This paper presents the author’s personal reflection on
work in mathematics education in low-income, mostly Latino communities in
Tucson. Over more than a decade, the author had been involved in the development
of apprenticeship-style approaches to the teaching and learning of mathematics.
It is claimed that “the research was driven by an equity agenda that
capitalizes on building on the students’ and their families’ knowledge and
experiences as resources for schooling” and was driven by the implications for
the mathematical education of these children if their experiences and
backgrounds were used as resources for learning in the classroom.
One of the key characteristics of the work was the involvement
of the community; parents, students and teachers all collaborated to develop
curricula. I see the benefits of offering teachers opportunities to learn
first-hand about the experiences of the community and reconnect with their
students’ families; however, this approach raises more questions about the role
of teacher in this approach especially when Leslie (one of the teacher who worked
with the author) wrote in reflecting on the impact of household visits: “it provides a real look at the whole child”.
I agree that the approach helps the family to know teachers better while
allowing teachers to learn ways to respect other cultures and therefore to
think about the classroom in the community, but I am concerned with what elements
are included in part of this “real” look of the child, and what options are
available for the teacher to adjust classroom instruction accordingly.
The proposed approach requires parents (and other
adults who are important in the life of their students) to provide resources
towards the development of the mathematics learning modules. For example, in
the construction module (asking students how to build an extra room in the
yard), the teacher allowed parents to answer students’ questions. It was
successful in this context, but would it work in a math-intensive situation?
Even though the author intended for math to play a role in the construction
module, would the students to view the activity as a math activity or just an
activity which happened to use math in it? I am lacking confidence that both
sample modules can be validated to be mathematical activities in terms of reasoning,
abstracting, and generalizing math concepts. The author argues that there are
many challenges to be overcome in the pedagogical transformation of household
knowledge into mathematical knowledge for the classroom. The author further
states that these challenges are related in part to teachers’, students’ and researchers
beliefs about what counts as mathematics. Indeed, the activities introduced in
the paper were more social than mathematical.
My question is: will apprenticeship in mathematics help
a majority of students gain mathematics competence outlined in new curricula?
