Abstract
This paper presents results of a case study conducted in secondary mathematics classrooms using a new generation of networked classroom technology (Participatory Simulations). Potential for drawing on youths’ cultural practices in networked learning environments is explored in terms of opportunities for traditionally underserved students to participate in powerful mathematical discourse and practice. As mediated by the networked technology, the multiple modes of participation and opportunities to contribute to the group’s accomplishment of its task served as important avenues for underserved students to bring to bear resources they develop through participating in everyday practices of their communities. The goal is to provide examples of networked activities’ potential for leveraging cultural practices of marginalized groups through pedagogy that invites youth to draw on linguistic resources and interaction patterns they develop as members of cultural groups.
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Notes
Networked technologies in this case are computers and/or calculators that link individuals so that information can be aggregated and mutually exchanged and accessed, as well as being displayed visually for all to see.
I use varying terms to signal the social position of the youth involved in this work to avoid falling into problems of using a single term such as urban or inner city that may be interpreted to identify these students from a deficit-based perspective.
In interviews, students identified the language use as ‘urban,’ reflecting its use by youth from various cultural communities in Rochester, i.e., African American, Puerto Rican American, European American.
See Stroup et al. (2004) for classroom activities for Gridlock and other Participatory Simulations.
This is not to say that all members of those communities engage in such practices, or that, for example, African American communities in New York engage in the same or similar practices as communities in Chicago. It is to make, following Gutierrez and Rogoff (2003), “a shift from the assumption that regularities in groups are carried by the traits of a collection of individuals to a focus on people’s history of engagement in practices of cultural communities” (p. 21). Such an approach resists both essentializing to entire populations and locating such practices as traits within individuals.
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Acknowledgements
Doctoral research assistants Alfred Schademan and Dawn Evans were instrumental in helping conceptualize and implement this study. Their expertise and commitment are invaluable, and their participation is central to this work.
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Ares, N. Cultural practices in networked classroom learning environments. Computer Supported Learning 3, 301–326 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-008-9044-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-008-9044-6