Race, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Mathematics Instruction: An Analysis of Preservice Teachers' Lesson Plans

• In Event: 64.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 64.086-13 - Black in (and) STEM: Narratives of Resistance and Social-Psychological Outcomes

Abstract

Two claims undergird the current study: 1) Teachers must be intentional about acknowledging the role that race and racism, among other forms of hegemony, play in the lives of students of color; and 2) Teachers should begin to critique their own {mathematics} teaching and learning within a critical lens. Until these two claims are addressed, teachers will not maximize the potential laid out within culturally relevant frameworks. Stated another way, lessons that address all tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 2006) would necessarily devote attention to ideas and realities that are consistent among racialized students, and evidence of this attention should exist to some degree, within their lesson plans.
Black students have not been consistent benefactors of quality instruction or self-knowledge (Martin, 2009) because, as Woodson (1990) argued, these students have been educated away from their own culture. An acknowledgement of cultural capital achieves the goal that critical race theory was intended to combat: the idea that White capital is normative (Guttierez, 2013; Tate, 1997). Challenging the idea of what is considered normative is at the heart of the work of critical race theorists and advocates for a culturally sensitive curriculum and environment (e.g., Bell, 1992; Howard, 2008; Crenshaw, 1989; Ladson-Billings, 1997; Tate, 1995). Though a discussion of race is not the only way to challenge these ideas, it cannot be treated as irrelevant; race still matters (West, 1992) in education.
In the current scholarship I pose the question that if race is not addressed in pertaining to cultural relevance, exactly how would PSTs make their mathematics lessons culturally relevant?
The research question for the study was: 1) how successful were PSTs in implementing culturally relevant tenets into mathematics lesson plans designed for a virtual classroom environment. Previous research has demonstrated that PSTs struggle with implementing an authentic form of culturally relevant pedagogy (Leonard et al., 2013). The current study contends that dealing with race and racism through a mathematical lens has the potential to address the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, but seeks to determine how, in the absence of race-inspired mathematics lessons, PSTs envision making their lessons culturally relevant. Through a content analysis of lesson plans analyzed with a researcher-created rubric, the researcher discusses findings that illustrate shortcomings in the PSTs' approach to designing culturally relevant mathematics lesson plans, and articulates how the lesson plans could have been more representative of Ladson-Billings' framework by including more attention towards issues of race and racism.
The significance is that this pedagogy, like others following the multicultural or critical race traditions, are susceptible to a more distilled and ineffective version that does not accomplish the original goals. As a result, there is a reality of transmuting theory in a way that only allows multicultural theories to be shadows of their conceptual selves (Ladson-Billings, 1998), but that result in manifestations that are superficial and trivial celebrations of diversity” (p. 22). To see color allows one to begin to see culture, to value cultural relevance, and to utilize it within one’s pedagogy.

Author

• Nickolaus Alexander Ortiz, Georgia State University