Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics: Promoting Students’ Sociopolitical Consciousness and Well-Being in Mathematics Class

Abstract

Using an ecological approach to trauma-informed care and radical healing, this case study explores how one Title I public middle school mathematics classroom offered students opportunities to engage in healing practices through the use of Social Justice Mathematics. Findings indicate that students identified their emotions, engaged in structural analyses of local social issues, and expressed plans to take action. This study suggests the possibility of using a Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics approach to support development of students’ sociopolitical consciousness, mathematics learning, and well-being.

Keywords

radical healing social justice mathematics trauma-informed care urban schools mathematics education middle school education

Introduction

Many students have endured adverse life experiences, some experiencing complex, chronic, and/or intergenerational trauma (Ridgard, Laracu, DuPaul, Shapiro, & Power, 2015). The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Justice, by interviewing a representative sample of children and their caregivers ages 0-17, found that 60.8% of children experienced at least one direct exposure to violence, crime, or abuse and 40.9% experienced multiple exposures, according to 2014 data. Combining indirect with direct exposures to violence, crime, or abuse, 67.5% had at least one exposure, 50% had multiple exposures, where rates are even higher when considering future exposure throughout a child’s lifetime (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2015).¹ These data include a nationally representative sample of children of diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, indicating the prevalence of trauma for all students, even those of dominant backgrounds and/or from families of high socioeconomic status. These experiences may have occurred before a student enters a teacher’s classroom, or it may occur during the school year a teacher is working with a student. I use the definition of trauma from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHS.

Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. (SAMHS, 2014, p. 7)

Traumatic events may include exposure to domestic violence, child abuse and/or neglect, witnessing violence in the community, living with a caregiver with mental health challenges, and losing a family member (Dorsey, Briggs, & Woods, 2011). Trauma and chronic stress have been found to negatively impact students’ cognitive development from the consistent and heightened levels of cortisol that enter the body (Carrion, Weems, & Reiss, 2007). Posttraumatic stress is associated with a range of negative effects including anxiety, aggression, depression, difficulty paying attention, and lower achievement (Ortiz, Richards, Kohl, & Zaddach, 2008; Zimmerman et al., 2018). Some youth employ a range of unhealthy coping mechanisms in response to adverse life experiences, for example, self-medication, joining gangs, and/or engaging in risky sexual behaviors (Milner, 2015). In underresourced urban areas, where many children of historically marginalized backgrounds and of immigrant status may live, students may experience even greater severity and higher rates of exposure to trauma due to structural factors such as lack of access to community resources (Diaz & Fenning, 2017). For instance, Ozer and Weinstein’s (2004) study of 349 middle school students in nine urban California middle schools found that 76% of participants had experienced or witnessed victimization within the past six months of being surveyed. In addition, students may experience trauma in schools themselves (Valenzuela, 2010), and mathematics class in particular may be a dehumanizing and traumatizing experience for students (Gutiérrez, 2017).

This case study employs an ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) to consider systemic factors, such as racism and poverty, that influence exposure to trauma (Ginwright, 2016; Milner, 2015; Prilleltensky, 2001). This ecological framework is used to explore how an urban Title I middle school mathematics classroom used practices that may promote students’ healing.

Literature

Trauma-Informed Care Programs in Schools

Studies have indicated positive results for students participating in school-based trauma-informed care programs (Dorado, Martinez, McArthur, & Leibovitz, 2016; Dorsey et al., 2011; Jaycox et al., 2009). Several of these programs, for example, Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), Supporting Students Exposed to Trauma (SSET), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Grief and Trauma Intervention (GTI) for Children, Multimodal Trauma Treatment or Trauma-Focused Coping in Schools (MMTT), have been found to decrease symptoms of posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety (Chafouleas, Johnson, Overstreet, & Santos, 2016; Jaycox et al., 2009; Stein et al., 2003). These programs typically use cognitive behavioral therapy approaches consisting of 10 to 14 sessions where students learn strategies such as identifying and expressing emotions, relaxation skills, and cognitive coping skills. Sessions are conducted in groups or individually, some with involvement of caregivers and families (Chafouleas et al., 2016).

Multitiered trauma-informed care programs that offer services to all students with a three-tiered delivery model have also resulted in positive outcomes (Chafouleas et al., 2016; Cole et al., 2005; Freeman et al., 2016). Tier 1 offers universal services for all students; Tier 2 provides targeted services for those who may benefit from additional supports such as promoting social support systems and strengthening self-regulation skills; and Tier 3 offers even more individualized supports typically utilizing cognitive behavioral therapy. A popular program called School Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or SWPBIS, also referred to as PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports), has found improvements in attendance and behavior (Freeman et al., 2016) and has been implemented in more than 20,000 schools (Plumb, Bush, & Kersevich, 2016). Another multitiered program called Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools, or HEARTS, uses a Flexible Framework multitiered model (Cole et al., 2005) and has been found to improve student well-being and in-class engagement as well as increase school staff understanding of trauma, including awareness of complex and chronic trauma (Dorado et al., 2016). Some multitiered programs also suggest including social emotional learning curricula and culturally relevant approaches (e.g., Cole et al., 2005; Plumb, Bush, Kersevich, 2016), which can improve students’ social and emotional skills and academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011).

