Nickolaus Ortiz

• Georgia State University

Ideologies of language and race are deeply connected in the United States. Language practices associated with racially marginalized communities, such as African American Language (AAL) or Spanglish, are often heavily stigmatized. Such stigma is not grounded in empirical research on language, but rather in “raciolinguistic ideologies” that reproduce...

This commentary proposes the metaphor of “languaging-as-practice” in science education as an alternative to “language-as-tool” metaphors. Describing language as a tool implicitly positions language as static and unchanging and assumes that named languages are distinct and bounded entities. In contrast, describing languaging as a practice acknowledg...

I use Toni Morrison’s Paradise as a backdrop for framing a Black Liberatory Fantasy (Martin et al., 2019) that is rooted in what Dumas and ross (Urban Education, 51(4):415-442, 2016) have conceptualized as BlackCrit. The goal of the current undertaking is to evaluate anecdotes of this working idea of paradise, to merge it with more refined ones, an...

Recent studies reveal people from marginalized groups (e.g., people of color and women) continue to earn physics degrees at alarmingly low rates. This phenomenon is not surprising given reports of the continued perception of physics as a masculine space and the discrimination faced by people of color and women within the field. To realize the visio...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought booming economies, seemingly world-class health care systems, educational infrastructures, and the lives and well-being of nations to a complete standstill. Georgia was one of the few states that released their Shelter-in-Place order early, while reports suggest that Black communities have disproportionally higher rate...

My goal with this conceptual paper is to describe how Black Language can be valued, utilized, and incorporated into mathematics pedagogy. This framing requires a critical orientation towards language because Black Language is often a site of marginalization. I begin this conversation by defining Black Language and identifying its roots. I then high...

This paper calls for a critical reimagination of science epistemology and praxis by advocating for a move toward Black liberation in and through K-12 science education. This call is driven by our desires as authors to foster a future of K-12 science teaching and learning that centers, embraces, and promotes historical and contemporary Black scienti...

Background/Context The popularity surrounding culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is notable primarily within language and literacy content areas but is also making its rounds in other disciplines. Because of its assumed objectivity and status, the mathematics discipline has long been a site of disrupting or perpetuating inequity and thus warrants...

According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the U.S. educational system has consistently failed Black and Brown children across both reading and mathematics. Educational research has further uncovered the ways that reading and mathematics assessment and curriculum are often biased and culturally and linguistical...

This study examines the relationship between mathematics dispositions and the mathematics achievement of Black students. The study aims to elucidate the acute effects of mathematics dispositions, such as identity, self-efficacy, interest, and utility, on the mathematics Grade Point Averages (GPAs) and credits earned by Black students. A canonical c...

This research is meant to articulate from a pedagogical and empirical sense, howeducators and those who engage in educational research conceptualize ways to create opportunities for Black children to participate in mathematics, and how this task is taken up in a way that affirms their identity, cultural practices, and knowledge. Thus, I ask the com...

One prerequisite to implementing a holistic form of culturally relevant pedagogy is to plan spaces, opportunities, and lessons for making connections.

Background and Context Computing is being integrated into a range of STEM disciplines. Still, computing remains inaccessible to many minoritized groups, especially girls and certain people of color. In this mixed methods study, we investigated racial and gendered patterns of equity and inequity in high school physics classrooms incorporating comput...

There is extensive evidence suggesting that school suspension is correlated with poor academic performance. However, many studies examining the association between school suspension and achievement focus on the effects of out-of-school suspension specifically. While in-school suspension is offered as a less harmful alternative consequence to out-of...

Drawing from the experiences of 14 Black students participating in a structured undergraduate research program at either an historically Black university or a predominantly White institution, the authors conducted a secondary data analysis on interview and journal prompt data using Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework to identify sources of...

In the present study we explored how culture affects the learning experiences of students in a mathematics classroom. The first author, an African American male, taught a class composed solely of two Asian and 15 White students. During this two-week statistics course, students were asked to engage in a “per-formative” assessment that was intentiona...

This article argues that the development of rap song lyrics or lyrical concept mapping can be a viable pedagogical alternative to the development of concept maps as a means to reinforce STEM vocabulary. Hip-hop pedagogy is a culturally responsive pedagogy that leverages the funds of knowledge acquired from hip-hop culture. Unfortunately, many stude...

This study is a meta-analysis of the effects of out-of-school time (after school, summer camps, enrichment programs, etc.) on the student interest in STEM. This study was guided by the following research questions: (1) How effective is OST as a means to foster student interest in STEM? (2) How does the effectiveness of OST differ by program and stu...