Culturally Responsive Teaching

Most Americans take mathematics to mean ``computation'' and view mathematics beyond arithmetic as having no relevance to everyday life. In fact, mathematics ``is commonly perceived as the antithesis of human activity - mechanical, detached, emotionless, value-free, morally neutral." [Mukhopadhyay & Greer, 2001]. Despite this common perception, mathematics is a human activity and, as a result, is value-laden and culturally informed. Moreover, my personal culture has never meshed well with the culture of the mathematics I experienced in schools and textbooks. Consequently, my approach to teaching in general, and for mathematics in particular, is steeped in attention to relevance, cultural responsiveness, and social justice. In every course I have taught, from quantitative reasoning for young adults to graduate qualitative analysis, my students have grappled with learning the content of the course and with how they enact that learning in the larger context of their lives and communities. An example of how this teaching approach is realized in my students' learning is given below, through several illustrations.

In addition to creating environments and materials that reflect the diversity of experiences my students bring with them to class, I embrace culturally responsive teaching [Gay, 2000]. I actively model for my students behaviors, actions, and approaches to teaching and learning that are culturally aware as well as socially and ethically informed. My goals in teaching responsively are to:

• Validate the experiences and learning styles students bring to class by finding out about them and folding these into course materials.
• Engage in multidimensional assessments of my students' learning. Even in large undergraduate courses I have always used ``non-traditional'' forms of assessment, in addition to quizzes and timed exams. These evaluations of student learning have included written projects, portfolios, collaborative (group-graded) assignments, cooperative (individually graded) assignments, web-based homework, and occasional peer- and self-evaluated work. development of self-regulation and critical thinking.
• Support students in developing an awareness of the knowledge, skills, and value sets - including understandings of mathematical concepts - associated with access to social, economic, and political power.
• Facilitate learning through a variety of authentic mathematical and pedagogical contexts (whether or not the contexts are from students' personal culture). For example, I have taught a largely white, middle-class, group of prospective teachers both through contexts that are personally relevant and through those that are socio-culturally rich but not echoes of personal experience.

How might all that look in action? As a classroom teacher it can be seen in the experiences I build into lessons and the choice of topics for assignments (e.g., see my course web pages). As a mentor to undergraduate and graduate students it appears in various forms, from encouraging awareness among European American students of the privileges that come with their skin color to challenging long-held beliefs that mathematics is acultural. Essential to my teaching is the belief that learning is part self-discovery and part synthesis of others' discoveries.

The activities my students and I design are aimed at developing habits of critical thinking both in and out of mathematical contexts. To me, students are successful when they can demonstrate understanding of the mathematics they can do and can identify the kinds of ideas that lie just at the edge of their grasp.