Interweaving Equitable Participation and Deep Mathematics

Susan Jo Russell began her career in education as a K-3 classroom teacher and elementary mathematics coach. For the last four decades, she has been a senior researcher at TERC, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mathematics and science education, where she directed projects on children’s mathematical understanding and on supporting teachers to learn more about mathematics and about children′s mathematical thinking. She spearheaded the original development and second edition of the K-5 mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data and Space, and contributed to the conceptualization of the Forum for Equity in Elementary Mathematics. In recent years, her research has centered on how students engage in early algebra, number and operations, and mathematical argument, and how to support teachers to engage all of their students in high-level mathematical reasoning. Deborah Schifter has worked as an applied mathematician; has taught elementary, secondary, and college level mathematics; and, since 1985, has been a mathematics teacher educator and educational researcher at Mount Holyoke College and at the Education Development Center. She authored Reconstructing Mathematics Education: Stories of Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Reform and edited a two-volume anthology of teachers′ writing, What′s Happening in Math Class? for which she received the American Educational Research Association Professional Service Award in recognition of an outstanding contribution relating research to practice. She was a writer for The Mathematical Education of Teachers as well as the second and third editions of the K-5 curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. Her recent research has focused on students’ mathematical generalizations and how students use a variety of representations to explain why such generalizations are true.

While reading this book and watching the videos, I found myself wishing that I had read it when I was a classroom teacher. The authors give readers a window into a learning community of educators as they apply their new sense-making about mathematics to their teaching. While the academic content is mathematics, we are guided through the creation of a community where each learner’s sense of self and agency is strengthened around their own learning.

• PrefaceIntroduction: What Is Mathematical Community?Part One: Every Voice MattersChapter 1: Creating Multiple Openings into Engaging MathematicsChapter 2: Establishing Expectations and Structures for a Participatory Mathematics CommunityChapter 3: Making Space and Time for Every StudentChapter 4: Encouraging PersistencePart Two: Collaboration Supports Student AgencyChapter 5: Noticing Patterns as a Gateway to Building Mathematical Ideas TogetherChapter 6: Collaboratively Building Towards a ConjectureChapter 7: Centering Students’ Ideas to Formulate a Class ConjecturePart Three: Student-Created Representations Offer Anchors, Openings, and DepthChapter 8: Raising Student Voices through Student-Created RepresentationsChapter 9: Looking Across RepresentationsChapter 10: Facilitating Critique and Revision of Student-Created RepresentationsPart Four: Students Become Initiators and Advocates for Their Own LearningChapter 11: Supporting Students to Take Charge of Their Own LearningChapter 12: Normalizing ConfusionConclusion: What To Do NextAppendix A: Mathematical Generalizations Explored in This BookAppendix B: Resources for Continued Learning