We share an overview of research-based resources for teaching mathematics for social justice and equity. The session will be framed by the NCTM Equity Pedagogy research brief, which focuses on reflecting, noticing, and engaging in community.

1. THEODORE CHAO
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
OCTM 2015
RESOURCES FOR EQUITY AND
SOCIAL JUSTICE
#OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds

2. FOR MATH?
WHY DOES EQUITY MATTER
#OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds

3. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
THEODORE CHAO
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
• Former middle-school teacher in Brooklyn,
NY
• Current assistant professor at The Ohio
State University
• My work involves:
• Equity/Social-Justice based
mathematics tasks
• Mobile tech for teacher noticing
• Taught “urban” and Special Ed
Elementary Teachers about using
community and social justice to teach
math
• I have 3 kids: 6, 4, and 2.
• I am very tired.

4. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
PAIR AND SHARE (USE A PHOTO/IMAGE IF YOU HAVE ONE)
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
• Where and How do you teach
mathematics?
• How do you see equity and
social justice impacting your
mathematics teaching and
learning?
• What are your frameworks/
definitions of what equity
means?
• What resources would you
like to share?

5. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
GUTIÉRREZ’S (2012) 4 DIMENSIONS OF EQUITY IN MATH
WHAT IS EQUITY ANYWAY?
• Access
• updated and rigorous texts,
appropriate technology, high-
quality teachers accessible
outside of class hours
• Achievement
• large numbers of students
engaged in mathematics, high
scores on standardized
achievement tests, students
prepared for/continuing on to
STEM-based fields
• Identity
• students able to use home
languages, algorithms from home
countries, students not required
to park their identity at the door
• Power
• student voice in the classroom,
students inventing their own
algorithms, the use of
mathematics to investigate
problems meaningful to one’s
own community

6. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
REFLECT FOR 5-MINUTES INDIVIDUALLY, THEN GROUP SHARE
LET’S REFLECT ON OUR MATH PRIVILEGE
• Along the four dimensions of
learning, reflect on your
experience as a math learner.
• What kinds of privilege and
power did you have or not
have as a math student?
• Access
• Achievement
• Identity
• Power

7. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
DONEC QUIS NUNC
50 years ago: Segregation in society &
schools, Brown vs. Board of Education
(1954), Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (1970)
25 years ago: Public Schools attacked, “A
Nation at Risk” (1980), Global
competitiveness in math/science, Bob
Moses’ Algebra as a Civil Right (1983)
10 years ago: The Accountability
Movement, No Child Left Behind, Gutstein
and Peterson’s Rethinking Mathematics
(2005), First Creating Balance Social Justice
Math Conference in Brooklyn, NY (2005)
Today: Attack on Teachers and Unions,
Common Core State Standards, Black Lives
Matter, Rochelle Gutíerrez’s Creative
Insubordination (2013)

8. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
SHORT RESEARCH REVIEW FOR TEACHERS AND TEACHER EDS
NCTM RESEARCH BRIEF ON EQUITY PEDAGOGY
• A quick, 4-page review of the
research on equity-based
teaching practices in
mathematics education
• Written to connect NCTM’s
historic equity position
statements to lack of equity
language in Common Core State
Standards
• Aimed to open up dialogue with
and for teachers
• Written with Eileen Murray and
Rochelle Gutiérrez

9. — Chao, Murray, and Gutiérrez
WE DEFINE EQUITY-BASED MATHEMATICS
TEACHING TO MEAN PRACTICES THAT TAKE
INTO ACCOUNT THE WAY(S) MATHEMATICS
EDUCATION PERPETUATES OPPRESSIVE NORMS
AND THEREFORE ACTIVELY SEEKS TO ERASE THEM,
SO THAT ALL STUDENTS CAN PARTICIPATE
MEANINGFULLY IN MATHEMATICS LEARNING AND
CREATE THEIR OWN MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE.
”
“
#OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds

10. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
OF EQUITY PEDAGOGY
OUR THREE INTER-RELATED PRACTICES
• Reflecting
• Not just reflecting on your pedagogy and your classroom norms, but also
considering how you identify yourself and how others identify you
• Developing advocacy dispositions
• Noticing
• Attending to students’ identities
• Building upon students’ prior knowledge
• Engaging in Community
• Forging a mathematics community in the classroom
• Building your teaching community

11. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
TALK AMONGST EACH OTHER ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS
REFLECTING
• What kinds of dispositions do I hold towards teaching, students, mathematics, and the
profession? Do I advocate for my students and for other teachers on a regular basis?
• The Multicultural Mathematics Dispositions Framework (MCMD) (White et al., 2012)
ask questions along these three strands:
• 1. Openness: How open am I to the different ways various cultures think about and
do mathematics differently and how culture affects mathematics teaching and
learning?
• 2. Self-awareness/Self-reflectiveness: How aware am I of my personal culture,
beliefs, and experienc- es learning mathematics? How do these affect my
mathematics teaching?
• 3. Commitment to Culturally Responsive Mathemat- ics Teaching: How do I find
ways to incorporate my students’ cultures into my teaching and to engage them in
rigorous mathematics?

12. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
TALK AMONGST EACH OTHER ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS
NOTICING
• Question: How do I listen to my students, particularly students who might have
little voice in school? How might I integrate mathematical counter-narratives into
and across my curriculum?
• Questions: How do my lessons utilize home language to support academic
development for English learn- ers? How do my lessons help students connect
math- ematics with relevant/authentic situations in their lives? How do my lessons
support students’ use of mathematics to understand, critique, and change an
important equity or social justice issue in their lives?
• Notice Student Identities:
• help students understand the circumstances of their identities,
• question whose interests these created identities serve
• help students construct counter-narrative identities.

13. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
TALK AMONGST EACH OTHER ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS
ENGAGING IN COMMUNITY
• Questions: What kinds of norms operate in my classroom? Do I create opportunities for students
to contribute regularly, particularly students with different home languages and/or mathematical
backgrounds?
• Questions: Am I doing enough to engage my colleagues and my students in meaningful ways,
drawing on their passions and future goals? When I have achieved some success, can I still do
things differently so that I can persuade even more teachers and students of the importance of
equity? By what standards, or whose, do I measure the success that I achieve? (Gutiérrez, Bay-
Williams, & Kanold, 2008).
• Forging a mathematics community:
• all students have a voice in the construction of mathematical knowledge
• Building your teaching community
• Being will- ing to take risks in teaching is much easier when done in a community of
professionals who seek to advocate for students.

14. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
SOME RESOURCES
HOW TO STAY CONNECTED?
• Twitter
• #educolor
• Facebook
• Conferences
• Creating Balance in an Unjust
World
• creatingbalanceconference.org
• NYCore
• Free Minds, Free People
• NCTM Diversity three-part book
series.
• Radical Math website:
• http://www.radicalmath.org
• Rethinking Mathematics, 2nd
Edition, book:
• Ron Eglash’s Culturally Situated
Design Tools
• http://csdt.rpi.edu

15. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
MY WORK
RESEARCH ON CHILDREN’S MATHEMATICAL THINKING
• Historically, math for children 3-6 emphasizes Counting and Cardinality,
with slight emphasis on “skip counting” and patterns (Clements &
Sarama, 2007)
• Rational numbers seen as “too hard”, not introduced until 4/5th
grade, and only emphasized in Middle School standards (NCTM,
CCSS)
• Yet, recent evidence shows young children can work with rational
numbers:
• If introduced through equal sharing problems (Empson & Levi, 2012)
• When embedded in stories and scenarios connected to prior
knowledge (Lesh et al., 2013)

16. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
CONNECTING TO FAIRNESS
Young children can work with Rational Numbers when connected
to ideas of Fairness and Sharing
• Helps children build strong numerical and mathematical
understanding
• Empowers children to “see” rational numbers as intuitive,
rather than unconnected
• Focuses mathematical thinking around fairness and justice
from an early age

17. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
SOME FINDINGS FROM MY WORK WITH CHILDREN
• Learning happens when we listen to
teachers and children, both are wealth of
anti-racist, equity-based resources and
ideas:
• But they rarely have opportunities to
connect these issues to mathematics
• Elementary children and teachers love
engaging in these activities as they lead to
mathematical experiences across curriculum
• Children as young as 3 (Pre-K) can
understand and describe complex issues of
injustice through role playing stories of
Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mike Brown Jr.
• Using mathematics to document unfairness
is empowering to children

18. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
SOME THINGS I’VE FOUND
ENGAGING CHILDREN TO CONCEPTUALIZE “FAIRNESS” MATHEMATICALLY
1. Know that children intuitively understand
“fairness”. Try it with fair sharing problems to
see. (Ex: I’ll take 3 brownies. You can have 1.
Is that fair?)
2. Allow children opportunities to use
mathematics to articulate “unfairness” in
their world. Start with sharing games, but
also connect to stories, current events, and
scenarios. (Ex: Is it fair that the 5rd-graders
always go to lunch 10 minutes early?)
3. Help children use mathematics to articulate
and document this injustice when they see it.
(Ex: Make a map showing the stores that sell
fresh fruit and vegetables in your
neighborhood? What about the stores that
sell alcohol or cigarettes?)

19. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
THE FAIR SHARING GAME
• Scenario: Should involve a story context,
often involving characters or settings that
your students are familiar with.
• Objects: Use objects that can be counted
easily, manipulated, and split into 1/2s, 1/4s,
and 1/3s. Grapes, cookies, slices of american
cheese, donuts, brownies, apples, pears,
kiwis, bananas, popsicles, stickers, or
modeling clay.
• Progression: Start simply, listening closely to
your children’s thinking. Play some basic
counting games to start. Only move to equal
sharing problems when your children seem
ready to show and discuss how they count.
• Not about teaching fractions. Rather, help
children connect fractions and division to
their intuitive understandings of fairness.
1. Your friend Carlos and you want
to share two carrot sticks. How do
you share the carrot sticks so that
you and Carlos each get the same
amount?
2. There are 10 crackers to share
for you and your 3 friends. How
many crackers does each child get
so that they each have the same
amount of cracker?

20. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
A #BLACKLIVESMATTER MATH LESSON
TRAFFIC STOPS IN FERGUSON ACTIVITY
• A game examining racial profiling statistics in Ferguson
(http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/2013/reports/161.pdf).
Each child has a toy car to drive across a bridge, an adult
plays a “police officer”. One by one, children spin a 10-unit
spinner.
• For “whites”, spinning a 1 (13%) means they get
“stopped”. 1 of 3 “whites” hold a bag labeled
“contraband”.
• For “blacks”, spinning a 1-9 (86%), means they get
“stopped”. 1 out of 5 “blacks” hold “contraband”.
• Children are eliminated if they are stopped and carrying
“contraband”. The game ends when every child has crossed
the bridge or been eliminated. Children make a short video
to document why the game is unfair.
• Children quickly learn, one group has unfair advantage over
the other group. Why?
Task designed by Jessica James, Britni Boyer, Mallory Loless, Amber
Gregg, and Theodore Chao

21. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
EXPLORING MATH OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
ROSA PARKS AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
• Create a “bus” with “front” and “back” rows,
where one adults plays the “bus driver”. Children
are randomly assigned to “white” or “black”
groups, with more students in “black” group.
Each student has a “coin”, to board the bus one
at a time. The bus driver tells them where so sit:
“white” in front, “black” in back. Children quickly
fill up back seats and must stand, while front seats
remain empty. Finally, one student plays Rosa
Parks, sits in front of the bus. The bus stops,
everyone gets off. The boycott begins:
• For young children (< 8), explore why it is not fair
to have X number of empty seats in the front, yet
Y children must stand in the back.
• Older children (8-12), examine the coins. How
many coins did the bus lose every ride with the
boycott? Every day? How much did the system
lose during the whole boycott?
Task designed by DeAndrea Jones and Theodore Chao

22. #OCTM2015 #EquityMathEd @professorteds
IT HAS BEEN AN HONOR TO WORK WITH YOU TODAY
THANK YOU
• Remember, this is NOT
easy work.
• If you want a copy of
this presentation or
have any questions,
contact me at
• Email:
• chao.160@osu.edu
• Twitter:
• @professorteds