Strategies to Promote Equity in Socio-Culturally Diverse Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

The major focus of this study was to carry out the strategies use by teachers to promote equity in socio-culturally diverse mathematics classroom. The objectives of this study were to find out the problems faced by teacher while managing equity in culturally diverse mathematics classroom and to explore the strategies used by teacher for the ‘promotion of equity’ in culturally diverse mathematics classroom. This study has addressed the research questions, why do teachers face obstacles while managing equity? And how and what strategies do adopt mathematics teachers for ‘promoting equity’? Qualitative with ethnography approach was the research design for this study. Classroom observation, semi-structured interview, documents analysis were the main tools of this research. The data were collected from Shree Mangal Higher Secondary School, Kirtipur. I used purposive sampling to select the participants for the study. The participants of this study were two mathematics educators, two mathematics teachers and four students from class seven and four students from class nine. Altogether twelve persons were there during the data collection. From the analysis of data, it was found that teachers faced problems were; to select appropriate medium of instruction, poor achievement of students from basic level, limitation of time to complete full course, poor responsible of parents and school administrative team to arrange extra class and un-contextual curriculum. Likewise, strategies that were used by teacher to promote equity were addressing individual differences, arranging co-operative learning, providing opportunities and motivating, connecting cultural phenomena with mathematical contents, making representative parents aware and responsible, creating proper environment of family as well as society, suggesting administrative team for manage extra class, following democratic behavior with all students and regular unit test, weekly test and terminal test for promotion of equity.