Remixing Resilience: A Critical Examination of Urban Middle School Learning Environments among Resilient African American Learners

This study examines a sample of African American students attending urban middle schools in a Southern city, and considers their perceptions of learning environments within mathematics classrooms. This study concluded that variables like Academic Self-Concept, Mathematics Anxiety, Satisfaction, Involvement, and Academic Aspiration varied significantly among higher and lower performing students. These variables are informed by the classic resilience literature on learning environment that tends to be less culturally affirming. In an effort to move resilience theory away from racial ideologies, we reconceptualize resilience as a cultural trait common among African American learners that should not be conceptualized dichotomously nor hierarchically

More Than Just Skill: Examining Mathematics Identities, Racialized Narratives, and Remediation Among Black Undergraduates

The purpose of this study was to shed light on the mathematics-learning experiences of students who were enrolled in non-credit-bearing remedial mathematics courses at a 4-year university. Non-credit-bearing remedial mathematics courses have a long curricular history in both 2-year and 4-year higher education institutions, but students' mathematics-learning experiences in these courses have been largely unexplored. Furthermore, other recent studies have evinced the otherwise anecdotal supposition that African American learners, particularly, are disproportionately placed in these courses. In this study, students' narratives are the primary unit of analysis, and the data are derived from semistructured interviews with then-enrolled students and observations in a noncredit-bearing remedial mathematics course at a public, 4-year university. The study's findings center on two psychosocial phenomena amid these students' mathematicslearning experiences: identity satisficing and racialized identity threat. The article closes with implications for future research regarding both non-credit-bearing remedial mathematics courses and mathematics-learning identities and experiences.

In My Opinion: Does Race Matter?

To the detriment of young African American learners, racial achievement gap rhetoric impacts social constructs in American classrooms. In my opinion, recent mathematics education reforms, despite equity-oriented rhetoric expressing concern for all children (NCTM 1989, 2000; RAND Mathematics Study Panel 2003), have instead helped foster an environment where African American children continue to be viewed as intellectually inferior and mathematically illiterate, usually in relation to children who are identified as white or Asian.