Dr. Karisma Morton, Understanding and Supporting Math Identity   ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 11

In this episode, we will explore the connection between identity and mathematics learning. We’ll examine the factors that may have shaped our own identities and those of our students. We’ll also discuss ways to practice affirming students' identities in mathematics instruction.

BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Karisma Morton is an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University of North Texas. Her research explores elementary preservice teachers’ ability to teach mathematics in equitable ways, particularly through the development of their critical racial consciousness. Findings from her research have been published in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and Educational Researcher. ​

RESOURCES

The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices by Julia Aguirre, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, and Danny Martin

Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn by Amanda Jansen

Olga Torres' “Rights of the Learner” framework

Cultivating Mathematical Hearts: Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching in Elementary Classrooms by Maria del Rosario Zavala and Julia Maria Aguirre

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Wallus: If someone asked you if you were good at math, what would you say, and what justification would you provide for your answer? Regardless of whether you said yes or no, there are some big assumptions baked into this question. In this episode, we're talking with Dr. Karisma Morton about the ways the mathematics identities we formed in childhood impact our instructional practices as adults and how we can support students' mathematical identity formation in the here and now. 

Welcome to the podcast, Karisma. I am really excited to be talking with you about affirming our students’ mathematics identities.

Karisma: Oh, I am really, really excited to be here, Mike. Thank you so much for the invitation to come speak to your audience about this.

Mike: As we were preparing for this podcast, one of the things that you mentioned was the need to move away from this idea that there are math people and nonmath people. While it may seem obvious to some folks, I'm wondering if you can talk about why is this such an important thing and what type of stance educators might adopt in its place?

Karisma: So, the thing is, there is no such thing as a math person, right? We are all math people. And so, if we want to move away from this idea, it means moving away from the belief that people are inherently good or bad at math. The truth is, we all engage in mathematical activity every single day, whether we realize it or not. We are all mathematicians. And so, the key is, as math teachers, we want to remove that barrier in our classrooms that says that only some students are math capable. 

In the math classroom, we can begin doing that by leveraging what students know mathematically, how they experience mathematics in their daily life. And then we as educators can then incorporate some of those types of activities into the everyday learning of math in our classrooms. So, the idea is to get students to realize they are capable math doers, that they are math people. And you're showing them the evidence that they are by bringing in what they're already doing. And not just that they are math doers, but that those peers that are also engaged in the classroom with them are capable math doers. And so, breaking down those barriers that say that some students are and some students aren't is really key. So, we are all math people.

Mike: I love that sentiment. You know, I've seen you facilitate an activity with educators that I'm hoping that we could replicate on the podcast. You asked educators to sort themselves into one of four groups that best describe their experience when they were a learner of mathematics. And I'm wondering if you could read the categories aloud and then I'm going to ask our listeners to think about the description that best describes their own experiences.

Karisma: OK, great. So, there are four groups. And so, if you believe that your experience is one where you dreaded math and you had an overall bad experience with it, then you would choose group 1. If you believe that math was difficult but you could solve problems with tutoring or help, then you would select group 2. If you found that math was easy because you were able to memorize and follow procedures but you had to practice a lot, then you'd be in group 3. And finally, if you had very few difficulties with math or you were kind of considered a math whiz, then you would select group 4.

Mike: I had such a strong reaction when I participated in this activity for the first time. So, I have had my own reckoning with this experience, but I wonder what impact you've seen this have on educators. Why do it? What's the impact that you hope it has for someone who's participating?

Karisma: Yeah. So, I would say that a key part of promoting that message that we started off talking about is for teachers to go back, to reflect. We have to have that experience of thinking about what it was like for us as math learners. Because oftentimes we go into the classroom and we're like, “All right, I got to do this thing.” But we don't take a minute to reflect: “What was it like for me as a math learner?” And I wanted to first also say that I did not develop this activity. This is not a Karisma original. I did see this presented at a math teacher-educator conference about five years ago by Jennifer Ward. I think she's at Kennesaw State [University] right now. But the premise is the same: We want to give teachers an opportunity to reflect over their own experiences as math learners as a good starting place for helping them to identify with each other and also with the students that they're teaching.

