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. 
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                            Supporting Preservice Mathematics Teachers’ Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Focus on Teaching for Social Justice
                        
                    
    
            This paper reports on how 10 middle and high school preservice teachers (PSTs) designed a social justice focused lesson using the culturally responsive mathematics teaching (CRMT) tool. Results from our analysis indicate that most of the PSTs were able to select appropriate social justice topics, though not all the PSTs integrated mathematics and social justice throughout their lessons. The results show that most of the PSTs need more experience with mathematization, handling controversial discussions, and developing transformative student action. Our work also led to a modification of the tool (CRMT-M). We discuss the implications of the study for mathematics teacher preparation. 
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                            - Award ID(s):
- 1660689
- PAR ID:
- 10337817
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Mathematics
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2227-7390
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 896
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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