Teachers creating mathematical models to fairly distribute school funding

Abstract

Our study aims to investigate what teachers do as they draw on their mathematical understanding and personal experiences to engage in social justice-oriented mathematical modeling. We analyze what ideas were expressed by teachers regarding their mathematical identities while they explore, wrestle with, and reconcile the underlying societal values that support mathematical models. We invited groups of teachers to make mathematical models for distributing school funding given real data from diverse, anonymized schools. Our results show that teachers created and refined diverse mathematical models to connect the mathematical world and societal space and these models reflected different societal values. Drawing on their own experiences, teachers expressed a sense of agency and critical consciousness while making decisions about school funding. This study delineates mathematical contents and processes necessary for advancing a societal goal of fairly distributing funds and we explore how teachers connect to this context as learners and members of society.