At the Intersection of Classroom Culture and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Noel Enyedy

The proposed project aims to investigate the ways classroom cultures (e.g., who gets to talk, when, and what counts as legitimate knowledge) mediate and navigate the tensions between the goals of culturally relevant pedagogy and the content goals of mathematics classrooms—in this case statistics. I propose to investigate this topic in the context of investigating issues of social and educational justice. Culturally relevant pedagogy promises to provide contexts where urban, and non-majority students are more engaged, develop a sense of agency and socio-political consciousness, and develop academic identities. However, when students engage with socially relevant topics they do not (nor should they) segment off the world in terms of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Students often bring with them assumptions and ways of talking that have been developed outside of school. These styles of discussion and debate can be an excellent resource for students to better understand the topics at hand, but sometimes they are not well aligned with the norms for academic discourse. In the project I will first study the informal ways students try and convince other people of some course of action outside of school. Second, I will study the academic discourse within schools. Finally, I will collaborate with teachers to create classroom cultures that are productive bridges between the two discourses and honor the goals of culturally relevant pedagogy and mathematics.

About Noel Enyedy

Noel Enyedy received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of California at Berkeley. Enyedy is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles in the graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His research addresses cognition, learning, and the development of mathematical reasoning using a framework that combines cognitive and sociocultural theories with sociolinguistics methods to simultaneously consider individual cognitive processes, external representation, and social discourse—not as separate factors, but as interdependent aspects of learning and development. Empirically this model is driven by studies that examine: the ways in which material, representational tools (e.g., visual displays, symbol systems, etc.) shape the mathematical activity, reasoning, and learning of students; the ways individuals construct meaning around these tools and representations; and the ways that mathematical discourse and discourse communities shape the learning process.