Although these evidence-based programs have demonstrated effectiveness with caring for trauma-exposed students, such programs have several limitations. First, many trauma-informed programs do not center cultural relevance in their approaches, with the exception of a few, such as the HEARTS and SWPBIS programs (Dorado et al., 2016; PBIS, n.d.). Second, trauma-informed care programs in schools may suffer from discontinuation due to shifting administrative priorities, need for training, and lack of teacher buy-in. Third, pulling students from class to receive care may exacerbate academic challenges if a student is already struggling; teachers may not want students to leave for services, students may feel stigmatized or singled out when leaving class, and parents may not wish for their child to participate in a program where their child misses class (Nadeem & Ringle, 2016).

These challenges suggest that in-class supports for students may be more successful than those where students are removed from classes to receive services. However, few studies investigate in-class supports other than SWPBIS. In addition, current universal Tier 1 supports attend primarily to student behavior and classroom management rather than centering students’ healing and well-being (Plumb et al., 2016). The present study explores in-class practices that may promote well-being in a Title I sixth-grade mathematics classroom and discusses school-wide supports that may be necessary for this approach to be effective, such as but not limited to administrative and caregiver support and ongoing professional development for teachers.

Supports Embedded in Classroom Academic Instruction

Studies of in-classroom supports indicate successes in facilitating students’ healing process with guidance from highly skilled educators. Alvarez (2017) explores how one Black male educator, Mr. Sellers, supported students’ ability to cope with trauma by encouraging students’ self-regulation of emotions, while also considering attention to cultural relevance, needs for safety and belonging, and the impact of systemic factors on trauma (e.g., lack of material, educational, and occupational resources). Similarly, Ginwright (2016) describes two teachers’ use of radical healing approaches in Title I high school classrooms, although he describes one-time visits to their classrooms rather than an extensive study of their practices. His team’s research and data collection focused on ethnographic observations and interviews with community organizations and teacher critical inquiry group members, rather than observations of teachers’ classroom practices.

In an 11th-grade high school English class, Cariaga (2018) articulates how critical healing praxis facilitated healing for her students and herself. Critical healing praxis “confronts disembodiment and the privatization of healing in schools by centering the body and making pain an explicit tool for learning” (Cariaga, 2018, p. 61) through collective reflection while connecting to larger struggles for freedom with the community. Cariaga designed units of “intimate inquiry” where students developed traditional literacy skills, following the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English, while learning tools of emotional literacy. Cariaga found that students developed an ability to identify emotions and needs, set healthy boundaries, and reimagine the world they wished to live in throughout the semester. Importantly, Cariaga engaged in these practices with students to facilitate her own healing as well.

Similarly, Camangian’s (2015) use of humanizing pedagogy in his 12th-grade English class encouraged students to “awaken the collective consciousness of others” (p. 20) through their critical analysis of historical, cultural, and social conditions influencing their lives. Camangian (2015) defines humanizing pedagogy as helping “historically dispossessed children study as a means to radically heal (Ginwright, 2010) from their suffering” by allowing “young people to explore the depths of their ‘unresolved historical grief’ while helping to cultivate a deeper knowledge of and compassion for self, mobilizing efforts to develop a deeper sense of control over their collective lives” (p. 3). In addition to students’ healing and development of agency, 100% of the students passed the English portion of the California High School Exit Exam, a rate twice the average of the school.

These studies offer promising findings for the possibilities of using in-class healing practices within academic core classes with both academic and wellness benefits. However, these studies involved English teachers rather than mathematics teachers, and Mr. Sellers in Alvarez’s (2017) study was primarily an after-school teacher. To my knowledge, at the time of this writing, there are no studies that address students’ healing in a mathematics classroom. The present study investigates an in-classroom approach to attending to students’ exposure to trauma, in a mathematics classroom. The following research question guides this study:

Research Question 1: How did students in one middle school mathematics class engage in healing practices?

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework consists of an ecological approach to trauma-informed care (Harvey, 1996), radical healing (Ginwright, 2016), and Social Justice Mathematics (Gutstein, 2006) as seen in Figure 1. This study explores how the intersection of these three frameworks may offer a Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics approach. While attending to healing has not been defined as a goal of Social Justice Mathematics, results of the present study indicate that its implementation in this classroom aligned with many practices of both an ecological approach to trauma-informed care and radical healing.

Figure 1.

Theoretical framework for Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics.

Radical Healing and Healing Justice

Radical healing is a process of healing within a larger healing justice framework (Ginwright, 2016), also referred to as healing-centered engagement (Ginwright, 2018). Healing justice is a strengths-based framework to improve and nurture well-being that involves transforming institutions and relationships that cause harm to collectively heal and foster hope (Ginwright, 2016). Ginwright (2016) refers to Prilleltensky’s (2012) work in community psychology to clarify that well-being and social justice are intertwined, where well-being is defined as “practices that sustain, maintain, and expand health,” and healing is a “process to restore health resulting from (psychological and/or physical) harm or injury” (Ginwright, 2016, pp. 37-38).

Radical healing is “a process that builds the capacity of people to act upon their environment in ways that contribute to the well-being for the common good” (Ginwright, p. 8). Radical healing is explicitly defined as different than social emotional learning because of its political and social justice goals that include structural analysis of systemic issues that threaten well-being. Analysis of structural conditions that impact well-being is important to prevent youth from blaming themselves for their own social emotional states (Ginwright, 2016; McGee & Stovall, 2015).

Radical healing consists of five features: Culture, Agency, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement, signified by the acronym CARMA. Culture anchors students to their racial/ethnic backgrounds to affirm their intersectional identities and cultivate pride and a sense of belonging. Agency offers students opportunity to act individually and collectively to address community issues and improve community well-being. Relationships with adults, peers, and community members foster trust and social capital and includes attending to the healing of adult providers. Meaning refers to discovering purpose in one’s role to work toward social justice to foster hope, healing, and optimism. Achievement highlights the possibilities for individual and community achievement, where one understands oppression but is not defined by it (Ginwright, 2016; Villarreal, 2017). Ginwright (2018) argues that these approaches are distinctly different from trauma-informed care because they aim to treat the root cause of the trauma (in addition to caring for the individual), honor the collective nature of trauma and healing, and shift the focus to possibilities rather than viewing one’s trauma as an illness to treat.

