Possibilities and Challenges of Teaching Integrated Math and Social Studies for Social Justice: Two Teacher Educators' Collaborative Self-Study

Abstract

In this paper, we--one mathematics teacher educator and one social studies teacher educator--describe a project where we collaborated to model teaching integrated mathematics and social studies for social justice in our methods courses. Using a self-study approach, we examined our teaching and our students' learning with regards to teaching integrated mathematics and social studies for social justice. We encountered varied challenges in our efforts to prepare teacher candidates for social-justice-oriented lessons. These challenges included teacher candidates' perception of authority/credibility of their professors who were foreign females from the "Third World," teacher candidates' deficit views on minoritized students, and the limited time and resources for teacher collaboration in teacher education. Despite these challenges, we believe this kind of project is necessary to move forward in teacher preparation for social justice education.