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Title: Modeling for social justice: A Model-Eliciting Activity on gerrymandering
Mathematics educators and researches have recommended that pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSTs) need opportunities both to engage in rich mathematical modeling and also to examine issues of social justice and equity. This poster describes a model-eliciting activity which aims to engage PSTs in mathematizing and modeling the social justice issue of gerrymandering. In the activity, PSTs are given a variety of data (including printed maps as well as the area and perimeter of congressional districts) and challenged to construct a mathematical model of “compactness.” PSTs must iteratively refine their model to rank congressional districts from most to least compact. This model-eliciting activity draws on geometric topics including a consideration of area, perimeter, scale, and attributes of shapes, while simultaneously provoking PSTs to reflect on the use of mathematics to inform public policy and positively transform our world.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1852846
PAR ID:
10168680
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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