Multitiered Trauma-Informed Care With an Ecological Perspective

This study uses Hopper, Bassuk, and Olivet’s (2010) definition of trauma-informed care to foreground students’ strengths and center empowerment as a goal.

Trauma-Informed Care is a strengths-based framework that is grounded in an understanding of and responsiveness to the impact of trauma, that emphasizes physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both providers and survivors and that creates opportunities for survivors to rebuild a sense of control and empowerment. (p. 82)

Trauma-informed systems of care create trusting relationships with providers who understand adaptive coping, do not pathologize nor re-traumatize individuals, and aim to treat the whole person and root cause of trauma rather than focusing solely on symptoms or behaviors that may result from such exposure (Harris & Fallot, 2001).

An ecological approach (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) to trauma-informed care considers how environmental factors may influence one’s exposure to adverse life experiences that can result in a traumatic stress response, inviting structural analysis of trauma and healing, similar to radical healing (Ginwright, 2016). Harvey’s (1996) description of an ecological approach to trauma-informed care articulates how racism (Carter, 2007), sexism, and poverty are considered environmental pollutants, or ecological factors that may threaten the safety of the community. Similar to Ginwright’s (2016) reference to Prilleltensky’s (2012) work in community psychology, Harvey (1996) also refers to community psychology’s ecological view of environmental influences on one’s wellness² and behaviors. Community psychology aims to eliminate oppressive social conditions to promote wellness through praxis, or theory in action, explicitly working toward social justice (Prilleltensky, 2001).

Multitiered trauma-informed care programs, like SWPBIS, foster trauma-sensitive and supportive environments, offering services to all students alongside targeted supports for those who may benefit from more services with three tiers, as discussed in the literature review. Multitiered models also attend to the needs of educators, both their own emotional needs and by offering education and training for how to best support students who may have experienced adverse life experiences (Chafouleas et al., 2016).

Social Justice Mathematics

Social Justice Mathematics, or SJM, is a mathematics-specific form of social justice pedagogy. Social justice pedagogy is a teaching approach that aims to develop students’ academic proficiency and students’ sociopolitical consciousness, or conscientização (Freire, 1970), to critically analyze and change the world (Ayers, 2009). SJM has also been referred to as Critical Mathematics (e.g., Frankenstein, 1983) and Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice (e.g., Bartell, 2013). SJM has been defined with two main goals—social justice pedagogical goals (Gutstein, 2006), or critical mathematics goals (Gutiérrez, 2002), and mathematics pedagogical goals, or dominant mathematics goals. According to Gutstein (2006), social justice pedagogical goals include developing students’ “positive cultural and social identities” (p. 28) and using mathematics to analyze the world to take action and change the world. Mathematics pedagogical goals include learning mathematics, developing a positive relationship with mathematics, and attaining mathematics achievement in the traditional sense (e.g., as valued by the dominant society through tests and grades).

SJM tasks typically investigate a social issue relevant to students’ local context using mathematics as a tool. For instance, the teacher of this study created a math task that used ratio and proportion to investigate the proportion of corner stores to homes in their own neighborhood in comparison with a nearby wealthy neighborhood. SJM is often created alongside a district curriculum, where SJM activities are used 15% to 20% of the time (Gutstein, 2006).³ This study investigates how students had opportunities to engage in healing practices through their use of SJM tasks.

Method

To investigate how students analyzed social issues and engaged in healing practices in their mathematics class, I conducted a classroom case study using purposive sampling (Creswell, 1998). Purposive sampling allowed the study to focus on a mathematics classroom that investigated social issues through the use of SJM, offering opportunities for students to discuss personal experiences related to potentially trauma-inducing incidents and conditions.

Participant Selection

Ms. Charles’s classroom was selected for this study because of her use of SJM. Conversations and initial visits to her classroom prior to conducting the study indicated her commitment to using SJM. Student interview and observation data began to reveal how students discussed their experiences related to trauma when engaging in the SJM tasks, resembling practices suggested by trauma-informed care and radical healing, shifting my focus to analyze how the SJM tasks offered opportunities for students to engage in healing practices. Nine focus students were selected for participation in the study, who were simply the first nine students to submit parent permission slips and student assent forms. I aimed to recruit eight to 10 focus students for the study (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Focus Students’ Background Information.

Pseudonym	Racial/ethnic background^a	Qualified for free or reduced lunch	Multilingual (English Learner)
Daisy	N/A	Yes	Yes
Kaden	Haitian, Mexican, Scottish	No	No
Kristine	N/A	Yes	Yes
Lexi	African American	No	No
Liza	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lily	Mixed Latina/White	Yes	Yes
Matthew	Asian Pacific Islander	Yes	Yes
Ophelia	Multiracial	Yes	No
Vanessa	Black	Yes	No

Note. Parent permission slips included optional demographic questions. N/A indicates questions that parents did not answer.

Parents wrote in their responses to the question, “How do you and your child identify his or her ethnic/racial background?”

