Marginalized Students’ Perspectives on Instructional Strategies in Middle-School Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

Marginalized students face a range of gaps in experience, highlighting the importance of understanding these students’ perspectives on their opportunities to learn. The current study contributes to this effort by reporting on marginalized students’ experiences and liking of mathematics instructional strategies in middle-school mathematics classrooms in a large metropolitan school district in the Southern U.S. Middle-school students (N = 466), many of whom attended racially segregated schools, sorted instructional strategies and discussed their experiences with the strategies in small groups or interviews. Most students reported that traditional and student-focused instructional strategies happened in their mathematics class, but fewer student-focused strategies were experienced in racially segregated schools than in racially balanced schools. Most students reported liking all but one of the student-focused strategies and not liking the traditional strategies. Common reasons that emerged during discussions of why students liked particular instructional strategies were that it provided opportunities to learn, built their confidence or increased their interest. Overall, marginalized students’ experiences and views should inform efforts to increase the instructional opportunities for all students.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional practices
• mathematics education
• opportunity gap
• segregated schools
• student attitudes
• urban education

Acknowledgments

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the funders. The authors thank the staff, teachers, and children in the Metro Nashville Public Schools for participating in this research, Megan Franke for her input on our methodology, and Claudell Haymond, Luke Rainey and Jessica Sommer for their help in designing and implementing the interview protocol and coding system.

Additional information

Funding

Research supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation (#2013-26) to Dale Farran and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305K050157 to Dale C. Farran and Mark Lipsey and grant R305A140126 to Dale Farran.