Using Social Justice Pedagogies to Improve Student Numeracy in Secondary School Education.

This unique Australian paper presents a study involving a Western Victorian District High School year nine mathematics class using social justice pedagogy to learn Mathematics. The class was comprised of gifted students, mainstream students and students who had diagnosed learning disabilities, all key foci in Australian Education research. The learning content of the Mathematics unit required students to make comparisons between their own lifestyles and those of different families from around the world. This was socially and educationally important as Mathematics was used as a tool to investigate social inequality to improve numeracy. One aim of the study was to determine if there are associations between student learning, student engagement and student achievement when teaching mathematics using social justice pedagogies. The findings from this study suggest that when mathematics is taught using Social Justice Pedagogy, student learning and engagement are both improved. Keywords: social justice mathematics, mathematics education, practical mathematics

Challenges Related to Teaching Mathematics Using Social Justice Pedagogies: A Secondary School Experience

This study involves an Australian Western Victorian District High School year nine mixed ability mathematics class learning mathematics using social justice pedagogy. The learning intent of the unit required students to compare their own lifestyles against different families from around the world and use mathematics as a tool to investigate inequality. Although the study’s findings showed that there were associations between student learning and engagement when using this initiative, there were also many individual and unique challenges encountered during the study. These challenges included integrating the study into an already overloaded school curriculum and many different educational stakeholders. Data analysis suggested that teachers who use social justice pedagogies within their classroom practices need to be flexible, highly adaptive and have a strong commitment to achieve the best learning outcomes for the students. Keywords: Social justice mathematics, student engagement, inequality, society, mathematics, challenges

Promoting Students’ Self-Directed Learning Ability through Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice

Mathematics is a subject which is often taught using abstract methods and processes.  These methods by their very nature may for students alienate the relationship between Mathematics and real life situations.  Further, these abstract methods and processes may disenfranchise students from becoming self-directed learners of Mathematics.  A solution to this may be to teach Mathematics utilizing real world social justice issues and a social justice pedagogy promoting the use of Mathematics as a tool to further investigate, address and potentially to change issues involving social justice.  This unique Australian study investigated a Western Victorian District High School year nine Mathematics class using social justice pedagogy to learn Mathematics.  The class comprised of gifted students, mainstream students and students who had diagnosed learning disabilities.  The learning content of the Mathematics unit required students to make comparisons between their own lifestyles and those of different families from around the world. This was socially and educationally important as Mathematics was used as a tool to investigate social inequality to improve numeracy and engagement with real world Mathematics tasks.  One aim of the study was to determine if this pedagogy motivated students by allowing them to become more self-directed as learners.  The findings from this study suggested that when mathematics is taught using a social justice pedagogy, both student learning and engagement improved and students became more self-directed as learners throughout the course of the study. Keywords: social justice mathematics, mathematics education, practical mathematics, student engagement

Student Perceptions of Classroom Environments in Streamed Middle Secondary Mathematics Classes in Australian Christian Schools

This paper reports on a study into the perceptions students have of the learning environment in Year 9 and 10 mathematics classrooms when the classes are streamed. The sample consisted of 581 students in Years 9 and 10 in 7 different Christian independent schools across Australia. The What is Happening in the Classroom (WIHIC) inventory was used along with a qualitative analysis of interviews with a subset of participants. Results included: students in lower stream mathematics classes report significantly less positive perceptions of their classroom learning environments than students in upper stream mathematics classes, the areas rated most negatively by the lower stream students were in teacher support and task orientation, the areas rated most negatively by the upper stream students were in involvement and investigation, students in the upper stream often feel overworked and left behind whereas students in the lower stream are in some cases not encouraged to excel and fall into a fatalistic attitude of underachievement, even though the learning environment in upper streams was perceived by students to be more positive than lower streams, the desire for positive changes in the upper stream learning environment was more pronounced than in the lower stream. Another result of particular interest and concern was that lower stream perceptions of learning environment deteriorates from Year 9 to Year 10 whereas upper stream perceptions become more positive from Year 9 to Year 10

International Students in Independent Schools: The Divide Between Attitude to Mathematics Class and Perception of Classroom Environment

The experience of students with a non-English speaking background (NESB) studying in Australian independent school classrooms is an ongoing concern for administrators of these schools. This paper reports on research by Kilgour and Rickards (2009) into the perceptions these students have of the learning environments of their Mathematics classrooms along with the same students’ attitudes to Mathematics as a subject. Data collected by survey and interview revealed that NESB students have a more positive attitude to Mathematics as a subject than their Australian classmates, but their perception of their learning environment is more negative than their Australian classmates

Californian Science Students' Perceptions of their Classoom Learning Environments.

This study utilised the What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire to examine factors that influence Californian student perceptions of their learning environment. Data were collected from 665 USA middle school science students in 11 Californian schools. Several background variables were included in the study to investigate their effects on students’ perceptions, such as student and teacher gender, student ethnic background and socio-economic status (SES), and student age. Class and school variables, such as class ethnic composition, class size and school socioeconomic status were also collected. A hierarchical analysis of variance was conducted to investigate separate and joint effects of these variables. Results from this study indicate that some scales of the WIHIC are more inclined to measure personal or idiosyncratic features of student perceptions of their learning environment whereas other scales contain more variance at the class level. Also, it was found that different variables affect different scale scores. A variable that consistently affected students' perceptions, regardless of the element of interest in the learning environment was student gender. Generally speaking girls perceived their learning environment more positively than did boys

Student Perceptions of Classroom Environments in Streamed Middle Secondary Mathematics Classes in Australian Christian Schools

This paper reports on a study into the perceptions students have of the learning environment in Year 9 and 10 mathematics classrooms when the classes are streamed. The sample consisted of 581 students in Years 9 and 10 in 7 different Christian independent schools across Australia. The What is Happening in the Classroom (WIHIC) inventory was used along with a qualitative analysis of interviews with a subset of participants. Results included: students in lower stream mathematics classes report significantly less positive perceptions of their classroom learning environments than students in upper stream mathematics classes, the areas rated most negatively by the lower stream students were in teacher support and task orientation, the areas rated most negatively by the upper stream students were in involvement and investigation, students in the upper stream often feel overworked and left behind whereas students in the lower stream are in some cases not encouraged to excel and fall into a fatalistic attitude of underachievement, even though the learning environment in upper streams was perceived by students to be more positive than lower streams, the desire for positive changes in the upper stream learning environment was more pronounced than in the lower stream. Another result of particular interest and concern was that lower stream perceptions of learning environment deteriorates from Year 9 to Year 10 whereas upper stream perceptions become more positive from Year 9 to Year 10

International Students in Independent Schools: The Divide Between Attitude to Mathematics Class and Perception of Classroom Environment

The experience of students with a non-English speaking background (NESB) studying in Australian independent school classrooms is an ongoing concern for administrators of these schools. This paper reports on research by Kilgour and Rickards (2009) into the perceptions these students have of the learning environments of their Mathematics classrooms along with the same students’ attitudes to Mathematics as a subject. Data collected by survey and interview revealed that NESB students have a more positive attitude to Mathematics as a subject than their Australian classmates, but their perception of their learning environment is more negative than their Australian classmates