Marta Civil

• University of Arizona

In this article, we explore the power relationships and positioning that occurred between caregivers and teachers who engaged in mathematics tasks as a part of a year-long project involving workshops. Specifically, we explore the shifts in power and positioning that occurred when the tasks were grounded in the caregivers’ funds of knowledge, in con...

We present the work with a group of Mexican American women who participated in a larger project aimed at developing a two-way dialogue about mathematics between parents and teachers. The basis of our study is the concept of funds of knowledge, which recognizes the richness of adult learners’ lived experiences. Funds of knowledge are defined as the...

This paper describes an innovative mathematics learning partnership that engages teachers and parents of multilingual children ages 7–10 from schools in underserved communities. At the center of this transformative work is the use of two complementary approaches to advancing equity in education– funds of knowledge and positioning theory. While both...

In this literature synthesis, the three authors bring their embodied voices to collectively retrace the political-cultural-racialized-gendered topographies where key conceptualizations of language, mathematics, and the learner have emerged. Recognizing that they themselves have never been outside these landscapes as mere objective observers, the au...

Background Making mathematics connections between home and school can have a positive impact on students’ mathematics learning. This is particularly important for students whose experiences and perspectives are underrepresented in school curricula. Although there is evidence for how crucial it is to make connections between mathematics instruction...

Background/Context There is much to understand about how parents and children interact around mathematics, particularly with families whose home language is different from the children’s main language of schooling. Families of immigrant origin are likely to bring experiences and knowledge that may be different from what their children’s schools exp...

Reflections on the Field of Mathematics Education

The importance of learners collaborating to construct deep mathematical understandings has been increasingly recognized in research and practice in recent times. In this paper we draw on a sociocultural perspective to show how a situative strength-based approach can be usefully applied to highlight the different ways in which learners from backgrou...

Mathematics education researchers agree that students’ mathematical learning can be positively impacted by making connections to their out of school experiences through a funds of knowledge lens. This is especially important for diverse students whose experiences are often underrepresented in school curricula. Making these connections can be challe...

This paper focuses on a group of mothers of immigrant origin as they engage in explorations and conversations about mathematics. We examine how bringing in tasks that draw on their children’s school mathematics, and on the participants’ knowledge and experiences, can inform us about their understanding of mathematics and provide opportunities to fu...

This article describes a formative intervention that supported our exploration of contradictions within the area of parental engagement in mathematics education in a low-income community. We draw on the third generation of cultural-historical activity theory as well as research on parental engagement and critical theory to discuss two contradiction...

This chapter provides a selective review of the research literature on mathematics teaching that attends to and addresses inequities in the learning opportunities offered to students. First, we trace and discuss the growing focus on educational equity in the teaching of mathematics. We then describe the challenges and possibilities for a few promin...

This volume contains the papers presented at the International Conference on Theory and Practice: An Interface or A Great Divide? and held from August 4-9, 2019 at Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland. The Conference was organized by The Mathematics Education for the Future Project – an international educational project founded in 1986 and dedicat...

This chapter presents a commentary on the pieces in the section of the book focused on identifying and connecting to family and community funds of knowledge. It underscores the importance of listening to and learning from those whose knowledge and experiences have often been unacknowledged (e.g., Indigenous communities; immigrant women). This comme...

Promoting empowerment, meaningful participation, and success for each and every student Access and Equity: Promoting High-Quality Mathematics in Grades 9–12 examines issues related to access, equity, and empowerment faced by students as they prepare for college, technical schools, or joining the workforce. Its chapters are organized across three m...

This paper draws from a research agenda focused on the interplay of culture, language and mathematics teaching and learning, particularly in working-class Mexican-American communities in the United States. Drawing on data collected over several years, I emphasize the need for a coordinated effort to the mathematics education of non-dominant student...

Mathematical modeling and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) are both pedagogical approaches that rely on students’ knowledge of everyday situations, yet mathematics education research has not fully attended to the ways in which they can be united in the classroom. We use an interpretation of culture as students’ lived experiences, a perspective dr...

