Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice in Multicultural, Multilingual Elementary Classrooms

This article describes a set of collaborative inquiry projects that emerged from a research study group involving teachers, university researchers (the authors), and school district staff as they worked to teach mathematics equitably in an urban elementary school. The project is analyzed using Marilyn Cochran-Smith’s (2004) six principles of pedagogy for teaching for social justice. In the study group, teachers were involved in designing research questions to honor their students’ cultural and community knowledge and to develop mathematics teaching with a social justice focus. We offer three examples of teaching mathematics for social justice in diverse classrooms and consider the broader implications of inquiry projects such as these.