From Ideas to Practices: How to Create Equitable Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

Establishing an equitable classroom is considered to be a challenging task particularly for teachers in mathematics classroom which has higher proportion of students’ failure with grade F or grade ‘Unsatisfied’ than other subjects. This evidence reflects ineffective connection between learning management and students’ needs. Some students who have slow learning paces, have learning difficulties, or have inadequate basic knowledge, tend to be ignored. Although many educators mentioned about supports and guidance for equitable classroom, those were just general guidelines, not specific to a subject. Consequently, mathematics teachers might not have practical examples to follow, hardly see the practicality from general equitable classroom guidelines to practices. Therefore, this article aims to propose ideas and corresponding practical guidelines specifically for equitable mathematics classroom. It merges the equitable framework of inclusive differentiated instructions and the framework of an effective mathematics classroom. The suggestion and concluding remarks were deduced from a case study of Grade 9 classroom in Creative Art secondary program from a large-size school in the northern region. It shows the teacher’s perspectives towards equitable mathematics classroom and the design of learning activities for equitable mathematics classroom based-on the proposed practical guidelines.