Chapter 12: Searching for Cohesion in a Mathematics Course for Social Analysis

Our mathematics content course, Math for Social Analysis, is a junior-level course for elementary- and middle-school preservice teachers (PSTs) taught in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Radford University. Math for Social Analysis is the last of three mathematics courses that PSTs take before they apply for entrance to the education program. The course integrates mathematics content knowledge with the pedagogical knowledge needed for teaching mathematics while providing the PSTs experiences using mathematics to explore timely social issues. The course has a semester project in which one option is service learning. This creates a connection between mathematics in the classroom and in an afterschool program in our local community. The second option is research based and provides an alternative for PSTs whose schedules do not align well with the needs of the afterschool program.