Improving Access to Mathematics

Key experts with extensive research and classroom experience examine how the multiple dimensions of race, class, culture, power, and knowledge interact in mathematics classrooms to foster and create inequities. Chapters explore new theoretical perspectives, describe successful classroom practices, and offer insights into how we might develop an effective sociocultural approach to equity in math education. Seeing diversity as an instructional resource rather than as an obstacle to be overcome, this forward-looking volume:

• Helps us to understand the process by which diverse learners experience mathematics education.
• Examines the way students’ identities can influence their mathematics learning.
• Describes mathematics education programs that have demonstrated their success with poor, urban, and rural students of color.
• Explains why certain teaching and learning interventions are successful.
• Offers culturally based approaches to mathematics education, including activities for the classroom.

Na’ilah Suad Nasir is Assistant Professor of Education at the School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Paul Cobb is Professor of Mathematics Education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

“This important book provides educators with new ways of understanding the social, historical, and even psychological processes that lead to differential access to mathematics. Hopefully, from those understandings will emerge new solutions that will allow reform to include mathematics content, the teachers who are meant to teach it, and the students who are expected to learn it.” Walter G. Secada, University of Miami

“This book advances the discourse in both multicultural education and mathematics education. It provides a state-of-the-art review of relevant theory and research on diversity, equity, and access.”
Ellice Forman, University of Pittsburgh