Study Context

The public Title I urban middle school where the study was conducted was situated in the Stoneview neighborhood of the city of Goldenview, California, a city with disparately resourced neighborhoods of great wealth and poverty. In the city of Goldenview, housing costs outpaced any other city in the nation, during the time of data collection for this study. The median monthly rent in the city was US$4,400, and the median home value was US$1.1 million dollars. Housing costs were so high that even an income of US$105,000 was considered “low income” for a family of four by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (Sciacca, 2017). Not surprisingly, at this time the city also had the second highest population experiencing homelessness in the United States, where even residents with full-time employment were unable to secure stable housing. All city, neighborhood, school, teacher, and student names are pseudonyms.

The neighborhood of Stoneview faced severe economic, educational, and environmental depression. The city dump, sewer, and at one point power plant were all located in the neighborhood, which was previously designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency due to the prevalence of toxic waste. Residents suffered from asthma at four times the rate of the city, with increased rates of cancer and heart disease. Educational resources were scant, where schools in the neighborhood were severely underresourced, compromising the education of children in the community. Roughly 30% of residents in the neighborhood did not have a high school diploma and only 22% had a bachelor’s degree (Goldenview Health Improvement Partnership, 2016). Full citations for city, neighborhood, and school information are not provided to protect the identity of the school.

A survey administered by a local community organization in 2011 found that 100% of youth surveyed knew someone who has been shot; approximately 80% knew someone who had been killed; and 50% had seen someone get shot.⁴ This data is shared to explain the reality of the neighborhood’s challenges shaped by structural and environmental factors (e.g., toxic waste) not to pathologize residents of the community. Ms. Charles described stressors her students faced such as “acts of violence in the school,” experiencing food insecurity, hearing gunshots in their neighborhood, or being pushed from their homes. Importantly, she emphasized the sensitivity and danger of discussing “acts of violence” in a school with predominantly Black and Brown students due to stereotypes of youth of color.

The student body of the Title I public middle school was roughly 40% African American, 30% Latinx, 10% Asian American, 10% Multiracial, 5% White, and 5% Declined to State, where 70% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch (Goldenview Unified School District, 2016b). Approximately 10% of the students were multilingual students, more commonly referred to as English Learners, and more than 20% had Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, qualifying for extra supports.⁵ The school and district used restorative justice practices and SWPBIS (Goldenview Unified School District, 2016a).

The sixth-grade math teacher Ms. Charles, 32, was a Black⁶ woman born, raised, and currently living in Goldenview with strong sociopolitical consciousness of the challenges and strengths of the community. Ms. Charles took great care to ensure that investigations of struggles (e.g., to pay rent) explored through the SJM activities related to their lives in a respectful manner. In the case study class, eight of the 22 students had IEPs. Therefore, as mandated by state law, a special education teacher, who served a supportive role, was assigned to co-teach with Ms. Charles every day.

Data Sources

I collected multiple sources of data as recommended for case study analysis—observation field notes, interviews, task sheets, and student work (Stake, 1995; Yin, 1984). I engaged in participant observation three times per week for the duration of the fall term of the 2016-2017 school year, for a total of 40 classroom observations. I wrote field notes during and after each observation, and I wrote analytic memos weekly, or after every three classroom observations, following Ely, Anzul, Friedman, Garner, & McCormack Steinmetz’s (1991) recommendation of memo writing. I interviewed the nine focus student participants one-on-one two times during the term and made copies of their work on SJM tasks. Interviews asked focus students general questions about mathematics class and invited them to elaborate on what they had written for their SJM tasks. Because the tasks themselves often asked students to write about their feelings regarding various social issues, such as the high cost of living, interviews allowed opportunities for me to ask students to expand upon their emotional reactions. I also interviewed the case study teacher three times throughout the semester to discuss her goals for students, background experiences, and reflections on SJM lessons.

Data Analysis

Observation field notes, analytic memos, interview transcripts, and selected student work were coded using qualitative thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) through a constant comparison method (Krathwohl, 1998). I began analyzing data through inductive coding and recoding, focusing first on field note data and analytic memos because interview and student work data were collected later in the term. Using constant comparison, I continuously analyzed new data as it was collected to compare with previously collected data and their associated codes and themes to support or refute developing theory. Themes developed through inductive iterative coding were then grouped into umbrella themes informed by the theoretical frameworks of trauma-informed care from an ecological perspective and radical healing. Atlas.ti was used to develop and refine codes and themes when analyzing these multiple data sources. Triangulation of multiple sources of data and member checking with the teacher helped attend to the validity of findings. Documentation of codes and analytic memos using Atlas.ti also helped attend to reliability concerns.

Researcher Positionality

I approach this research as a womxn⁷ of color who both attended and taught in Title I urban public high schools. The urban Title I California high school I attended in the 1990s had a strong presence of gangs coupled with heavy police surveillance (not school safety officers but traditional police officers), where our school suffered on-campus violence, for example drive by shootings and robberies with weapons. As a teacher in a New York City Title I high school for 10 years, the student community I worked with also suffered a great deal of trauma, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, incarceration of parents, and losses (murder) of students and family members. I am mindful not to glorify nor normalize trauma, due to my own experiences. Normalization of trauma can be common when constantly exposed to adverse conditions (Gaylord-Harden, Cunningham, & Zelencik, 2011).

To be mindful of my potential bias, I included my comments and feelings throughout field notes with its own note-taking column denoted “OC” for observer comments (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) to separate my reactions from actual incidents I observed. I also wrote reflexive memos about my reactions, wonderings, fears, and breakthroughs (Paulus, Lester, & Dempster, 2013) to “untangle the personal from the theoretical” (Kleinsasser, 2000). I applied Milner’s (2007) four components of the Framework of Researcher Racial and Cultural Positionality to question my own cultural background, my background in relationship to the student participants, to discuss classroom events with Ms. Charles, and to consider how systemic factors (e.g., racism, poverty) influence the experiences of student participants. These reflections were especially important to the study as a fourth-generation Japanese American womxn working with predominantly African American, Latinx, and Filipinx student participants. Also, I did not grow up in the community where the school was located and where most students lived.

