Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Supporting Young Children Of Immigrants In Prek-3

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.

#Sayhername: Making Visible The T/Terrors Experienced By Black And Brown Girls And Women In Schools

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Queering Education: Pedagogy, Curriculum, Policy

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Critical Mathematical Inquiry

Occasional Paper Series

Welcome to Issue 41 of Bank Street’s Occasional Paper Series. The issue features a collection of papers by authors with a shared affinity for the work of critical mathematical inquiry (CMI). In what follows, we present our framing of mathematics education as a participatory venue for CMI and situate it in the context of another, perhaps more familiar approach to teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ).

The “Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations” And Its Role In Maintaining White Supremacy Through Mathematics Education, Laurie Rubel, Andrea V. Mccloskey

Occasional Paper Series

In this study, we offer an analysis of the phrase the "soft bigotry of low expectations" and considers its role in rhetoric about U.S. mathematics education policy and practice, especially in regards to Critical Mathematical Inquiry. From the phrase’s origins in a speech given by President George W. Bush in 2000, to its current use on social media, this phrase offers a lens into white supremacy and "tools of whiteness" (Picower, 2009), and their persistence in U.S. schooling paradigms, especially about mathematics. We analyze specific, recent instantiations of the phrase on blogrolls and Twitter, in addition to more implicit …

Elementary Mathematics And #Blacklivesmatter, Theodore Chao, Maya M. Marlowe

Occasional Paper Series

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has opened up conversations in schools across the country about systemic racism, a “new” civil rights movement, and the treatment of children of color. In this article, a veteran elementary teacher uses the #BlackLivesMatter movement to help her students see the power of mathematics in their own lives, taking care to first connect with her school community so as not to incite trauma. Using an age-appropriate activity to investigate the feelings of anger felt by the Black community of Ferguson County, Missouri, shortly before the police murdered Michael Brown, we construct a conversation on what elementary mathematics …

Mathematics For Whom: Reframing And Humanizing Mathematics, Cathery Yeh, Brande M. Otis

Occasional Paper Series

Mathematics for social justice allows students to see mathematics as an analytic tool to understand and influence issues important to them and their communities. Existing work in teaching mathematics for social justice often connects to secondary curriculum. But what about elementary mathematics? This paper describes the theoretical frames and gives an example of social justice-oriented mathematics with elementary-age students. We share the process of analyzing published K-6 mathematics curriculum as an entryway to engage in investigations that raise students’ awareness of social issues and to develop their mathematical power and sense of self as mathematics thinkers and doers.

Power To Change: Math As A Social-Emotional Language In A Classroom Of 4 And 5 Year Olds, Elinor J. Albin, Gretchen Vice

Occasional Paper Series

Tells the story of how mathematics influenced a long term investigation around feeling powerful within an early childhood classroom. Written by Early Childhood Teacher, Elinor J. Albin, and Dean of Faculty, Gretchen Vice, this essay outlines the guiding questions by which teachers at The Advent School in Boston, MA connect mathematics to overarching themes and social-emotional learning. “Power to Change” concludes with observations about how and why mathematics provided a language for building social-emotional intelligence in four and five year olds.

The World In Your Pocket: Digital Media As Invitations For Transdisciplinary Inquiry In Mathematics Classrooms, Lynette Deaun Guzmán, Jeffrey Craig

Occasional Paper Series

Building a curriculum from online digital media may provide opportunities for students to draw on their funds of knowledge, deconstruct dominant narratives, and engage with complex multimodal artifacts. We focus on an example of how we have used a digital infographic, The World as 100 People, to unpack global and local issues in mathematics classrooms. Using digital media as invitations for critical mathematical inquiry, we call for mathematics educators to push back on (1) the way mathematics should be formally taught in schools, and (2) a common practice of social media restrictions in schools.

Collaboration And Critical Mathematical Inquiry: Negotiating Mathematics Engagement, Identity, And Agency, Frances K. Harper

Occasional Paper Series

When faced with the challenge of supporting students to do the “messy” mathematical work necessary for exploring social justice problems through critical mathematical inquiry, teachers might rely on more procedural or direct instruction. Because how students learn matters as much as what they learn, this can inadvertently limit students’ engagement with mathematics. Instructional strategies designed to foster equitable collaboration can support critical mathematical inquiry by promoting norms for equitable student engagement and mathematics identity development. As teachers and students negotiate what counts as mathematics engagement and who has access to mathematics, students’ authority over mathematics and social justice issues increases.

