June 19, 1865, now commemorated as Juneteenth, is the day when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the emancipation of enslaved African Americans — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Charles E. Wilkes II, assistant professor in the UC Davis School of Education, and his colleague Dr. Imani Masters Goffney (University of Maryland) see this historical event as a liberatory moment worth replicating in mathematics. Just as freedom was unjustly delayed for enslaved people, many Black students today are still waiting for access to meaningful, empowering math education, but are being held back by systemic inequities. Juneteenth serves as a symbolic turning point and a model for delivering on the promise of equity and liberation in math education.

Just as freedom was unjustly delayed for enslaved people, many Black students today are still waiting for access to meaningful, empowering math education, but are being held back by systemic inequities."  — Wilkes

“For decades scholars have argued that mathematics, in particular mathematics literacy for African Americans, is a civil right that is necessary to actualize full citizenship in America,” Wilkes and Masters Goffney write. “It is vitally important that Black learners are liberated [from systemic barriers in the classroom] as they learn ambitious mathematics. What might be collectively possible for the education field as a result of our Juneteenth movement?

The ongoing struggle for equity in math classrooms

Black students regularly encounter racial, gender, and socioeconomic barriers that disrupt their engagement in the math classroom, including disproportionately high disciplinary measures and less access to high-quality teaching and rigorous content. The impact of these structural challenges discourages Black students from forming a sustained interest in mathematics, and it prevents them from strengthening classroom discourse with their unique skillsets.

“The perspectives and skills Black students bring to mathematics classrooms are rich, valuable, and useful for learning and doing complex mathematics, but are often unused,” write Wilkes and his colleague.

Reframing role of the math teacher

Wilkes and Masters Goffney argue that the education field’s Juneteenth is unfolding right now. Increased scholarship about how math students have persevered in the face of structural barriers is enabling teachers to reform their classroom pedagogy and create new outcomes for all learners.

Researchers are working to reimagine the role of power and participation in the math classroom. They suggest that teachers can remove inequities tied to math education by applying a Rights of the Learners framework to their pedagogy:

●      The right to be confused

●      The right to claim a mistake

●      The right to speak, listen and be heard

●      The right to write, do, and represent only what makes sense

Wilkes and his colleague emphasize vocalizing and reiterating students’ rights in the classroom because these rights are often treated as something that can be given or taken away by school authority figures — a reality that mirrors the historical treatment of marginalized communities.

“The teacher is the one who holds all the power,” Wilkes and Masters Goffney write. “There is an implicit and explicit emphasis on pleasing the teacher because it is their judgement that shapes the lived experience of students in classrooms. Teachers distribute benefits or consequences based on their opinions of students and their behavior.”

By reminding students that they have inherent learning rights in the classroom, activating those rights, and supporting students to exercise them daily, teachers redistribute power and agency and encourage all learners to grapple with ambitious content while using their own cultural and linguistic perspectives and resources as valuable tools for learning and doing math.

Putting Juneteenth into practice: strategies for the classroom

Practical applications of the Rights of the Learner framework follow three key strategies: designing a classroom that empowers learners; supporting engagement, participation, and ambitious learning; and orienting mathematics work toward collective learning instead of peer-to-peer competition. 

In the classroom, these strategies can look like:

●      Valuing and encouraging student collaboration

●      Creating easy access to materials and resources

●      Organizing the classroom in a way that supports public sharing and the presentation of ideas

●      Naming how different student rights might be useful for different activities, tasks, and structures

●      Recognizing when students use their rights to support a positive and ambitious learning experience

●      Establishing collective classroom goals that encourage safety, respect, and inclusivity

To create a future where all people access and leverage math to create a fulfilling life, “it is imperative that these pedagogical efforts start as early as possible, especially in academic spaces where children spend much time during their formative years,” Wilkes and Masters Goffney write. “We must work collectively to critique the structures in schools and classrooms to identify dehumanizing, oppressive structures and work collaboratively with students to co-design and co-create new structures, routines, and ways of learning.”