Social Justice Mathematics Tasks

During the semester of data collection, Ms. Charles created mathematics tasks and activities contextualized by local social issues as shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

Ms. Charles’s Social Justice Mathematics Activities.

Math task	Social issue	Math content
Mean Tweets	Cyber bullying	Positive and negative integers
Coroner Store: Food Deserts^a	Food deserts	Positive and negative integers
Rich ’Hood Poor ’Hood^a	Resources in neighborhoods	Coordinate plane
Rich ’Hood Poor ’Hood Part 2	Stereotyping	Coordinate plane
Money Makes All the Difference	Resources in schools	Conversions and area
Bills, bills, bills	Affording living expenses	Fractions
No Money More Problems^a	Single moms’ living expenses	Ratio and proportion
Eating in My Community	Food deserts	Ratio and proportion
What quality of life can minimum wage workers afford?^a	Affording living expenses	Fractions

Tasks discussed in the “Results.”

Note: Ms. Charles used the word “coroner” to indicate how unhealthy the food in corner stores are.

When creating these tasks, Ms. Charles aligned them with the mathematics content she was expected to cover by the district. For instance, one task from the district curriculum used a hot air balloon rising and falling along a number line to teach addition and subtraction of positive and negative integers. (Zero was set at ground level, but the hot air balloon also traveled below ground level to the bottom of a canyon to represent negative integers.) Ms. Charles created a task “Coroner Store: Food Deserts,” with the same mathematics but set in an authentic context, to use instead of the hot air balloon task. Students were asked to map a trip for a young woman who wanted to make gumbo for her grandmother, but because there were no grocery stores in her neighborhood she needed to travel to multiple stores to purchase the fresh ingredients. She created the task so that the stores were situated along a single street, and students needed to take the bus north and south along this street to the multiple markets, mimicking the hot air balloon task. Ms. Charles used the names of local grocery stores and markets, but to protect the identity of the city and school portions of the problem have been changed in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Portion of task “Coroner Store: Food Deserts.”

This problem engaged students in the same number line task as the hot air balloon problem in the district’s version of the task, but it was set in a context students had experienced in their own lives, referring to stores in the community. The task also asked students to answer questions aimed to develop their sociopolitical consciousness and invite students to identify and discuss their feelings, a practice suggested by trauma-informed care (e.g., Cole et al., 2005; Jaycox et al., 2009; Stein et al., 2003). Three more tasks are described in the discussion of the results.

Results

The SJM tasks offered students opportunities to engage in healing practices in a number of ways. First, students identified and discussed their feelings around such issues. Second, students analyzed structural conditions, such as how the minimum wage does not provide nearly enough income for Goldenview residents to secure stable housing, understanding how systemic factors influence living conditions. Third, students expressed plans to take action in the community.

Although this is not a clinical psychology study with data collected to evaluate students’ exposure to adverse experiences nor their symptoms of trauma, data of classroom observations, student work, and student interviews indicate that students had opportunities to attend to emotional needs and critically analyze relevant social issues, as suggested by trauma-informed care and radical healing, opportunities they likely would not have in a typical mathematics classroom.

Identifying Emotions

Field note observation data of in-class discussions, student written work, and student interviews all revealed strong emotional expressions from students. Identifying and regulating emotions, with evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy approaches, have been found successful in decreasing symptoms of posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety (Chafouleas et al., 2016). Students identified their emotions, feeling “sad,” “mad,” and/or “worried.” For example, one math task Ms. Charles created “No Money More Problems” (Figure 3) explored equivalent fractions, decimals, and percentages, such as 1/4 is equivalent to 0.25 and 25%. Students were then asked to solve the following problem about living expenses as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Portion of task: “No Money More Problems”

For part A, after finding each fractional amount of US$100 (1/4 of $100 is US$25; 2/5 of US$100 is US$40; and 4/10 of US$100 is US$40), students realized that the total of US$25, US$40, and US$40 is US$105. However, the problem states that there is only US$100, not enough to pay everyone back. Ms. Charles used signed numbers to indicate that there would not be enough money. “I’m negative 5 dollars. That right there is the plight of many people in the U.S.” She then showed a six-minute video about a single mother of four struggling to pay her bills.

Part B of the task invited students to discuss their feelings about the video about single moms working to pay their multiple living expenses. In their written work students used phrases like, “I feel bad for her” or “I feel sorry for her,” when answering these questions. Lexi wrote, “The feelings I have are sad and worried. I’m mad. She should be given a raise. That’s so mean she needs a better job.” Daisy who wrote extensive responses in her written work yet rarely spoke in class wrote, “I have more respect for all single mothers for all the hard work they do to give their child a better life. I also feel sad because she has to handle things by herself.” During the class discussion one student remarked that he felt “sad and worried.” Another added, “I feel sad and angry because she works 40 hours a week and she still is not able to provide food.” Another student concurred, “I feel sad because she doesn’t deserve to be treated like that.” Students’ reactions were emotional, and they readily analyzed the single mom’s situation as unfair.

