Martin, D. B. (2000). Mathematics success and failure among African-American youth: The roles of sociohistorical context, community forces, school influence, and individual agency. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (ISBN 0-8058-3042-1, 214 pages)  

Bruce B. Douglas, M.S.  

Danny Martin introduces his book on the mathematical success and failure of African American youth with a preface in which he discusses his reasons for writing the book. The text was both a personal and professional project for the author and is the result of his efforts to understand mathematical success and failure among African-American youth. The author suggests that this book is also about history and context. It is about history because the mathematical experiences of the African American parents and community members profiled in the book can not be discussed apart from their larger socioeconomic and educational experiences or the treatment they receive over the course of their lives as a result of their African-American status. This book is about context because the mathematical experiences of African American parents and students are subject to a variety of interrelated contextual influences. The author also hints that these contextual influences included the sociohistorical, community, family, school, and intrapersonal forces that have an impact on their academic and mathematical development at both the individual and group level.  

The purpose of this text is to address the psychological, academic, and mathematical development of African American adolescents, viewed in the context of the various forces that significantly impact their academic achievement. In this book, Martin acknowledges that numerous studies on mathematics achievement and persistence among African Americans rely on the analysis and presentation of aggregated test-taking data, with limited attention or voice given to the individuals in these studies. Because prior studies have failed to link contextual forces in meaningful or complex ways, the author’s analysis suggests that these studies can be characterized by both theoretical and methodological limitations—restrictions that hinder the ability of mathematics educators to reverse the negative achievement and persistence trends that continue to affect African-American students. Therefore, it is the sincere hope of the author that this book will contribute to a greater understanding of the mathematical education of African American students, and ultimately, to increase success in mathematics for all students.  

At the very beginning, Martin opens the book by describing how his experiences as a student and teacher of mathematics led him to investigate mathematics success and failure among African American youth. As a teacher and researcher, the author struggled with the questions of why African Americans remain underrepresented in mathematics and why large numbers of these students achieve below their academic potential. In search of compelling explanations, in the fall of 1993, the author conducted ethnographic observations in a predominantly African American middle school in Oakland, California. This particular school was chosen because it was in the process of implementing the Algebra Project Transition Curriculum, an experience-based curriculum that was being used in a number of middle school sites around the country, specifically in middle schools with large numbers of African-American students. This curriculum was designed to help African American students “mathematize” their experiences in real-world contexts using a highly successful five-step learning process: (a) experiential learning, (b) mathematical communication, (c) cooperative learning, (d) emphasis on multiple representations, and (e) problem solving.  

Chapter 1, entitled “Mathematics Learning, Achievement, and Persistence among African-Americans: Toward a Context-Based Perspective,” frames the basis of the book by reviewing and critiquing existing perspectives of mathematics achievement and persistence among African-Americans. The author discusses the ability of Black students and their attitude and achievement levels, based on results from large-scale tests of mathematical achievement, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Those results indicate that, as a group, African American students typically score below their White peers in all content areas of mathematics. The chapter also presents the capstone of the author’s research; a multilevel framework that he believes allows one to trace out the explanatory streams of mathematics achievement and identifies mechanisms that produce both mathematics success and failure among African-American students. This multi-level framework addressed mathematical socialization and identity, cultural and community beliefs about mathematics, school-level factors that affected mathematical achievement levels, and student success and the role of intrapersonal agency.  

Chapter 2, entitled “’I Wasn’t Going to be Doing any Math:’ Mathematics Socialization, Identity, and the Evolution of Community Beliefs about Mathematics,” offers an analysis of the mathematical experiences of four African American parents and community members. These four narratives highlighted a particular collection of socioeconomic and educational experiences that dramatically affected the participants’ mathematics identities and their expectations and goals for themselves and for their children. Even in such a small sample, African American adults had insightful and compelling stories to tell about their mathematical experiences. All four narratives address beliefs about African American status and differential treatment, beliefs about the importance of mathematics, beliefs about motivation to obtain mathematical knowledge, socioeconomic and educational goals, and expectations for children. Embedded within each of these stories are references to the achievement and persistence problems that continue to affect large numbers of African American students.  

