Today's Dumb Idea--Inserting "Equity" and "Social Justice" Into Math Instruction

Lemme take a stab at it--if the Palestinians have six olive trees and the Jooos steal all six and go on to ethnically cleanse the Arabs who grew them, how many Palestinians "refugees" will you find in an UNRWA "refugee camp"? From the OISE site:

Indigo Esmonde's award-winning research on understanding equity and diversity issues in mathematics education and using that understanding to structure more effective and equitable mathematics learning contexts has highlighted new ways to enact equity in the math classroom, and shows that social justice issues can make very effective entry-ways into mathematical discussions. Drawing primarily from sociocultural and cultural-historical theories of learning to frame her research, and from a variety of research methods, including ethnographic, discourse analysis and conversation analysis, and video interaction analysis, she studies mathematics learning in different contexts – in schools, family life, in stores, and at work – discerning how mathematics learning is connected to identity formation. This provides insight into the way people’s identities – including race, gender, and other social categories – affect and are affected by mathematics learning.

Her latest research project has just received funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation's Leaders Opportunities program. The infrastructure project will establish a laboratory that will address two important objectives: 1) the urgent issue of inequitable mathematics achievement in Canada, and 2) the pioneering of new research methods for studying multi-camera video data. The project will include development of a classroom enabled with multiple cameras and recording devices, as well as a collaborative video analysis space that will be made available to faculty and students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto.

Big Teacher is Watching You?