In this article, we use multimodality to examine how bilingual students interact with an area task from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in task-based interviews. Using vignettes, we demonstrate how some of these students manipulate the concrete materials, and use gestures, as a primary form of structuring their explanations and maki...

This book is part of a book series that was proposed by the Educational Materials Committee at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) to address the Access and Equity Principle for school mathematics as described in Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (NCTM, 2014). The series aims to support teachers in usin...

Anthony Fernandes, Sandra Crespo, and Marta Civil, volume editors; Marta Civil, series editor, Access and Equity: Promoting High-Quality Mathematics Series NCTM's Access and Equity Principle states that “all students [should] have access to a high-quality mathematics curriculum, effective teaching and learning, high expectations, and the support a...

In 2005, the NCTM Research Committee devoted its commentary to exploring how mathematics education research might contribute to a better understanding of equity in school mathematics education (Gutstein et al., 2005). In that commentary, the concept of equity included both conditions and outcomes of learning. Although multiple definitions of equity...

This Working Group will continue the work of last year's Working Group in considering multiple aspects of research and practice related to mathematics learning and teaching with English Learners. Our goals include: (1) developing further the collaborative endeavors that began during the 2015 meeting and (2) fostering new collaborations and supporti...

The NCTM Research Committee identifies key influences on mathematics education that are largely outside the domain of the academic world in which most mathematics education researchers live. The groups that are identified—including the media, companies and foundations, and other academic domains—affect the public's perception of mathematics and mat...

This book is intended for all educators who are committed to improving the mathematics learning of every student. It is specifically designed to support Mathematics Teacher Educators (MTEs) as they facilitate conversations about inequities in mathematics classrooms across various instructional settings (i.e., content and methods courses for prospec...

This Working Group will consider multiple aspects of research and practice related to mathematics learning and teaching with English Learners. Our goals for the Working Group include: (1) developing a shared understanding of the research questions, issues, challenges, and contributions that research studies focusing on English learners can make to...

This article focuses on argumentation in mathematics classrooms in two different geographic contexts, the US and New Zealand. Drawing on data from a case with immigrant students (Pāsifika) in NZ and a case with Mexican American students in the US, we argue for the need to study the concept of argumentation through a cultural and language lens. Our...

Do you want to know something that Melanie and I have noticed? Okay, picture this: You ask a question, “Who thinks that division is the right thing for this problem?” Melanie and I, neither of us raise our hands. Nobody else raises his or her hands, except maybe Daniel, because he is an individualist. And then you say, “Who thinks it’s subtraction?...

Stephan, M., Chval, K.B., Wanko, J.J., Civil, M., Fish, M., Herbel-Eisenmann, B., Konold, C., & Wilkerson, T. (2015). Grand challenges and opportunities in mathematics education research. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 46(2), 134-146.

This article examines STEM learning as a cultural process with a focus on non-dominant communities. Building on my work in funds of knowledge and mathematics education, I present three vignettes to raise some questions around connections between in-school and out-of-school mathematics. How do we define competence? How do task and environment affect...

This article presents my rejoinder to Jrène Rahm’s response to my article “STEM learning research through a funds of knowledge lens.” I focus on four themes that emerged from my reading of her commentary: the importance of the histories of youth of immigrant origin; her comments on globality; the theoretical lens that she brings to my research; and...

In this article we reflect on the learning of mathematics in bilingual settings from a social and a political perspective. In particular we highlight two concepts that are key to our work: language-as-resource and language-as-political. To do so, we draw on classroom data from students of Mexican origin in Tucson, USA, and students from Latin Ameri...

In the last decade we have intensified our work on mathematics education and language diversity in our two contexts of research: Tucson, AZ, and Barcelona, Catalonia. The two of us are interested in the role and use of languages in scenarios of mathematical teaching and learning. From the perspective of our investigations, this interest entails dif...

This chapter is based on a paper I presented at the 11th International Congress on Mathematical Education as part of Survey Team 5: Mathematics education in multicultural and multilingual environments, chaired by Alan Bishop. Our team ended up dividing the survey team theme into four topics and I was in charge of surveying research related to the m...