And so, whenever I have this activity done, I have each of the participants reflect. And then they have conversations around why they chose what they chose. And this is the opportunity for them to have what we call “windows,” “mirrors,” and “sliding glass doors,” right? So, you either can see yourself in another person's experience and feel like, “Oh, I'm not alone here,” especially if it were a negative experience. Or you may get to see or take a glimpse into what someone else has experienced that was very different from your own and really get a chance to understand what it was like for them. They may have been the math whiz, and you're looking at them like they're an alien that fell from the sky because you're like, “How did that happen,” right? But you can begin to have those kinds of conversations: “Why was it like this for you?” and “It wasn't like that for me.” Or “It was the same for me, but what did it look like in your instance versus my instance?” 

I honestly feel like sometimes people don't realize that their experience is not necessarily unique, especially if it's coming from a math trauma perspective. Some people don't want to talk about their experience because they feel like it was just theirs. But they sometimes can begin to realize that, “Hey, you had that experience too, and let's kind of break down what that means.” Do you want to be that type of teacher? Do you want to create the type of environment where you felt like you weren't a capable math doer? So powerful, powerful exercise. I encourage your listeners to try it with a group of friends or colleagues at work and really have that conversation.

Mike: Gosh, I'm just processing this. One of the things that I keep going back to is you challenging us to discard the idea that some people are inherently good at math and other people are not. And I'm making a connection that if I'm a person who identified with group 1, where I dreaded math and it was really a rough experience, what does it mean for me to discard the idea that some people are inherently good or inherently not good at math versus if I identified as a person who was treated as the math whiz and it came easy for me, again, what's required for me? 

It feels like there's things that we can agree with on the surface. We can agree that people are not good inherently at mathematics. But I find myself really thinking about how my own experience actually colors my beliefs and my actions, how agreeing to that on the surface and then really digging into how your own experience plays out in your practice or the ways that you interact with kids. There's some work to be done there, it seems like.

Karisma: Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head there. It's important to do that work. It's really important for us to take that moment to reflect and think about how our own experience may be impacting how we're teaching mathematics to children.

Mike: I think that's a great place to make a shift and talk about areas where teachers could take action to cultivate a positive mathematics identity for kids. I wonder if we can begin by talking about expectations and norms when it comes to problem solving.

Karisma: Yes. So, Julia Aguirre, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, and Danny Martin wrote this amazing book, called The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices. And one of those equity-based practices is affirming math learners’ identities. And so, one of the ways we can do this in the math classroom is when having students engaged in problem solving. And so, one of the things that we want to be thinking about when we are having students engaged in math problem solving is we want to be promoting students' persistence and reasoning during problem solving. And you might wonder, “Well, what does that actually look like?” 

Well, it might be helpful to see what it doesn't look like, right? So, in the typical math classroom, we often see an emphasis on speed: who got it done quickly, who got it done first, who even got it done within the time allotted. And then also this idea of competition. So, that is really hard for kids because we all need time to process and think through our problem-solving strategies. And if we're putting value on speed, and we're putting value on competition, are we in fact putting value on a problem-solving strategy or the process of problem-solving? So, one way to affirm math learners' identities is to move away from this idea of speed and competition and foster the type of environment where we're valuing students' persistence with the problem. We're valuing students' processes in solving a problem, how they're reasoning, how they're justifying their steps or their solutions’ strategies, as opposed to who's getting done quickly. 

Another thing to be thinking about is reframing making mistakes. There's so many great resources about this. What comes to mind immediately is Rough Draft Math by Amanda Jansen, which is really helping us to reframe the idea that we can make some mistakes, and we can revise our thinking. We can revise our reasoning, and that's perfectly OK. 

Olga Torres' “Rights of the Learner” framework talks a lot about the right to make a mistake is one of the four rights of the learner in the mathematics classroom. And so, when having kids engaged in problem-solving and mathematics, mistakes should be seen more like what Olga Torres calls “celebrations,” because there are opportunities for learning to occur. We can focus on this mistake and think about and problem-solve through the mistake. “Well, how did we get here?” Use it as a moment that all students can benefit from. And so, kids then become less afraid to make mistakes because they're not ridiculed or made to feel less than because they've done so. Instead, it empowers them to know that “Hey, I made this mistake, but in actuality, this is going to help me learn. And it's also going to help my classmates.”

