Incorporating Social Justice into Statistical Instruction: Using Action Research to Impact Pre-Service Teachers

The following action research depicts how two researchers from two universities merged their courses and goals of instruction to impact change in future teachers. Two currently practicing middle school teachers from one university worked with researchers to develop a social justice lesson that had relevance to seventeen K-8 pre-service teachers at another university to promote changes in beliefs about equitable teaching practices and policy. Findings from preand post-surveys, field notes during enactment, and reflections teachers found teaching statistics for social justice (TS4SJ) in this setting provided an increased responsiveness to the needs of students and statistical connections while also attending to excuses by those facing dilemmas in belief and racial dominance. INTRODUCTION For decades, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge have been a focus in teacher education programs (Shulman, 1987). However, while deepening teachers’ mathematical content knowledge is of high priority, it is not sufficient for mathematics instruction in the 21st century (National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics [NCSM] & TODOS Mathematics for All [TODOS], 2016). Therefore, in recent years, more attention has been given to broaden those knowledge foundations to improve achievement in all students, especially underserved and marginalized students, by using culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Greer, Mukhopadhyay, Powell, & Nelson-Barber, 2009) and teaching for social justice in mathematics education (Gutstein, 2003). There is also much argument for the need of culturally relevant pedagogy in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics courses (Kant, Burckhard, & Meyers, 2018). The goal of this article is to explore changes in K-8 teacher candidates’ beliefs about the importance of cultural, social, or political knowledge as they learn about statistics through a social justice lens. To reach this goal, a team of two mathematics educators (researchers) from two universities in the southeastern United States and one of the researchers’ two graduate students (teachers) co-planned a lesson for K-8 Pre-Service Teachers (students) in the other researcher’s course called Probability and Statistics for K-8 Teachers. This lesson targeted statistics for the course and social injustices expressed by the K-8 PSTs and was co-taught by the two teachers immersed in teaching statistics for social justice (TS4SJ). LITERATURE REVIEW Culturally Relevant Teaching Culturally relevant teaching is defined as a pedagogy that allows students to bring knowledge and experiences from their homes and communities that can influence the mathematics teaching and learning (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Ladson-Billings’ (1994) study showed that culturally relevant teaching has positive effects on teacher beliefs and students’ learning. Ladson-Billings (1995) found that regardless of their instructional approaches, educators who were successful with marginalized students recognized the importance of including their students’ cultures and valued their identities in the teaching-learning process. Through culturally relevant teaching, educators can broaden their students’ participation and engagement and spark their interests in using mathematics to explore issues of equity in schools and their communities. Since raising social awareness is one of the key goals of culturally relevant teaching (Gay, 2000), social injustices naturally arise as culturally relevant pedagogy is implemented. Teaching for Social Justice Gutstein’s (2003, 2006, 2009) approach to teaching mathematics for social justice included three goals to help students use mathematics to develop: (1) critical sociopolitical knowledge of their surroundings, (2) a sense of social agency; i.e., seeing themselves as part of the solution to injustice, and (3) positive social and cultural identities. When students develop an awareness of the world in which they live through mathematics, they see mathematics as a tool to understand, analyze, and make a difference to social action and change (Gutstein, 2006). According to the literature, mathematics standardized tests have served as “gatekeeper” for underserved and marginalized students receiving access to higher-level mathematics, advanced programs, and future goals (Davis & Martin, 2008). In their 2016 joint statement, the NCSM and TODOS described a social justice approach in mathematics education as a way to “transform mathematics from a gatekeeper to a gateway, democratizing participation and maximizing education advancement that equitably benefits all children rather than a select few” (NCSM & TODOS, 2016, p. 3). Unfortunately, many see equity in education as a means to lower expectations of students or as in opposition to excellence in school policy (Gutiérrez, 2013b). However, culturally relevant teaching and teaching for social justice should actually reduce student misconceptions, make content applicable, and increase conceptualization by students. TS4SJ should help develop social, 1 IJ-SoTL, Vol. 14 [2020], No. 1, Art. 13 https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2020.140113 political, and critical knowledge for teaching so educators and students can advocate for underserved and marginalized individuals (Gutiérrez 2013a, 2013b). True equity is in place when rigorous standards are encouraged and content is accessible and applicable to students’ everyday lives. To do this educators and students need to “identify, examine, and reflect on their attitudes toward different ethnic, racial, gender, and social-class groups (Banks & Banks 1995)”. Importantly, this is required by all persons whether from a majority or minority population or a socially advantaged or disadvantaged group. Co-Teaching and Co-Teaching with a Lens toward Social Justice Co-teaching describes an involvement of “two or more educators working collaboratively to deliver instruction to a heterogeneous group of students in a shared instructional space” (Conderman, 2011, p. 24). Co-teaching practices combined with teaching for social justice benefits teacher candidates through increased pedagogical risk taking and support (Conway, Erickson, Parrish, Strutchens, & Whitfield, 2017; Conway, Strutchens, Martin, & Kenney, 2018). By experiencing co-teaching and developing a sociopolitical awareness, teacher candidates can be better prepared to teach in increasingly diverse classrooms and extend their understanding of a culturally relevant pedagogy (Conway et al., 2017; Mensah, 2011). Berry, Conway, Lawler, and Staley (2020) encourage educators to establish networks and communities to support and plan social justice lessons with their colleagues. When educators use co-teaching to provide social justice lessons, thoughtful feedback and self-reflections from each teaching partner enhance both their teaching practices and learning experiences for their students (Cobb & Sharma 2015). Teaching Statistics for Social Justice Education (TS4SJ) Teaching mathematics for social justice is described by Gutstein (2003, p. 35) as reading the world: to understand relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities between different social groups and to understand explicit discrimination based on race, class, gender, language, and other differences. Further, it means to dissect and deconstruct media and other forms of representation and to use mathematics to examine these various phenomena both in one’s immediate life and in the broader social world and to identify relationships and make connections between them. Lesser (2007) suggested that when interchanging the words “mathematics” and “statistics,” TS4SJ is similar to teaching mathematics for social justice. In particular, Lesser (2007, p. 3) defined TS4SJ as “the teaching of statistics with nontrivial inclusion of examples related to (our previously defined version of) social justice, offering opportunities for students to reflect upon the context of these examples as they learn or apply the associated statistical content.” This means that TS4SJ helps students see statistics not only as a useful tool to their everyday lives but also to bring awareness of and transform injustices. Lesser’s (2007) study mentioned various resource distribution examples; for instance, low-income students being less likely to have qualified educators (Spencer, 2005), and argued that this topic is important for students to explore but is not a strong example of social justice. One explanation is that it is not easy to agree on how much a nation such as the United States should allocate its resources on education, military, Medicare and health, etc. Rather, topics such as racial profiling by police (McAplin, 2000; Berry, et al., 2020) and the death penalty would be more powerful examples of social injustice. This is because these lessons require students to analyze data collected from a probability simulation which attends to the content need while also investigating fairness in real life and engaging in sociopolitical issues. Enyedy, Mukhopadhyay, and Danish (2007) presented an argument that the statistics education community was not progressing in attempts to improve achievement in underserved and marginalized students with the use of culturally relevant pedagogy and curriculum. Since 2007 very little attention has been given to this topic in the International Association for Statistical Education. Sharma (2014) blames this on many statistics education researchers not being familiar with emerging research and perspectives relating to culture and power. In addition, Sharma (2014) argued that many of the cultures and experiences differ internationally. This difference is potentially another hindrance for educators incorporating TS4SJ. Though this difficulty persists, in 2014 Sharma published an article illustrating the need to attend to culture while teaching statistics to middle