Chapter 3, entitled “’When Am I Ever Going to Use This?:’ School-Level factors and Mathematics Socialization among African-American Students,” characterizes several important school-level factors that affect the conditions for mathematics learning and teaching in a predominantly African-American middle school in Oakland, California. Based on interviews with several teachers and observations of teachers and students in their normal in-school setting, the author discovers various school-level forces that contribute to the students’ in-school mathematics socializations. These forces include the role of teachers as agents of mathematical socialization, the role of peers in mathematical socialization, and the ways in which classroom and curricular practices served as contexts that promoted positive or negative mathematical socialization and identity. Based on the results of the qualitative inquiry, there is a strong norm of underachievement among most of the students. This norm negatively influences many students’ in-class behaviors and also contributes to their beliefs about, and resistance to, many of the reform-oriented practices stressed in the Algebra Project curriculum. Chapter 3 details the effects of this resistance on mathematics learning and teaching.  

Chapter 4, entitled “’Because I Want to Be Somebody: African-American Student Narratives on Academic and Mathematics Success,” illustrates the often overlooked strengths and resiliency of African American students, particularly in mathematics. The seven narratives on academic and mathematical success highlighted the factors that influenced these students’ success in light of the discussions in chapters 2 and 3. The discussions focused on the ways in which successful students view themselves as learners of mathematics, the beliefs they hold about the instrumental importance of mathematics, their motivations to learn mathematics, and the actions they take to achieve and maintain their success. Each narrative addressed personal identity, personal goals and motivation to learn, perceptions of peers and school climate, perceptions of teachers, beliefs about mathematical ability, beliefs about the importance of mathematics, and beliefs about differential treatment. The student narratives strongly suggest that African American students can achieve success in mathematics.  

Chapter 5, entitled “Mathematics Socialization and Identity Among African-Americans: Real Life Experiences, Research, and Recommendations,” synthesizes analyses presented in chapters 2, 3, and 4. These analyses indicate that the messages generated within these contexts can be very powerful and can profoundly influence one’s mathematical identity. The discussion also returns to the context-based framework that was introduced in Chapter 1 and highlighted important relationships between the themes outlined in the framework. The chapter concluded by highlighting the contributions and implications of the author’s research for mathematical educators, African American students, and teachers of African American students.  

The author uses qualitative inquiry to address the issues confronted in this book, ethnography in particular. According to Ary, Jacobs, and Razavieh (2002), ethnography is the “in-depth study of naturally occurring behavior within a culture or social group” (p. 25). A major strength of this approach to research is that it seeks to understand human and social behavior from the “insider’s” perspective, as it is lived by participants in a particular setting. The advantage of the research conducted by the author is that it displays that human behavior can be fully understood only by knowing the setting in which it occurs. The interviews and observations produced a wealth of information rich data that cannot be obtained through written surveys or other data collection methods. The students and teachers’ personal words added face validity and credibility to the research project.  

In contrast, a noted weakness with the data collection method was that it only measures a small number of people and cases. The implications suggested by the author can only be directed to the cases in the book. More specifically, the cases selected were not representative of the entire African American population. Therefore, the extent to produce valid generalizations is very limited. Also, another major concern with this type of inquiry was the credibility of the researcher. Ary et al. (2002) stated that the main limitation with ethnographic research is that the findings depend heavily on the particular researcher’s observations and interpretations of the data. “The researcher has an obligation to represent the realities of the research participants as accurately as possible and must provide assurances in the report that this obligation was met” (p. 452). Another concern has to do with the extent to which the predispositions or biases of the evaluator may affect data analysis and interpretations. Bias may result from selective observations, hearing only what one wants to hear, or allowing personal attitudes, preferences, and feelings to affect interpretation of data. “Getting close enough to the situation observed to experience it first-hand means that researchers can learn from their experiences, thereby generating personal insights, but that closeness makes their objectivity suspect” (Patton, 2002, p. 569).  

In summary, Martin’s book documents small portions of mathematical socialization, identity, and success among African Americans. It also addresses several questions related to how these socializations, identities, and successes were influenced by sociohistorical, community, school, and intrapersonal forces. The text surely added to our understanding of how mathematical success and failure among African-Americans are affected by contextual forces that extend far beyond the school setting. This book will be useful and informative to many internal and external constituents with an interest in education, teachers, mathematics education researchers, and policy makers to name a few. Because it includes history and context, the theoretical framework the author refers to numerous occasions in this text may be used to analyze the educational situations of other groups for whom history and context play important roles.  

About the Author:   Mr. Bruce B. Douglas is a Ph.D. degree student specializing in organizational development and change in the School of Education at Colorado State University. His scholarly research interests include the academic achievement of African American students, diversity initiatives in organizations, and career advancement opportunities for minorities in organizations. Address correspondence to the author at Colorado State University, School of Education, 221 Education Building, Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA; e-mail bbd@lamar.colostate.edu.  

References  

Ary, D., Jacobs, L.C., & Razavieh, A. (2002). Introduction to research in education (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.  

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.