relevant mathematics tasks that help secondary
mathematics teachers create opportunities to connect to students’ lived experiences.
Thank you, Matthews, Jones, and Parker, for the secondary version of Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks. You provide secondary teachers
with the tools to deepen their understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy for the classroom. Our students need it!
The authors of Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks have provided a well-needed modern vision of what mathematics teaching and learning
at the secondary level should look like in the 21st century. Teachers who read this book will be given the tools to begin developing rich, engaging,
meaningful mathematics experiences that foster joy and creativity for their students while empowering students and teachers as change agents.
In this much-needed work, Matthews, Jones, and Parker build seamlessly on their prior volume for Grade K–5 teachers. The authors provide practical
guidance to support teachers in finding, adapting, or creating tasks with challenging contexts that help develop students’ hope, empathy, and
agency. This is an invaluable resource for teachers who want to center students’ voices and lived experiences.
For those who fear that culturally relevant math can be misconstrued as formulaic tricks or bombastic rhetoric, this book lives up to the title’s
promise of fostering hope. Readers will find a wealth of frameworks for reaching students where they are at, for illuminating the cultural
landscapes that escape our notice, and for inspiring students to see how mathematical ways of knowing and social motivations for inquiry can be
united with rigor, compassion, and scholarly excellence.
The authors remind us that quality math tasks are not solely defined by their level of cognitive demand but must also give deliberate attention
to inquiring about and centering the cultural brilliance and wisdom of students and their communities. This book is a must-read for middle and high school math teachers.
What a wonderful resource full of concrete, actionable strategies for creating more inclusive, culturally responsive mathematics classrooms. The authors offer not only a multitude of rich task examples that are classroom tested, but they also provide guidance for designing mathematically meaningful tasks that are relevant for the students and communities you serve. At the heart of their work is a deep respect for students’ identities and abilities and for the work of teachers committed to a more just, equitable, and hopeful approach to mathematics education.
