When I came to know myself, I was the youngest in a household of 10. One of my earliest memories is being outside with one of my brothers, catching bumble bees in an old Coca-Cola® bottle
Thomasenia Lott Adams
Akihiko Takahashi, Makoto Yoshida, and Introduction by: Dewey Gottlieb
From the Archives highlights articles from NCTM’s legacy journals, as chosen by leaders in mathematics education.
Elizabeth A. van Es, Victoria Hand, Priyanka Agarwal, and Carlos Sandoval
Teachers’ noticing of classroom activity shapes who is invited to participate, who is valued, and whose forms of knowing are included in mathematics classrooms. We introduce a framework for multidimensional noticing for equity that captures the stretch and expanse of teachers’ attention and sense making of the local, sociocultural, and historical aspects of mathematics classrooms. We use data from two teachers’ classrooms to illuminate how their noticing of students’ sociocultural selves, of the history of mathematics and schooling, and of students’ potential futures informs enactment of culturally sustaining instructional practice. We discuss this framework in relation to calls in mathematics education to create more equitable and affirming classroom spaces for youth.
Justin Gregory Johns, Chris Harrow, and Kaitlyn Alexander
Problems to Ponder provides 28 varying, classroom-ready mathematics problems that collectively span PK–12, arranged in the order of the grade level. Answers to the problems are available online. Individuals are encouraged to submit a problem or a collection of problems directly to mtlt@nctm.org. If published, the authors of problems will be acknowledged.
Dan Battey, Kristen Amman, Luis A. Leyva, Nora Hyland, and Emily Wolf McMichael
Precalculus and calculus are considered gatekeeper courses because of their academic challenge and status as requirements for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and non-STEM majors alike. Despite college mathematics often being seen as a neutral space, the field has identified ways that expectations, interactions, and instruction are racialized and gendered. This article uses the concept of labor to examine responses from 20 students from historically marginalized groups to events identified as discouraging in precalculus and calculus instruction. Findings illustrate how Black students, Latina/o students, and white women engage in emotional and cognitive labor in response to discouraging events. Additionally, to manage this labor, students named coping strategies that involved moderating their participation to avoid or minimize the racialized and gendered impact of undergraduate mathematics instruction.
Rachel Wiemken, Maria Nielsen Stewart, Gabriel Matney, Timothy Folger, and Tami Matney
This department provides a space for current and past PK–12 teachers of mathematics to connect with other teachers of mathematics through their stories that lend personal and professional support.
Xiaobo She and Timothy Harrington
Get familiar with this visual instructional tool to help students make sense of mathematical relationships and select suitable operations for word problems at varied grade levels.
Amanda T. Sugimoto and Heidi Meister
The authors draw on collaboration with a group of teachers to describe how three-act tasks could be (re)designed and implemented for online synchronous and asynchronous learning, identifying technological factors that teachers might consider.
Kari Kokka
Caring for student affect when teaching social justice mathematics (SJM) is important because discussions of social inequities may elicit emotional responses from students. This article extends previous conceptualizations of SJM, which typically encompass dual goals of teaching dominant and critical mathematics, by theorizing a third set of goals—affective pedagogical goals. Dominant, critical, and affective pedagogical goals are described within a framework of Three Dimensions of SJM. Two illustrative cases, one in a Title I public middle school and the other in an elite independent school, are presented to explore how affective pedagogical goals may be mediated by context. Affordances and tensions of affective pedagogical goals are discussed.
Courtney Fox and Anna DeJarnette
This full unit in trigonometry introduces the world water crisis. Students engage in real-world problem-solving activities that access 21st-century skills while learning mathematics.