Cultivating A Space For Critical Mathematical Inquiry Through Knowledge-Eliciting Mathematical Activity, Debasmita Basu, Steven Greenstein

Occasional Paper Series

Learning mathematics becomes more effective when teachers leverage their students' mathematical and everyday knowledge as resources for instruction. Thus, tasks that reveal these forms of knowledge would be especially useful to teachers. Unfortunately, such tasks are hard to find and even harder to create. Consequently, we developed a collection of mathematical tasks that we hoped would elicit “children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases (i.e., the understandings and experiences that have the potential to shape and support children’s mathematics learning—including children’s mathematical thinking, and children’s cultural, home, and community-based knowledge)” (Turner et al., 2012, p. 68). These tasks proved to be productive …

Quantitative Civic Literacy, Mary Candace Raygoza

Occasional Paper Series

As teachers strive to reimagine mathematics classrooms as interdisciplinary, problem-posing spaces that connect to students’ lives, communities, and the world, how can they prepare young people to develop as civic actors, to build quantitative civic literacy? This article explores how mathematics teachers may support students to learn about and take civic action in relation to mathematical study of societal inequalities. Keeping in mind there is not a singular way of conceiving what it means to develop students as democratic citizens, this article offers a call to explore the range of ways quantitative civic literacy may be understood and taken up.

Re-Designing Mathematics Education For Social Justice: A Vision, Fahmil Shah

Occasional Paper Series

With a recent push within recent years incorporate issues of social justice within mathematics classrooms, it is important to consider the practicality of addressing these issues in classrooms. Using a theoretical framework developed through a historical analysis of mathematics and its development in school systems around the world, this paper addresses aspects of the current US educational system that limit the feasibility of incorporating social justice in mathematics classrooms. The author also provides recommendations for the field that might pave the way for progress towards a socio-analytical focus in mathematics classrooms in the future.

Teaching For Social Justice Through Critical Mathematical Inquiry, Steven Greenstein, Mark Russo

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Patriotism? No Thanks!, Madhu Suri Prakash

Occasional Paper Series

Patriotic fever reigned supreme in my son’s fifth grade classroom in the public elementary school he had attended since kindergarten. It was in a middle-sized university town in the United States.

Framed photos of each student flouting the flag with patriotic pride announced his teacher’s curriculum and pedagogy. Mrs. ABZ’s message, at least as experienced by my son and me, was “Do or die!” You either subscribe to her patriotic philosophy of education, or you die as a legitimate and valued member of the class.

The school principal accepted that this was unpalatable, undemocratic, inappropriate, unjust and mis-educative—to say the …

A Love-Hate Relationship: Personal Narratives Of Pride And Shame As Patriotic Affects, Mark E. Helmsing

Occasional Paper Series

The Office of Alumni Relations for George Mason University—in Fairfax, Virginia, where I teach—is located centrally on the campus. The exterior of the building faces a busy walkway, displaying in vinyl lettering the official slogan of the university’s alumni association: “once a Patriot, always a Patriot.” This motto refers to the university’s Patriot mascot and implies that once a person joins the university as a student, that person becomes a Patriot and will forever remain a Patriot, which, the alumni office presumably hopes, will result in feelings of goodwill that prompt generous financial contributions from alumni donors.

In considering the …

Patriotism To People In Diaspora Is Love Of Humanity, Ming Fang He

Occasional Paper Series

Patriotism is always contested. It is even more contested for people in diaspora. Diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – “a scattering [of seeds]”) refers to the movement of a population sharing common ethnic identity who are either forced to leave or voluntarily leave their indigenous or ancestral lands and become residents in areas often far removed from their former homes (He, 2010).

In a broader sense, diaspora refers to the situations when indigenous peoples, immigrants, and emigrants are forced to leave or voluntarily leave their tribes, native lands, territories, communities, or countries due to such reasons as imperialism, colonialism, political persecution, …

Constructed Patriotism; Shifting (Re)Presentations And Performances Of Patriotism Through Curriculum Materials, Nina Hood, Marek Tesar

Occasional Paper Series

What does it mean to be patriotic? How are notions of patriotism (re)presented and performed in curriculum materials? In attempting to answer these questions, we contend that it is necessary to move beyond the word patriotic as an isolated concept to explore it in relation to specific temporal, geographic, political, economic, and institutional contexts. Patriotism, or to be patriotic, is conceptualized and means something quite different—and manifests differently—in different eras and in different countries.

We utilize curriculum materials and documents as a lens through which to explore different conceptions and manifestations of patriotism as they pertain to the education of …

Patriotism, Race, And The Militarization Of Citizenship, Jenna Christian

Occasional Paper Series

The visual essay emerges from 2.5 years of ethnographic and arts-based research on the politics of race, citizenship, and military recruiting among Latinx youth in Texas. The essay juxtaposes two examples of how the military intersects with racialized constructions of a patriotic citizen: 1) the case of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem at NFL football games, and 2) the role of military-run Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs in teaching citizenship. Through the two cases, the essay challenges readers—and educators—to attend to how patriotism is linked to both white supremacy and militarization within the United States.

