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Quantitative Reasoning for Social Justice An Active Learning Workbook

Kenan Ince, Bianca Thompson

Section 1.1 Getting Started

If you’re new to incorporating social justice issues into math classes, I’d encourage you to start by reading or skimming Jonathan Osler’s "A Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum"
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https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SJMathGuide.pdf
, made by a high-school educator but equally relevant in the postsecondary context. Next, Dale Winter’s "Infusing Mathematics with Culture"
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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tl.291
offers a valuable framework for thinking about the relationship between mathematical content and social justice issues, as well as an emphasis on connecting to student activism and interests.
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This book is meant to be used as a workbook for students in a quantitative reasoning (QR) course framed around issues of social justice (SJ). This course developed out of Kenan Ince’s Social Justice open source resources and Westminster University’s course Social Justice by the Numbers; feel free to mix and match chapters from this book and other resources to plug into existing courses as well as to "remix" your own full course.
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Subsection 1.1.1 Why Teach Postsecondary Math for Social Justice?

  • Culturally relevant teaching (Ladson-Billings 1995) practices contribute to educational equity and social justice (McGee 2014)
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  • Teaching math with a social justice frame increases student learning and achievement (Gutstein 2003; Moses & Cobb 2001; Winter 2007)
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  • Math is already political. What assumptions do our algorithms and databases inherit (O’Neill 2016)? What do we think is "worthy" of mathematical inquiry? Math with applications to petroleum engineering or fracking (Hendrickson 2015)
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    https://nagt.org/nagt/publications/trenches/articles/v5n3-5.html
    ? Statistical analyses of police stops by race (Khadjavi 2013
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    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2006.10722786?journalCode=ucha20&journalCode=ucha20
    , Ince 2021
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    https://rpubs.com/kaince/SLCPD
    )?
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See this literature review (Ince 2015)
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https://www.kenanince.org/literature-review-teaching-math-for-equity-social-justice
for an investigation of what the research shows about teaching math for social justice.
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Subsection 1.1.2 Other Texts for a Math for Social Justice Course

Resources are beginning to be developed for full postsecondary courses, largely in quantitative reasoning, for social justice. A few of the exciting new resources are described in the table below; and check out more at Math 4 Impact
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https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/math4impact
for other resources.
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Table 1.1.1. Texts for a Semester Course on Social Justice Math
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Resource Type Authors Name and Links to Resource(s) Cost
Complete lesson plan collections Gizem Karaali, Lily Khadjavi Mathematics for Social Justice
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https://bookstore.ams.org/clrm-60
and Focusing on Quantitative Reasoning and Statistics
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https://bookstore.ams.org/cdn-1630595793631/clrm-66/
 ~$60 each
Lesson plan collection in development Mark Branson, Whitney George Math for the People
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https://www1.rebus.community/#/project/8825e826-1c44-4900-95e4-ef14b4704be2
 Free
Complete PDF book; not always SJ-focused David Lippman Math in Society
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http://www.opentextbookstore.com/mathinsociety/index.html
 Free
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