A taxonomy of (mathematics) educational opportunity

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34024/prometeica.2024.31.16403

Keywords:

rural education, educational opportunity, mathematics education, economic stratification

Abstract

Mathematics education research and policy makers lament differences in outcomes related to race and class, treating so called “failures” as obstacles to be eliminated, rather than the outcomes for which it is designed. That is, mathematics education serves an important economic function in society: social selection and economic stratification. Following literature that foregrounds the economic dimension of schools, this analysis offers an examination of how inequalities are created and reinforced through a taxonomy of mathematics educational opportunity. More specifically, it addresses two questions: 1) What are the opportunities that contribute to the creation and reinforcement of social inequality in rural schooling? and 2) In what ways are those opportunities hoarded or leveraged to accomplish stratification? Through an ethnography of a rural, public elementary school in the United States, five opportunities emerged: learning, credentialing, positioning, relating, and networking. The paper offers a conceptualization of each of the types grounded in mathematics education literature and describes how those opportunities were distributed. I suggest that mathematics education’s focus on learning opportunities, while important, fails to account for other dimensions of equity in schools. These other, often invisible, opportunities and the mechanisms by which they are distributed are likely a source of significant inequity.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biography

  • Cassandra Kinder, University of Missouri--Kansas City

     . 

References

Apple, M. W. (1985). Education and power. Routledge.

Baldino, R. R. (1998). School and surplus-value: Contribution from a Third-World country. In P. Gates (Ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference on Mathematics Education and Society (pp. 73–81).

Baldino, R. R., & Cabral, T. C. B. (2013). The productivity of students ’ schoolwork: An exercise in Marxist rigour. The Journal for Critical Educational Policy Studies, 11(4), 70–84.

Cabral, T. C. B., & Baldino, R. R. (2019). The social turn and its big enemy: A Leap Forward. In Jayasree Subramanian (Ed.), Proceedings of the Tenth International Mathematics Education and Society Conference (Issue 35, pp. 1–15). University of Hyderabad.

Calarco, J. M. (2018). Negotiated Opportunities. Oxford University Press.

Carpenter, T. P., & Lehrer, R. (1999). Teaching and learning mathematics with understanding. In E. Fennema & T. A. Romberg (Eds.), Mathematics classrooms that promote understanding (pp. 19–32). Erlbaum.

Cohen, E. G. (1994). Designing groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. Teachers College Press.

Domina, T., Penner, A. M., & Penner, E. (2017). Categorical inequality: Schools as sorting machines. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 311–330. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053354

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes (Second). The University of Chicago Press.

Ernest, P. (2016). The scope and limits of critical mathematics education. In Critical Mathematics Education: Theory, Praxis, and Reality (pp. 99–126). Information Age Publishing.

Gholson, M. L., & Martin, D. B. (2019). Blackgirl face: racialized and gendered performativity in mathematical contexts. ZDM - Mathematics Education, 51(3), 391–404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01051-x

Gutiérrez, R. (2013). The sociopolitical turn in mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 44(1), 37–68. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.44.1.0037

Hiebert, J., & Grouws, D. A. (2007). The effects of classroom mathematics teaching on students’ learning. In F. K. Lester (Ed.), Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 371–404). Information Age Publishing.

Horn, I. S. (2012). Strength in numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics. In National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Ing, M., Webb, N. M., Franke, M. L., Turrou, A. C., Wong, J., Shin, N., & Fernandez, C. H. (2015). Student participation in elementary mathematics classrooms: the missing link between teacher practices and student achievement? Educational Studies in Mathematics, 90(3), 341–356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-015-9625-z

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x035007003

Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life (Second). University of California Press.

LeCompte, M. D., & Schensul, J. J. (2010). Designing and conducting ethnographic research: An introduction (Second). AltaMira Press.

Lin, N. (1999). Building a network theory of social capital. Connections, 22(1), 28–51.

Martin, D. B. (2015). The collective Black and principles to actions. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 8(1), 17–23.

Murray, B., Domina, T., Petts, A., Renzulli, L., & Boylan, R. (2020). “We’re in this together”: Bridging and bonding social capital in elementary school PTOs. American Educational Research Journal, 57(5), 2210–2244. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220908848

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc. (2020). Catalyzing change in middle school mathematics: Initiating critical conversations.

National Research Council. (2001). Adding it up: Helping children learn mathematics (J. Kilpatrick, J. Swafford, & B. Findell, Eds.). National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9822.html

Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (Second). Yale University Press.

Pais, A. (2013). An ideology critique of the use-value of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 84(1), 15–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-013-9484-4

Pais, A. (2014). Economy: the absent centre of mathematics education. ZDM - Mathematics Education, 46(7), 1085–1093. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-014-0625-8

Pais, A., & Valero, P. (2012). Researching research : mathematics education in the Political. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 80(1/2), 9–24.

Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.

Reinholz, D. L., & Shah, N. (2018). Equity analytics: A methodological approach for quantifying participation patterns in mathematics classroom discourse. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 49(2), 140–177.

Secada, W. G. (1989). Agenda setting, enlightened self-interest, and equity in mathematics education. Peabody Journal of Education, 66(2), 22–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/01619568909538637

Sfard, A. (2008). Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing. Cambridge University Press.

Wallace, T. L., Ye, F., McHugh, R., & Chhuon, V. (2012). The Development of an Adolescent Perception of Being Known Measure. The High School Journal, 95(4), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2012.0010

Willis, P. E. (1977). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs.

Downloads

Published

2024-11-29

Issue

Vol. 31 (2024): Prometeica - v 31 (11/2024 - 02/2025)

Section

Articles - Dossier 1

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Cassandra Kinder

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Copyright: Prometeica allows the author (s) to keep their copyrights unrestricted. Prometeica allows the author (s) to retain their publication rights without restriction. Authors should ensure that the article is an original work without fabrication, fraud or plagiarism; does not infringe any copyright or right of ownership of any third party. Authors should also ensure that each one complies with the authorship requirements as recommended by the ICMJE and understand that if the article or part of it is flawed or fraudulent, each author shares responsibility.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Prometeica - Journal of Philosophy and Sciences is governed by the licencse CC-By-NC

You are free to:

  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

 

Copyright maintenance

Prometeica allows the author (s) to keep their copyright without restrictions.

Prometeica allows the author (s) to retain their publication rights without restriction.

How to Cite

Kinder, C. (2024). A taxonomy of (mathematics) educational opportunity. Prometeica - Journal of Philosophy and Science, 31, 300-310. https://doi.org/10.34024/prometeica.2024.31.16403
Received 2024-03-06
Accepted 2024-11-12
Published 2024-11-29