This Is About Us: Drama Workshop As Patriotic Education, Samuel J. Tanner

Occasional Paper Series

For 15 years, I was a drama teacher in two large urban high schools in Minnesota. My classes were designed with the belief that theatre requires the downplaying or even sacrifice of the individual for the success of the collective. Yes, these classes involved practices that helped students rehearse basic tools of performance but, more importantly, they required participants to work together as a group. Each semester-long class ended with a theatrical production written, produced, and performed by the students for audiences of their peers. Careful not to impose my vision on the content of their productions, I worked to …

On Patriotism, William Ayers

Occasional Paper Series

What’s so great about America?

Near the top of my list is sweet home Chicago—a mesmerizing metropolis, once home to generations of Illini, Winnebago, and Miami peoples, rising along the shore of that immense inland sea and sweeping toward the dazzling prairie just beyond.

There’s Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. There’s Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm and Studs Terkel’s Division Street, Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

So …

Fostering Democratic Patriotism Through Critical Pedagogy, Hillary Parkhouse

Occasional Paper Series

When I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I …

Patriotism And Dual Citizenship, Patricia Gándara

Occasional Paper Series

I am a citizen of two countries—the United States and Mexico—and I have a deep love of both, for different reasons. I believe that being a citizen of two countries allows me to be a partial outsider in each, which perhaps gives me an uncommon perspective on both. I know that there are those who argue that it’s impossible to be truly loyal to one country if one is also a citizen of another, and there are those for whom any criticism of one’s country is tantamount to treason. I reject both of those positions.

First, I believe that a …

Loving America With Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study Of U.S. Rights In The Age Of Trump, Margaret N. Becker 9828901

Occasional Paper Series

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the students of my 4^th grade classroom in a public school in East Harlem had lots of questions about our country. Over and over they wondered: What is a right? How can we protect ourselves when we disagree with the government? This paper stories the year-long study of rights in the United States that grew out of these questions and the learning that came out of this curriculum, as well as works to define what patriotism means to me as an educator and a citizen.

“That's Quite A Tune”: An Interview With Bruce Springsteen, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania.

My name is Mark Kissling. I am an assistant professor of education at Penn State University. I’m also the guest editor of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series issue #40 titled, “Am I Patriotic?” The purpose of the issue is to complicate how we think about and enact patriotism, with a particular focus on how teachers teach and students learn about patriotism.

So how does this relate to Bruce Springsteen and the interview that you’re about to hear?

In mid-December of 2008, I spent two days at the Woody Guthrie Archives—then in New York City, …

A Note From The New Editor-In-Chief, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Learning And Teaching The Complexities Of Patriotism Here And Now, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Last June, the day before the Philadelphia Eagles franchise was scheduled to celebrate its Super Bowl victory at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump revoked the invitation.

The majority of the players had made clear that they would skip the event. Instead of attending the presidential spectacle, they planned to celebrate elsewhere in Washington, D.C., including by touring the nearby National Museum of African American History and Culture (Nakamura & Lowery, 2018). In place of the event, the President led a ten-minute “Celebration of America” on the White House lawn that featured the playing and singing of the national …

Experiential Knowledge And Project-Based Learning In Bilingual Classrooms, Adriana Alvarez

Occasional Paper Series

Culturally and linguistically diverse children deserve sophisticated and dynamic biliterate learning opportunities that integrate the children’s life experiences and keen intellects. Dynamic learning in early childhood classrooms, including progressivist pedagogical approaches like project-based learning, has been shown to facilitate academic achievement as well as high-level learning capabilities including critical thinking, agency, problem solving, and negotiation (Adair, 2014; Bell, 2010; Hyson, 2008; Katz & Chard, 2000). Too often, culturally and linguistically diverse children are offered learning opportunities that fall short of helping students achieve their potential or of validating their life experiences (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Nieto & Bode, 2008; …

No Room For Silence: The Impact Of The 2016 Presidential Race On A Second-Grade Dual-Language (Spanish-English) Classroom, Sandra L. Osorio

Occasional Paper Series

“¡Quiere sacar a todos los suramericanos! Quiere quedarse con solo los blancos,¹ shouted second grader Salvador² to his classmate Victor. They were supposed to be reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, but somehow the conversation had turned to the then presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Donald Trump. That was how Trump and his rhetoric entered our dual language classroom.

Far too often, the voices of students of color, their experiences, and their lives are not validated in the classroom. When Salvador and Victor’s conversation about Trump erupted, the teacher and I—the teacher …

Introduction: A Vision For Transforming Early Childhood Research And Practice For Young Children Of Immigrants And Their Families, Fabienne Doucet, Jennifer Adair

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.