Black English and Mathematics Education: A Critical Look at Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

Abstract

Background/Context: The popularity surrounding culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is notable primarily within language and literacy content areas but is also making its rounds in other disciplines. Because of its assumed objectivity and status, the mathematics discipline has long been a site of disrupting or perpetuating inequity and thus warrants our focus in thinking about how any pedagogical framework influences the success of Black students. We question whether the ideology undergirding CSP is beneficial to the ways in which we seek to educate Black mathematics learners through a philosophy of mathematics education that prioritizes language, and Black English more specifically. Purpose/Objective: The objective of this theoretical paper is to take a closer look at the shift in education research that has drawn attention away from asset-based frameworks, like culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) or culturally responsive teaching, to focus on CSP. We seek to address how Black children may be positioned by the ideologies proposed in CSP, particularly in the way that culture, and Blackness in itself, is performed. Our goal is to highlight potential oversights in this framework and to discuss whether CSP represents a viable solution for Black students, particularly in regard to their mathematics education. Research Design: We elucidate the genesis of CSP and establish its roots as in tension with a Black ontology by tracing the theoretical origins of two scholars known best for its conceptualization. Findings/Results: Conceptualizers of CSP build on Ben Rampton’s work using the concept of “language crossing” and “styling the other,” to level critiques at CSP based on their studies of ritual insults in battle rap and use of African American Language in schools with multiethnic youth. Although it is true that people engage in language-crossing processes quite often, we question whether these actions of language crossing support claims about the eradication of cultural ownership, and at what cost Black people lose these aspects of culture. Conclusions/Recommendations: There are valuable lessons learned from Paris’s undertaking, but what Ladson-Billings provided in her theory of CRP was a more powerful conceptualization of improving education for Black students across multiple content areas because of the ways in which it forgoes the often conservative stance on language proffered in the theoretical ideologies of CSP. Discourse and language are inherently significant aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, and Black English is one possible entry into culturally relevant mathematics.

A Review of Antar A. Tichavakunda's, Black Campus Life: The world Black Students Make at a Historically White Institution SUNY Press

“…Rather my point is to question the assumed community or sameness within the people of color construct and to show how antiblack sentiments exist even within other minoritized groups" (p. 216). The similarities that I see in my own work and Tichavakunda's, is this attention and nuance of a Black specificity, seeking to understand exactly what it means to be Black within spaces of mathematics learning (Ortiz, 2022;Ortiz et al, 2019;Ortiz & Ruwe, 2021), and what it means to be Black while majoring in engineering at an institution that is historically white. Thus the takeaway is that, although less emphasized in largely positivist disciplines of science and mathematics (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), identity matters a great deal within these STEM areas both in the K-12 and postsecondary contexts (Gholson & Wilkes, 2017;Varelas et al, 2012).…”

“…The invoking of scholarship from BlackCrit and Afropessimism is useful, and as Tichavakunda intimates, allows us to see the unique oppressions of Black students. My work has questioned some of the same oversights within multiculturalism and grouping of people of color (Ortiz & Ruwe, 2021). Tichavakunda nails it by saying "my point here is not to vilify a particular group of students.…”

Linguistic emancipation

“…Beyond language arts education, efforts to account for educational underachievement by Black students in mathematics have also included assessments in need of linguistic clarification. While some have considered AAVE to be a barrier to mathematical mastery, accentuating alternative deficit hypotheses (Orr 1997), others have documented instances where culturally pertinent mathematics is embedded within African American culture (Nasir & de Royston 2013, Ortiz & Ruwe 2021 and which therefore may serve as a potential basis upon which sociolinguistic studies of AAVE might be leveraged to promote culturally sustaining and relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995, Ladson-Billings & Tate 1995, Paris 2012, Paris & Alim 2014.…”

But What Does it Look Like in Maths?

“…It is important to note that this marginalization of students' habitual communication patterns does not only happen with students officially classified as multilingual; speakers of Black language (Baker-Bell, 2020) and other disparaged ways of speaking are frequently taught-both explicitly and implicitly-that they should adopt dominant/white speaking habits (Baker-Bell et al, 2017;Boutte et al, 2021;Ortiz & Ruwe, 2021). In fact, many assimilationist policies in U.S. schools have anti-Blackness at their core (Boutte et al, 2021).…”