Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks, 6-12
Fostering Hope in the Middle and High School Classroom
Corwin Mathematics Series
Empower your students as they reimagine the world around them through mathematics
Culturally relevant mathematics teaching engages students by helping them learn and understand math more deeply, and make connections to themselves, their communities, and the world around them. The mathematics task provides opportunities for a direct pathway to this goal. But many teachers ask, how can you find, adapt, and implement math tasks that build powerful learners?
Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks helps teachers to design and refine inspiring mathematics learning experiences driven by the kind of high-quality and culturally relevant mathematics tasks that connect students to their world. With the goal of inspiring all students to see themselves as doers of mathematics, this book provides intensive, in-the-moment guidance and practical classroom tools that empower educators to shape culturally relevant experiences while systematically building tasks that are standards-based. It includes
- A pathway for moving through the process of asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving culturally relevant math tasks.
- Tools and strategies for designing culturally relevant math tasks that preservice, novice, and veteran teachers can use to grow their practice day by day.
- Research-based teaching practices seen through the lens of culturally relevant instruction that help students develop deep conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, fluency, and application in 6-12 mathematical content.
Examples, milestones, opportunities for reflection, and discussion questions guide educators to strengthen their classroom practices, and to reimagine math instruction in response. This book is for any educator who wants to teach mathematics in a more authentic, inclusive, and meaningful way, and it is especially beneficial for teachers whose students are culturally different from them.
The book is a great resource and provides a deep dive into culturally responsive and relevant mathematics practices. It includes rich examples
and tasks that can be used during instruction, professional development, and research initiatives in mathematics education that seek to embrace
culture and emphasize the relevance of mathematics in our everyday lives. Notably, the culturally relevant mathematics task-building framework
provides clear guidance for creating cognitively demanding tasks that draw on the knowledge and experiences of individuals’ communities and
empower them to address existing inequities.
This phenomenal book provides practical approaches to analyze, identify, and create culturally relevant mathematics tasks that help secondary
mathematics teachers create opportunities to connect to students’ lived experiences.
Thank you, Matthews, Jones, and Parker, for the secondary version of Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks. You provide secondary teachers
with the tools to deepen their understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy for the classroom. Our students need it!
The authors of Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks have provided a well-needed modern vision of what mathematics teaching and learning
at the secondary level should look like in the 21st century. Teachers who read this book will be given the tools to begin developing rich, engaging,
meaningful mathematics experiences that foster joy and creativity for their students while empowering students and teachers as change agents.
In this much-needed work, Matthews, Jones, and Parker build seamlessly on their prior volume for Grade K–5 teachers. The authors provide practical
guidance to support teachers in finding, adapting, or creating tasks with challenging contexts that help develop students’ hope, empathy, and
agency. This is an invaluable resource for teachers who want to center students’ voices and lived experiences.
For those who fear that culturally relevant math can be misconstrued as formulaic tricks or bombastic rhetoric, this book lives up to the title’s
promise of fostering hope. Readers will find a wealth of frameworks for reaching students where they are at, for illuminating the cultural
landscapes that escape our notice, and for inspiring students to see how mathematical ways of knowing and social motivations for inquiry can be
united with rigor, compassion, and scholarly excellence.
The authors remind us that quality math tasks are not solely defined by their level of cognitive demand but must also give deliberate attention
to inquiring about and centering the cultural brilliance and wisdom of students and their communities. This book is a must-read for middle and high school math teachers.
What a wonderful resource full of concrete, actionable strategies for creating more inclusive, culturally responsive mathematics classrooms. The authors offer not only a multitude of rich task examples that are classroom tested, but they also provide guidance for designing mathematically meaningful tasks that are relevant for the students and communities you serve. At the heart of their work is a deep respect for students’ identities and abilities and for the work of teachers committed to a more just, equitable, and hopeful approach to mathematics education.