A perspective on achieving equality in mathematics for fourth grade girls:A special case

How can and do teachers create equal access within everyday classroom lesso ns and establish opportunities for girls to participate fully? What context s contribute to equity? In contrast to classrooms where boys receive more a ttention, encouragement, and content-area instruction, Ms. Jeffreys conduct s whole class lessons in her fourth grade classroom where girls participate equally and successfully with boys during mathematics. To ascertain what c ontributes to the equal participation, I use interactional analysis to clos ely examine two mathematics lessons. Part of Ms. Jeffreys' success lies in altering normative classroom discourse and in the assertive context created and sustained by the math, science, and technology magnet school setting. However, another layer of complexity is introduced: to teach her students a t their instructional level, Ms. Jeffreys groups her students by their abil ity to pass timed multiplication tests. By instituting a form of tracking, Ms. Jeffreys also legitimates girls as knowledgeable, both socially and aca demically, by their membership in the top math group. While policy guidelin es exhort teachers to provide equal access to curriculum, actually accompli shing a first step of access to participation in the routine day-to-day cla ssroom talk remains extremely difficult.