About Professor Eric Gutstein
Professor Eric Gutstein is currently part of the faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago as a Professor of Mathematics Education. His research and teaching interests include mathematics education, teaching for social justice, and critical literacies in an urban, multicultural context. He also focuses on Freirean approaches to teaching/learning and Chicago school policy.
He is also a co-founder of Teachers for Social Justice, a 15-year-old education activist organization supporting teachers both in and outside of the classroom. Teachers for Social Justice works to help teachers rethink classroom practices and, in partnership with community organizations and the Chicago Teachers Union, is active in the struggle against education privatization locally and nationally.
His research and teaching interests include mathematics education, teaching for social justice and critical literacies in an urban, multicultural context, Freirean approaches to teaching/learning, and Chicago school policy. In his work, Professor Gutstein argues that K-12 students need to be prepared through their mathematics education to investigate and critique injustice (such as racism and language discrimination) and to challenge, in words and actions, oppressive structures and acts. He prepares teachers who can teach mathematics and other subjects in this manner to students in urban settings.
Professor Gutstein has taught mathematics for social justice in his own classroom in a Chicago public middle school and a high school, the Greater Lawndale/Little Village High School for Social Justice (also a public school). There he co-taught with and supported math teachers, helped teachers and students develop/teach/learn from social justice mathematics projects, and worked for years with a group of students who were co-researchers, public advocates, and spokespeople for teaching and learning mathematics for social justice. Together, they (teachers, students, Professor Gutstein) studied the process of creating a critical mathematics program for the school, focused on developing students' sociopolitical consciousness, sense of social agency, and their strong cultural/social identities.
