Dilemmas Encountered While Planning Social and/or Political Elementary Mathematics Tasks

ABSTRACT A mathematical task rooted in social and/or political contexts has the potential to engage students in exploring their own realities and learning about the realities of others while building their mathematical knowledge. While there are planning and instructional practices recommended for these types of tasks, no single practice can fully capture the nuances and challenges that teachers might encounter. Therefore, this study identified dilemmas encountered by a team of mathematics education researchers while planning a mathematical task rooted in social and/or political contexts. Using qualitative analysis, the researchers identified three planning dilemmas: (a) what social and/or political goal to establish, (b) how might students respond to the task, and (c) which language to privilege in the task. These dilemmas were connected to the core planning practices of establishing mathematical and social and/or political goals, designing a task, and anticipating student thinking.