Matthew wrote, “I have empathy for her because my mom has struggled to pay rent and has struggled to feed me, my brother, and sister. My mom works from eight to seven at night. My dad left, and she’s struggling even more.” When asked about this written response in the interview, he shared that his family was experiencing housing instability after his father left the family. He explained that he and his two siblings lived in their mother’s car when they were “in between homes.” Matthew did not use the language of “experiencing homelessness,” despite intermittently living in his mother’s car. She eventually moved the family far from Matthew’s school—with traffic the drive was almost two hours each way. Matthew broke down in tears when discussing his living situation during the interview, and I asked if I could share with his teacher for her support and for her to find a school counselor and other services for him. Because Matthew was quiet and an academically strong student, his teachers likely would not have recognized the trauma he was facing. The activities he engaged in in his mathematics class afforded him the ability to discuss his own trauma of experiencing homelessness, missing his father, and wanting to help his mother afford rent.

Students went beyond identifying emotions, as evidence-based trauma-informed care practices often utilize, to engage in critical analyses of structural conditions, a practice suggested by radical healing discussed in further detail in the following section. Many students suggested that the government should help people in need like the single mom in the video. In her interview Kristine explained, “I think that was sad, but I also got mad because the government or someone else of her family should help her with her kids and with money and food because she said the kids eat a lot.” She also wrote that she believed that the mom should be able to spend more time playing with her baby rather than returning to work soon after giving birth. Another student, Lily, suggested that free day care should be available for families so they can afford to work and pay their living expenses. Suggestions for government supports like these indicate students’ analyses of systems and structures.

Analysis of Structural Oppression

Congruent with an ecological approach to trauma-informed care (Harvey, 1996) and radical healing (Ginwright, 2016), students’ awareness of systemic issues, such as inequitable distribution of resources, can help prevent youth from blaming themselves for their own conditions (Ginwright, 2016). Students’ comments in class, responses in written work, and interview data indicated an awareness of structural issues related to inequitable living conditions, such as their comments regarding how the government should help single mothers. Students’ analyses of structural oppression fell into three themes.

Suggestions for government supports

In addition to investigation of financial struggles of a single mother, Ms. Charles created a task about fractions that explored the lives of people working jobs that pay the minimum wage, “What quality of life can minimum wage workers afford?” (Figure 4). To launch the task she showed a short video that profiled the lives of several people working minimum wage jobs and the impossible nature of paying one’s bills with that salary. The task sheet asked students to answer the following questions indicated in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Portion of Task “What quality of life can minimum wage workers afford?”

Several students suggested that the minimum wage should be raised. Kristine explained how she felt the low minimum wage was unfair to workers. “Even if they work hard, the hardest they can, they still can’t get all the money they need. I think if they [business owners] know the story of people that work at McDonald’s, they would be given more money.” She believed that if the government or the company understood the struggles of their employees they might raise the minimum wage. Liza connected the low minimum wage to health and the quality of one’s food. “I think it isn’t fair that minimum wage is so low and then some people can’t even survive off of it because a lot of fast food places are cheap but not as healthy as cooking a home-cooked meal.” She suggested that the minimum wage should be increased and that companies should give more money to their employees to help them survive. While the task may not result in realistic amounts of money for each bill, the task engages students with fractions while inviting critical analysis of the minimum wage and discussion of their feelings. Perhaps better questions could be, “How much money does Rafael have for each bill if he pays each of these fractional amounts? Does he have enough to pay each bill?” while providing realistic amounts for each bill based on local service and rental costs.

Students also called on the government to help when engaging in the “Rich ’Hood Poor ’Hood” activity Ms. Charles created that invited students to question labels for neighborhoods such as “good” and “bad.” The activity taught the coordinate plane where students were to plot a series of points given as ordered pairs, for example, (–4, 3), that represented various community resources. They first plotted points for a “Neighborhood 1” with a hospital, trees, parks, schools, and grocery stores, and also for a “Neighborhood 2” with corner stores, police stations, no hospital, and few grocery stores and schools, representing disparately resourced communities. The task asked, “When you think of ‘good neighborhoods’ or ‘bad neighborhoods’ what words or phrases come to mind? Do you think it is alright to use words like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when talking about neighborhoods?” Then for Part 2 of the “Rich ‘Hood Poor ‘Hood” activity students used ordered pairs to indicate resources (e.g., schools, grocery stores, etc.) on the coordinate plane to map out their own community with equitable access to resources. This Part 2 task sheet asked students, “What do we need in a neighborhood for it to benefit ALL members of the community? Why are those things important to all community members regardless of how much money they make?”

This two-part mapping task invited students to consider structural conditions that influence one’s health and opportunities for academic and professional success. In their written work students explained how important it was for all neighborhoods to have access to hospitals and grocery stores to live healthy lives. Kaden explained how the government was not doing enough to support health and education, resulting in overcrowded schools and lack of access to hospitals and health care in underresourced neighborhoods. Students’ analyses of community resources also revealed their resistance of negative stereotypes.

Resistance of negative stereotypes

All nine focus students resisted stereotypes about neighborhoods in class discussions, written work, and in interviews. Students expressed awareness of stereotypes of Stoneview. For instance, Matthew explicitly acknowledged such stereotypes. When asked about labels of “good” or “bad” to describe neighborhoods, Matthew responded,

They’re using stereotypes to determine what category the neighborhood is . . . In bad neighborhoods they would think there are lots of crimes, lots of bad people, lots of rundown houses, lots of homeless people, and lots of corner stores and other bad stuffs. But what I think about this neighborhood [Stoneview] even though people say it’s bad, I think it’s like a good neighborhood where people are still safe and can still learn and get good jobs.