This article explores issues related to the relationship between everyday mathematics and academic mathematics within adult education, through a series of workshops with parents. Participants were encouraged to reflect on their perspective on learning and teaching mathematics through different activities in the workshops. All sessions were videotap...

This article centers on a professional development project with a group of high school mathematics teachers in Barcelona. The eight participating teachers taught in low-income schools with a high percentage of immigrant students. Our model of professional development is based on the involvement of the teachers as co-researchers of their local conte...

To assess students' developing literacy, teachers regularly listen as individuals read. Similarly, listening to students talk about their mathematical reasoning is a powerful way for teachers to assess students' problem-solving abilities and mathematical understanding. Traditional paper-and-pencil tests have long been the main avenue to evaluate st...

This paper presents snippets from a research agenda focused on the interplay of mathematics education and the language, social, cultural, and political issues that affect Mexican American communities in the USA. The lessons learned and issues raised should be of interest to other contexts with non-dominant, marginalized students. The research appro...

In this article, we draw on research within a large project on parental involvement in mathematics education in working-class Latino communities. Our research is situated within a sociocultural framework and, in particular, the concept of funds of knowledge. We also draw on research on parental involvement in education, particularly that which crit...

This paper presents a reflection on my research largely grounded on my interest in students', teachers', and parents' ideas about mathematics. Starting with some considerations from a cognitive point of view, in particular preservice teachers' understanding and beliefs, I move onto sociocultural aspects. I specifically address issues related to con...

This paper draws on two research studies with similar theoretical backgrounds, in two different settings, Barcelona (Spain) and Tucson (USA). From a sociocultural perspective, the analysis of mathematics education in multilingual and multiethnic classrooms requires us to consider contexts, such as the family context, that have an influence on these...

Math in a Cultural Context (MCC) is based in traditional Yup'ik cultural values and ways of knowing and representing the world, which provide access to math concepts through hands-on exploration and active problem solving. This case illustrates how a novice and outsider teacher successfully implemented MCC in a classroom with predominantly Yup'ik s...

In this paper we present a continuing effort to engage in a dialogue with parents about mathematics education. Using the technique of the unfolding matrix (Padilla, 1993), a group of parents and researchers critically examined and reflected on the parents' mathematics educational efforts with their children and in the district. The dialogue expande...

Contents: Preface. N. Gonzalez, L. Moll, C. Amanti, Introduction. Part I: Theoretical Underpinnings. N. Gonzalez, Beyond Culture: The Hybridity of Funds of Knowledge. C. Velez-Ibanez, J. Greenberg, Formation and Transformation of Funds of Knowledge. L. Moll, C. Amanti, D. Neff, N. Gonzalez, Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Appro...

This work shares the experiences of an ongoing collaboration between Mexican immigrant women, the authors, and the principal and the librarian at a middle school in Tucson, Arizona. The collaboration entailed the establishment of rapport through respectful interactions between mothers, school personnel and university researchers. It also required c...

The article is based on an extensive microethnographic study (Planas, 2001) that was focused on students aged 15–16 years who exhibited a high number of interruptions in their participation in the mathematics classroom. Our research points to the importance of considering how the students construe normative meanings for the classroom episodes, and...

The study examines ethnically and linguistically diverse parents’ learning in an eight-week Math for Parents course on fractions, decimals and percentages. Analysis of classroom observations, interviews, focus groups, written feedback, videotapes, and task-based/clinical interviews provided rich data yielding findings about both parents’ affective...

The study is of 3 Latina parents of children in an Arizona middle school in which parents made observations and participated in three different reform mathematics classrooms. The parents' expectations, concerns, and reactions to the observations of the lessons were discussed and recorded. The goal of the study was to better understand the Latina pa...

This paper is based on several research efforts aimed at connecting school mathematics with everyday experiences. In particular it addresses the need to openly question the different values and beliefs associated with different forms of knowledge. It focuses on work done in working-class, minority communities and emphasizes the need to develop scho...

This chapter explores the tensions and compromises resulting from what seem to be different conceptions of what mathematics is and of what mathematics children should learn in school. Our work in a fifth-grade class has allowed us to combine elements of mathematicians' mathematics with the students' everyday mathematics. On the one hand, we work to...

