Reframing Urban Mathematics Education: The Spatial Politics of Opportunity

Overview & Synopsis

Although equity-oriented discourse is working to move the mathematics education community from achievement-gap rhetoric toward a focus on opportunity gaps, it does not currently recognize the role of space and the politics of space in creating and maintaining opportunity gaps as it relates to mathematics education in urban settings. The purpose of this paper is to engage the task of reconceptualizing urban mathematics education by proposing a framework for scholarship, policy, and practice. The authors engage scholarship in mathematics education, urban education, critical geography, and urban sociology to substantiate a socio-spatial framework for urban mathematics education, which features a visual schematic that locates mathematics teaching and learning--vis-à-vis a mathematics-instructional triad--within a system of socio-spatial considerations relevant to U.S. urban contexts. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583989.]