Mexican American Women Reflecting on Mathematics Education, as Mothers and as Adult Learners

Abstract

Parents bring a wealth of experiences and mathematics knowledge than often goes untapped. The reason for this is the little information that teachers have about their students’ parents and the limited communication with them. Latinx families are even more impacted by this because of prevalent deficit views about Latinx parents’ parental involvement and participation in the education of their children. In order to move away from these deficit views, in this study I share insights that five Mexican American mothers offered about the mathematics education of their children and about their experiences with mathematics as learners themselves. This study addresses two research questions: (1) how do parents’ experiences with mathematics influence their involvement in their children’s education and their views of their children’s school mathematics? And (2) how do parents’ everyday life experiences influence their approach to mathematical problems? Each mother was interviewed and participated in a mathematics workshop for parents that focused on the algebra topic of interpreting graphs. The findings indicate that these Mexican American mothers used their previous experiences with mathematics education at school and at home as guidelines for their participation in their children’s mathematics education. As adult learners, the mothers collectively constructed knowledge about interpreting graphs and used their day to day experiences as tools that helped them understand this mathematical concept. These findings underscore the importance for researchers, teacher educators, and teachers to take into consideration the parents’ backgrounds (i.e., their culture, their education level, their expectations, their goals, and their concerns) as part of their efforts to work with parents as partners. There is a lot to learn about and from Latinx parents, and such learning can help improve children’s mathematics education and parent-teacher relations.