Phyllis Harris
Farmer/Norland
CIL 533/Spring 2017 Article Critique:
No Time Like the Present: Reflecting on Equity in School Mathematics
Summary: Teaching mathematics has given little attention to the issue of equity. In this article, the authors discuss moving equity from the boundaries of typical mathematics in education to focusing on “teacher reflection” and strategies to students whom don’t look like them so-to-speak or come from different socio-economic backgrounds. The authors argue there needs to be a focus on equity especially at the elementary school level when it comes to instructional practices and the influence of those practices on students of color in their classes because it ultimately effects benchmark goals. The article
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Include A from above. This article discusses mathematics education research in relation to equity and the classroom. Although there has been some education research conducted on the topic of equity and mathematics in schools, the studies in this area inclines to ignore relevant social and cultural alarms. I like this article because it is not “business as usual” when it came to giving attention to topics some educators avoid if they can because of the topic on social classes and ethnicity. As I observed my colleagues this week I finally came across an African American math teacher whose classroom purposefully included strategies to meet the needs of all students in her classroom – I had to reflect on my own teaching style and did identify some bias’. On the other hand, the other teachers taught with a lot of assumptions about student’ knowledge and exposure. This quotes from the article really designated with me as I observed. “If teachers assume a "one-size-fits-all" approach to the instructional process, without careful reflection on individual as well as collective student learning, the results are likely to be unequally distributed opportunities to learn and disparities in student achievement” ( Rousseau & Tate,