Mike: I suspect a lot of those moments, people really appreciate when there's the “aha!” or the “oh!” What was happening before that might've been some struggle or some misconceptions or a mistake. You're making me think that we kind of have to leave space for those mistakes or those misconceptions to emerge if we really want to have those “aha!”s or those “oh!”s in our classroom.

Karisma: That's exactly right. And imagine if you are the one who's like, “Oh!”—what that does for your self-confidence. And even having your peers recognize that you've come to this answer or this understanding. It almost becomes like a collective win if you have fostered a type of environment where it's less about me against you and more about all of us learning together.

Mike: The other thing that came to me is that I'm thinking back to the four groups. I would've identified as a person who would fit into group 2, meaning that there were definitely points where math was difficult for me, but I could figure it out with tutoring or with help from a teacher. I start to wonder now how much of my perception was about the fact that it just took me a little bit longer to process and think about it. So, it wasn't that math was difficult. It was that I was measuring my sense of myself in mathematics around whether I was the first person, or I was fast, or I got it right away, or I got it right the first time, as opposed to really thinking about, “Do I understand this?” And to me, that really feels connected to what you're saying, which is the way that we as teachers value students' actions, their rough-draft attempts, their mistakes, and position those as part of the process—that can have a really concrete impact on how I think about myself and also how I think about what it is to do math. 

Well, let's shift again and talk about another area where educators could support positive identity. I’m thinking about the ways that they can engage with students' background knowledge and their life experiences.

Karisma: Hmm, yeah. This is a huge one. And this really, again, comes back to recognizing that our students are whole human beings. They have experiences that we should want to leverage in the math classroom, that they don't need to keep certain parts of themselves at the door when they come in. And so, how do we take advantage of what our students are bringing to the table? And so, we want to be thinking a lot about, “Well, who is the student?” “What do they know?” “What other identities do they hold?” “What's important to them?” “What kinds of experiences do they have in their everyday life that I can bring into the math classroom?” “What are their strengths?” “What do they enjoy doing?” The truth of the matter is really great teachers do this all the time, you know? You know who your students are for the most part, right? And students come to us with a whole host of experiences that we want to leverage and come with all sorts of experiences that we could use in the math classroom.

I think oftentimes we don't think about making connections between those things and how to connect them to the mathematics that's happening in the classroom. So, oftentimes we don't necessarily see a reason to connect what we know about our students to mathematics. And so, it's really just a simple extra step because really amazing teachers—which I know they're amazing teachers that are listening right now—you know who your students are. So how do we take what we know about them and bring that into the mathematics learning? Again, as with problem solving, what is it that we want to stay away from? We want to be staying away from connecting math identity only with correct answers and how fast a kid is at solving a problem. Their math identity shouldn't be dependent on how many items they got correct on an assessment. It should be more about, “Well, what is it that they know? And how are we able to use this in the math classroom?”

Mike: You're making me think about how oftentimes there's this distinction that happens in people's minds between school math and math that happens everywhere in the real world. Part of what I hear you suggesting is that when you help kids connect to their real world, you're actually doing them another service and that you're helping them see, like, “Oh, these lived experiences that I might not have called mathematics, they are,” right? “I do mathematics. I'm a doer.” And part of our work in bringing that in is helping them see what's already there.

Karisma: I love that. Helping them see what's already there. That's exactly right.

Mike: Well, before we go, I'm wondering if you could talk about some of the resources that have informed your thinking about this and that you think might also help a person who's listening who wants to keep learning.

Karisma: Yeah. There's a lot of great resources out there. The one that I rely on heavily is The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices. I really like this book because it's very accessible. It does a really great job of setting the stage for why we need to be thinking about equity-based practices. And I really enjoy how practical things are. So, the book goes through describing what a representative lesson would look like. And so, it's a really nice blueprint for teachers as they're thinking about students' identities and how to promote positive math identity amongst their students. And then I think we also mentioned Rough Draft Math by Amanda Jansen, which is a good read. And then there's also a new book that came out recently, Cultivating Mathematical Hearts: Culturally Responsive [Mathematics] Teaching in Elementary Classrooms. And this book goes even deeper by having vignettes and having specific classroom examples of what teaching in this kind of way can look like. So those are three resources off the top of my head that you could dig into and have book clubs at your schools and engage with your fellow educators and grow together.

Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has really been a pleasure.

Karisma: Oh, it's been a pleasure talking to you too. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.

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