Advancing Equity & Strengthening Teaching through Mathematical Modeling
NSF DRK12 Project Award
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Send us an email if you are interested in mathematical modeling as a lever for equitable instruction.
What is Math Modeling
As stated in the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Modeling, “Real-world situations are not organized and labeled for analysis; formulating tractable models, representing such models, and analyzing them is appropriately a creative process [5] (p.60)” These real-world problems tend to be messy and require multiple math concepts, a creative approach to math, and involve a cyclical process of revising and analyzing the model. Mathematical modeling translates between the real world and mathematics in both directions, defining the real world as everything that has to do with nature, society, or culture, including everyday life, school, and university subjects, or scientific and scholarly disciplines different from mathematics.
Advancing Equity and Strengthening Teaching through Mathematical Modeling
Mathematics modeling has the potential to “re-humanize” mathematics (Gutierrez, 2018) by providing students opportunities to make connections, and experience mathematics in a way that can help them navigate the realities in their daily life. Mathematical Modeling has several attributes of an approach that “(re)humanizes” mathematics. By tapping into students’ funds of knowledge, mathematics becomes personally relevant, and using real-world problems illustrates the usefulness of mathematics to students’ everyday situations and becomes a tool through which both students and teachers can affect social change.
Math Modeling Process
Pivotal Spaces that promote equitable participation and modeling competencies
In the modeling process, we identified pivotal spaces for equity and for rigorous mathematics: a) In these spaces, teachers have to make decisions that could advance, or hinder equitable participation and diverse contributions. In other words, teachers have to make and enact instructional decisions that have consequences with respect to equity; b) They have the potential to foster the development of MM competencies which are central to modeling as content/practice standards (Kaiser, 2007; Maaβ, 2006; CCSSM, 2010). This is key given such cognitively demanding competencies are often under-emphasized in elementary settings serving historically marginalized children.