Ophelia even argued that visiting neighborhoods might change people’s minds by learning what the neighborhood is truly like. She said, “They say it’s a bad neighborhood but when you go there, it’s a good neighborhood.” Lexi also resisted negative stereotypes explaining, “There’s no such thing [as “good” or “bad” neighborhoods]. All neighborhoods are the same, except some neighborhoods have less things than the other.”

Kristine explained that it’s not fair to call neighborhoods “good” or “bad” because “sometimes bad things happen in good neighborhoods, and sometimes good things happen in bad neighborhoods.” She described her own neighborhood as “quiet,” but that last week “something bad happened.” There was a recent shooting two blocks from her home. Daisy also lived nearby and described her neighborhood as “very peaceful but recently there was a shooting by the park so it’s kind of in between [‘good’ and ‘bad’]. We have good days and bad days.”

“Everybody is human.”

Not only did students resist negative stereotypes, they expressed an understanding that some people have more than others simply because of how much money they have. Students argued that “everybody is human,” and some shouldn’t have more than others simply because they have more money. Daisy expressed this clearly when discussing differences in how well-resourced some neighborhoods are in comparison with others. She explained, “I think it wasn’t fair because everybody is human and these kids especially, they wouldn’t get that, or they would think, ‘Why don’t I or why don’t we have this?’ We’re all people. It doesn’t matter what your parents earn.”

Understanding structural reasons behind social inequities may help students manage their trauma, such as experiencing homelessness, through a systemic understanding of their conditions. For instance, understanding that a family may struggle to pay rent because of the boom of the tech industry, not because of their parents’ career or earnings, may preserve students’ dignity, pride, and self-worth. Importantly, students emphasized that being kind and friendly are important to communities and that people of all backgrounds deserve quality schools, health care, secure housing, and healthy foods.

Taking Action

Students’ awareness of structural issues influenced their plans for taking action. Taking critical action is part of radical healing (Ginwright, 2016) and SJM (Gutstein, 2006) to gain a sense of agency and empowerment, a way of healing from trauma (Ginwright, 2016). Kaden, for example, was enraged by the gentrification occurring in her neighborhood and decided to take action. She lived in a different neighborhood than Stoneview, where her school was located, in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Goldenview. Gentrification can initiate exposure to trauma by pushing residents from the community and causing members to experience housing insecurity (like Matthew’s family), creating fear of being driven from the community, and/or through fears of erasure of the community’s identity (Anguelovski, 2013). Kaden described her “tears of anger” with the situation of incoming residents “taking away the culture of the neighborhood” by raising rents and causing businesses to close. She even took action by creating and posting signs in her community that read, “Help our neighborhood.”

Other students explained their plans for helping their communities in the future. Daisy described her plans to open her own business to provide food for the community. Lexi explained how learning about social issues in class is important to bring awareness to the struggles of the neighborhood. “If more and more people learn about it [lack of access to healthy food] maybe they’ll try to help Stoneview.” She believed that others might contribute to Stoneview by learning about the struggles of local residents. Several students also suggested that nearby wealthier communities should donate and share resources.

Overall, students expressed sentiments of empowerment by discussing social issues. Kristine, for example, enjoyed learning about her community “because then we’ll know more about our community and we’ll know what the problems are and solutions we could solve the problems with.” Vanessa discussed how she appreciated learning about “good stuff and bad stuff in my neighborhood so I can know so it makes me look at the world different.” Likewise, Daisy described that the SJM tasks “help me see the world better and open my eyes about the world a lot more.”

Although traditional achievement data (e.g., standardized test scores) were not gathered, all nine focus students passed the course and interview data indicate that all focus students enjoyed engaging with SJM tasks. Students described the class as “fun” where they enjoyed “learning about [their] community but it’s math too so it’s fun,” rather than the “boring textbook” mathematics they did in their fifth-grade class. Ms. Charles also explained that she felt students were more engaged and successful when doing mathematics with SJM tasks set in authentic contexts.

Discussion

Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics

The intersection of SJM, radical healing, and multitiered trauma-informed care from an ecological perspective may offer a way for students to learn mathematics, gain sociopolitical consciousness, and improve wellness. I refer to this approach as Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics. Combined, these approaches include structural analysis of oppression, attention to cultural relevance, empowerment to take action, identification and regulation of emotions, and learning mathematics with a strengths-based, collective approach (see Figure 1).

Instructional Implications

Teachers’ ability to use this approach requires an understanding of radical healing and trauma-informed approaches to invite students to identify and discuss emotions with great care taken not to re-traumatize students. Ms. Charles was a Black teacher from Goldenview, with an understanding of trauma-informed care and an acute awareness of the challenges and strengths of the community, which helped her avoid the pitfalls of re-traumatizing or pathologizing students, which can happen when teachers are not from the community (Ayers, 2018). Ms. Charles’s sociopolitical consciousness as well as her understanding of trauma-informed care promoted her ability to contextualize mathematics problems using local, relevant social issues while inviting discussion of feelings around such issues. At the close of data collection, in the third and final interview she mentioned her knowledge of trauma-informed care through various professional development opportunities she had participated in. Ongoing professional development and partnerships with counselors and health professionals may help teachers use trauma-informed approaches in their classrooms.

