Aritz Cardenas

MIAA 320: Molly Johnson

Fall 2013

Cultural and Mathematics in School: Boundaries between Cultural and Domain
Knowledge in the Mathematics classroom and beyond.
By Nailah Suad Nasir, Victoria Hand, Edd V. Taylor
REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATION, 2008, 32:187

This was an interesting article that discussed the importance of schema and
background knowledge that students have when in a classroom (particularly a
mathematics one). First, the authors define two types of knowledge that are commonly
thought of by educations; those type of knowledge are cultural, or everyday knowledge,
and domain, which is knowledge valued from the educator ( Nasir et al, 187). The
authors argue that you cannot distinct the two types of knowledge because knowledge is in
fact entirely cultural, and is tied (and valued) to those with power (Nasir et al 188).

Nasir, Hand, and Taylor stress the importance of having relevant mathematic
lessons that will engage diverse populations. The authors use the example of illustrating
the importance of this by discussing a study of a group of African-American students who
are interested in basketball. Students were given mathematical problems in two formats;
the first format had problems framed by the practices of basketball and the other was a
typical math work sheet. Students were required to complete both formats of questions
(Nasir et al, 188). The authors noted many surprises from their study. Students who
attempted to first solve the math problems with basketball did much better than those
students who attempted to solve the typical math worksheet first, even though every
student ulitimately worked on the same problems (Nasir et all, 189).

What was interesting was that the authors theorize the reasoning for this. They
suggest that the students who received the basketball problems first took on the position
as knowledge experts. They were able to relate their experiences with basketball and
complete the set of problems. Then they were able to apply that knowledge to the other
problems. Regarding the students that began with the typical worksheet, the authors
theorize that it left those students unable to tie in their cultural knowledge with that of
the domain knowledge the educator were trying to teach them (Nasir et al, 190). This
leads to the bigger idea in which Nasir, Hand, and Taylor conclude is a major reason for the
achievement gap between ethnicities and race in education. Not all students are being
empowered as learners and thinkers due to the difference in culture in the classroom.
Minority students might feel like their cultures are not being acknowledged in the
classroom (Nasir et al, 196). Students are coming into the classroom with different culture
(schema) (Nasir et al, 191). The authors stress that educators need to value knowledge as a
cultural activity. This includes teachers construct and adapt lesson designs with the
knowledge that students are entering the classrooms with to allow them to having access
to the content that is being taught and to acknowledge the students identity as a learner in
the classroom (Nasir et al, 192, 202-203).