2024 Mathematics Education Colloquium October 28th
Please join us at the upcoming Mathematics Education Colloquium on Monday, October
28, 2024 from 2:00 - 3:30 pm in 252 Erickson and on Zoom. Dr. Nickolaus Ortiz, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, will be presenting Rejoicing gon’ rise without bound: Exploring the curricular and pedagogical implications
concerning Blackness, language, and mathematics discourse.
Please see the zoom link and passcode in the Colloquium flyer posted on our Mathematics Education Colloquium page.
Abstract:
This colloquium talk seeks to address how curricula and pedagogy are deployed in ways that may marginalize students and reduce the potential of creating affirming spaces in which they learn. Specifically rooted in my theorizations around mathematics education, I extend these observations to critically interrogate students' learning environments. At least two areas of interest are significant to the quality of education that students will receive —the curriculum to which they are exposed, and the pedagogy that their teachers utilize. Given their importance, I provide examples that serve to underscore the less salient lessons that we teach within mathematics as reflected in these two areas. Further, I use language, particularly in relation to Black children's linguistic patterns and their language repertoires, to describe the tensions that may exist within mathematics learning. This focus on their linguistic repertoires allows one to consider what it means to "speak mathematically", problematizing the ways that we socialize students in these spaces, at times to the detriment of their cultural and authentic selves. The question that I pose to attendees is what are those cultural and historical values that our curricula and pedagogical moves socialize students away from, in hopes of making them "better" mathematicians? The ultimate goal of this colloquium talk is to explore how the curriculum and pedagogy will continue to assist in teaching students much more than we intend, if we do not critically analyze our instructional moves. I proffer that the educational space has the potential to be one where students learn about their cultural practices, in this case, those which are linguistic, and how these practices can be assets in learning environments. Hence, the colloquium talk will conclude by developing a few actionable items towards this end.
Bio:
Dr. Nickolaus A. Ortiz is assistant professor of mathematics education in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education at Georgia State University. He is from Metro Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught for three years in a public high school and where he teaches calculus each summer to high school students enrolled in the UpwardBound Program at Morehouse College. His research focuses on how an ontological Blackness is manifested and/or stifled during high-quality mathematics instruction that emphasizes teaching for conceptual understanding, mathematics discourse, and cultural relevance. Specifically, he studies how mathematics discourse for Black children may be imbued with Black Language, and is actively theorizing a Black liberatory mathematics education that affirms these linguistic practices and Black people writ large. Dr. Ortiz is 2024 recipient of the Early Career Publication Award from AERA’s Research in Mathematics Education SIG, and a 2022 recipient of the Ernest D. Morrell Emerging Scholar Award. His most recent funded award from the National Academy of Education’s Equity in Math Education Research Grants (EMERG) Program explores Black Language within mathematical contexts, and its culminating product will produce a short documentary on the subject.
The Program in Mathematics Education sponsors this event.
