Relationships, Play, and Mathematics: Secondary Mathematics Pre-service Teachers engaging Latin@ Middle School Students to Play with Mathematics

In the United States, the student population is becoming increasingly diverse. Yet teachers are majority middle class, female, and white. Teacher education programs are responding by providing opportunities for pre-service teacher to work with marginalized students. The purpose of this research is to understand how secondary mathematics pre-service teachers engage Latin@ middle school students in rigorous mathematics through games in an after school club.

The primary method of data collection is participant observation. Data sources are field notes and interviews with the pre-service teachers to document their participation, challenges, and successes during the after school club. This data will be coded to identify themes that emerge as the data is analyzed. Due to the small sample size only descriptive statistics will be provided.

Preliminary results show that the pre-service teachers developed sophisticated approaches to engage marginalized students to play with mathematics. Their approaches became more nuanced in establishing relationships and probing for mathematical exploration of the games. Additionally, they often positioned the middle schoolers as mathematics experts. Yet, challenges were evident: working with groups of middle schoolers, maintaining middle schoolers engaged, and helping them make mathematical connections.

Our goal is to provide the opportunity for secondary mathematics pre-service teachers to engage marginalized students to play with mathematics in an informal learning environment. Although the after school club is a low-risk environment, there is the opportunity for high-rewards for the pre-service teachers to develop dispositions and practices to engage marginalized students in rigorous mathematics.