In addition to understanding trauma and trauma-informed care, teachers need sociopolitical consciousness to create relevant, respectful, and authentic SJM tasks (Gutstein, 2006; Kokka, 2015). Gutstein (2018) suggests that teachers be actively engaged in the political struggles of the community in which they teach. To foster students’ empowerment, teachers may also encourage students to take action as a class, by supporting local community initiatives or advocating for change within their school. Leonard, Brooks, Barnes-Johnson, and Berry (2010) suggest that preservice mathematics teachers engage in culturally relevant social justice examples in their coursework. Teachers also need to be compassionate (Oplatka & Gamerman, 2017) and attend to social emotional needs to foster safe and caring relationships with students (Hannegan-Martinez, 2015) as recommended by trauma-informed care (e.g., Cole et al., 2005), SJM (Gutstein, 2006), and radical healing, for example, through relational pedagogy (Ginwright, 2016). Engaging in this work may also require teachers to learn about mathematics pedagogical approaches that promote equitable student participation, for example, group work such as Complex Instruction (Boaler, 2008), encouraging productive struggle, developing sociomathematical norms (Yackel & Cobb, 1996), and fostering growth mind-set approaches (Dweck, 2008), which Ms. Charles herself mentioned.

For teachers who may already use SJM, this study highlights the sensitive nature of discussing social issues of SJM tasks where a healing-informed approach may be more successful and beneficial for students. The literature indicates that teachers who use SJM can encounter resistance from students who prefer traditional mathematics to contexualized SJM tasks (e.g., Brantlinger, 2013). Students in previous studies may have resisted because they did not wish to relive adverse experiences and/or because the teacher lacked the sociopolitical consciousness to create authentic, respectful, rigorous tasks. A healing-informed SJM approach better attends to students’ well-being by considering dangers of re-traumatization using trauma-informed approaches to instead promote student wellness, which may help overcome these previously documented dilemmas of SJM.

These findings contribute to the growing research base of effective instructional strategies that are intentional about ensuring success for historically marginalized students, such as culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Caraballo, 2017; Paris & Alim, 2014), cogenerative dialogues⁸ (Beltramo, 2017), and social justice pedagogy (Ayers, 2009). While Ms. Charles was a Black woman, born and raised in Goldenview, this does not suggest that only teachers of similar backgrounds can engage in this pedagogical approach. Scholars of culturally relevant pedagogy (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1994) and ethnic studies (e.g., Sleeter, 2011) offer instructive examples of white teachers engaging their respective pedagogical approaches with students of color. In addition, students of dominant backgrounds (e.g., students who are white and/or affluent) are also likely to have experienced trauma (Finkelhor et al., 2015), where such considerations also apply to their well-being.

School-Wide Supports

Simultaneously supporting students’ mathematics learning and overall well-being may be an ambitious goal for teachers, who already face numerous demands and challenges, such as large class sizes, lack of resources, and standardized testing pressures. Some educators have organized grassroots efforts outside of school time to collectively design curricula that center students’ healing and identity development (e.g., Coffey & Cariaga, 2015) through critical professional development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015). In these groups, teachers collaboratively design curricula that use social justice pedagogy (Valdez et al., 2018), meet learning standards, for example, CCSS (Coffey & Cariaga, 2015), while also attending to educators’ needs for healing (Pour-Khorshid, 2016) and engagement in political education and activism (Kokka, 2018; Martinez, Valdez, & Cariaga, 2016).

However, school-wide structures should be in place to support teachers and adult caregivers, for example, by increasing counseling staff; creating collaborations with health professionals, caregivers, and the community; and offering professional development and additional preparation time for curriculum development. Such supports may address potential challenges such as teachers’ and students’ susceptibility to experiencing vicarious or secondhand trauma or feeling re-traumatized when engaging in these discussions (Cole et al., 2005; Dorado et al., 2016), and offer supports for healing practices. Given the prevalence of students’ (of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds) exposure to trauma, where approximately 60% of children are exposed to violence, crime, or abuse, according to a study with nationally representative sample of diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (Finkelhor et al., 2015), it is worthwhile to consider how to promote students’ healing in addition to their mathematics understanding. In addition, using tasks set in real-world contexts may improve mathematics performance (Bottge & Hasselbring, 1993; Carraher, Carraher, & Schliemann, 1985) and engagement (Bae & Kokka, 2016), especially if the tasks are aligned with students’ interests (Walkington, 2013).

Conclusion

Future research may include collection of achievement data, surveys to measure exposure to trauma, and symptoms of trauma, which I did not collect. Analyses of the SJM tasks (e.g., cognitive demand, rigor, authenticity of context, task quality, text complexity) need investigation, as some studies have found decreased task quality with SJM activities (Brantlinger, 2011). Using SJM with students in collaboration with families and the community (Purnell et al., 2018) through participatory action research may also be of interest for future research.

This study and its Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics approach, combining SJM (Gutstein, 2006), an ecological approach to trauma-informed care (Harvey, 1996), and radical healing (Ginwright, 2016), may offer a way to support students’ well-being and development of sociopolitical consciousness in mathematics class, a class and subject typically not thought of as offering such opportunities. Mathematics teachers can engage in this work by contextualizing mathematics problems with local social concerns and asking students about their feelings associated with such issues. A Healing-Informed Social Justice Mathematics approach may help rehumanize mathematics (Gutiérrez, 2017) and promote transformative healing for students, teachers, and their communities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Gina Garcia, Yodit Betru, and Christina Villarreal who offered helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. she would also like to thank the teacher and students for their participation in the study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Kari Kokka is an assistant professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Instruction and Learning of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She studies student and teacher perspectives of Social Justice Mathematics, STEM teacher activism, and longevity of STEM teachers of color in urban schools. She is a former mathematics teacher and mathematics coach, where she worked for 11 years in Title I public high schools. She is also co-founder of the Creating Balance in an Unjust World Conference on STEM Education and Social Justice and co-chair of the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (2017-2019).

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