The work in this article has a basis in a long-term research paradigm investigating the "funds of knowledge" of diverse populations. This conceptualization adopts an anthropological perspective for viewing the households of low-income and minority students as repositories of diverse knowledge bases. In the BRIDGE project, the focus has been on unde...

Can rigorous mathematics be developed from everyday experiences?” This question brought together an intermediategrades teacher and a university researcher to collaborate on a project that incorporated students' and families' knowledge and experiences. The importance of designing culturally relevant instruction is well documented (Lipka, Mohatt, and...

Three Spanish-speaking mothers of middle-school children, a relative of one of the mothers, a school librarian, and the researcher met regularly to establish a collaborative, two-way dialogue which would encourage social and educational equality and that would take contributions into consideration according to the validity of reasoning rather than...

In this paper I present mostly a personal reflection on some aspects of our work in the research project BRIDGE 1 . The goal of this project is the development of mathematics teaching innovations in which students and teachers engage in mathematically rich situations through the creation of learning modules that capitalize on students' (and their f...

This paper describes some aspects of a collaborative project between elementary school teachers and university faculty in anthropology, bilingual education, and mathematics education. The project goal is to develop classroom-teaching experiences that make use of the resources and experiences of students and their families. Most of the students were...

In this paper we present a model for mathematics classroom observations conducted with parents that allows us to engage in a dialogue on issues around reform-oriented mathematics teaching. We will report on our findings on Hispanic, working-class parents' perceptions about the teaching and learning of mathematics.

In this paper we focus on parents' perceptions of and expectations for the teaching and learning of mathematics for their children. This research is part of a large parental involvement project in mathematics in several working class, Latino communities in the Southwest. Our work is grounded on the concept of dialogic learning (Flecha, 2000) by whi...

This paper centers on two research projects on parents as adult learners of mathematics in a Latino/Hispanic working class community in Tucson, AZ. I focus on two settings of our work with parents, as they are relevant to work with adults in general. These settings are characterized by a dialogic approach towards adult education, which allows us to...

This paper focuses on three "Math for Parents" courses that have been implemented as part of a large project on parental involvement in mathematics. The three courses were very different in terms of content (patterns/algebra; geometry; numbers/ arithmetic), and in terms of pedagogical approach (from social constructivism to somewhat teacher-centere...

In this paper we discuss a study with Latino parents doing mathematics with their children. Some of our findings reveal that parents react to their children's mathematics education looking back to their own experience as students. They try to make sense of their children' homework. They struggle with pedagogical strategies unfamiliar to them. Some...

The purpose of this research is to explore the concept of mathematics learning as participation in the context of schools. We use the dimensions of learning from communities of practice to broaden our vision of learning within schools. Our research is a year-long qualitative study in one fifth-grade classroom in an urban elementary school in United...

This paper draws on two research projects located in minority, working-class communities. Both projects have as a key component the engagement of parents as learners of mathematics. Through this engagement we seek to redefine the notion of parental involvement, by rejecting a deficit view of parents (and families) that portrays them as somehow lack...

This study is grounded on a sociocultural perspective and focuses on the role of Latino families in their children's mathematical learning. Through parents' voices we explore possible ways of inclusion that may allow for Latino families to overcome social and educational exclusion. Latino mothers explain strategies to counteract this exclusion usin...

This paper examines the case of a 6 th grade teacher who was implementing a mathematics module as part of a treatment in a quasi-experimental study examining the impact of culturally based instruction on American Indian and Alaska Native students' academic performance. This teacher was teaching in a small rural Yup'ik community that consistently sc...

This paper uses my professional trajectory in mathematics education to present specific proposals and topics of research in mathematics teacher education for multicultural classrooms. I emphasize the urgency to develop closer links between those working on topics such as teachers' beliefs and knowledge and those working on equity topics in multicul...

In this paper we describe some characteristics of the nature of the participation of adults involved in mathematics workshops for parents. We find that adults become more engaged in exploring, learning, and teaching mathematics when their experiences (both prior schooling and life/work experience) are incorporated in the learning process. Adult lea...