Interactive Workshop: Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies: Implications for Teaching from a Curricular Analysis

75 Minutes 

Omni Hotel 

Background. As researchers working with teachers, coaches, and administrators, we regularly encounter the laments of both practitioners and academics around “equity work.” We hear teachers say, “I’m not sure where to start” and “How can I support students when I’m white and don’t share students’ culture?” Many teachers are hungry to find ways to support multiply marginalized students (e.g., intersection of race, disability, sexuality), yet do not feel there are tangible ways to do so. We hear academics argue that educators must go beyond intolerance of -isms or admission of privilege and grapple with ways they enact violence against students, families, and communities (Dumas, 2016; Wilderson, 2010). We take up the theories of anti-Blackness (Dumas, 2016) and white supremacy culture (Okun, 2021) to unpack educational practices that create and sustain violence and identify actionable alternatives. Specifically, we support practitioners and academics to engage with the question: What does it mean and what does it look like to center Black girls’ brilliance in mathematics pedagogy? Given that anti-Blackness is one of the most pervasive forms of oppression in the world (Bullock, 2024), and is amplified by gendered discrimination against Black girls (Epstein et al., 2017), focusing on Black girls has the potential to positively impact students and teachers across diverse contexts.
Purpose. We offer a pedagogical reflection tool that was developed through an equity audit of an NCTM-aligned secondary mathematics curriculum. Our equity audit transformed the pedagogical framework of Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies (BlackFMP, Joseph, 2021) into a qualitative codebook we used to audit the curriculum. BlackFMP is a framework born from studies of Black girls in mathematics classrooms. Building on Critical Race Feminism (Evans-Winters & Love, 2015; Wing, 1997), Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2022; Leyva, 2021), and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), BlackFMP details four dimensions: Academic and Social Integration, Robust Mathematics Identities, Critical Consciousness and Reclamation, and Ambitious Mathematics Instruction.
Research Design. We iteratively developed a codebook from BlackFMP (Joseph, 2021) by integrating key ideas from mathematics education research (e.g., positionality, mathematical dispositions, status) and organizing them as codes around the four dimensions of BlackFMP. We then coded 96 lessons from three middle school courses. This coding moved dialectically between deductive and inductive coding (Saldaña, 2021). This dialectic process reduced overlap within and across the four dimensions of BlackFMP, refined the usefulness of codes and their descriptions, and led us to stabilize codes for each dimension. Once the codebook stabilized, we re-coded all prior lessons to ensure consistency.
Contribution. This session offers tools and activities for educational praxis (heuristic reflection questions paired with a sandbox of examples) developed from the research-based BlackFMP framework (Joseph, 2021) and corresponding codebook. Our work with teachers indicates these tools are empowering, providing an often elusive starting point. Our work with scholars indicates this work is an important extension of the BlackFMP framework as it provides curricular and pedagogical implications for supporting teachers in centering students’ brilliance in their instruction.

6 to 8

Research/Linking Research and Practice