Critical Video Praxis as a Tool in Humanizing Secondary Mathematics

• In Event: The Power and Possibility of Creating and Exploring Critical Mathematics Classroom Teaching Video Cases in Teacher Preparation Programs

Abstract

As TCs embark on the process of becoming transformative urban school mathematics teachers committed to social justice, it can be challenging to bridge theory and practice, especially beginning to bring humanizing mathematics classroom practices to life in student teaching placements (Bacon, 2012). The purpose of this study is to understand how secondary mathematics TCs engage in critical praxis by examining how they reflect and take action on classroom video self-study. This research uncovers the affordances and challenges of classroom video self-study in supporting, affirming, and improving TCs’ teaching practices and offers implications for the role of classroom video self-study in mathematics teacher education.

In a joint position statement, the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics & TODOS: Mathematics for ALL (2016) organizations asserted that “a social justice stance interrogates and challenges the roles power, privilege, and oppression play in the current unjust system of mathematics education - and society as a whole” (p. 1). Critical education scholars argue that engaging in praxis (Freire, 2007) – identification of a problem, exploration of the problem, analysis, action, and reflection, with the goal of transformation – is central to the life-long development social justice educators (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Katsarou, Picower, & Stovall, 2010). Structured opportunities to engage in praxis early on in TCs credential work can support them in imagining how they can strive to teach mathematics for, with, and about social justice (Wager & Stinson, 2012).

Utilizing critical qualitative methodologies, data were collected from four mathematics TCs’ praxis journals that they kept for a course centered around humanizing mathematics teaching methods, which is a course within a social justice-oriented teacher education program that prepares TCs to teach in local urban schools. Journal entries specific to reflecting on and taking action on their classroom video self-study (a required assignment within the course) were analyzed; these include TC entries both prior to and following collective class viewing and dialogue of videos from their classrooms. Descriptive, In vivo, and values coding (Saldaña, 2013) were used to build ideas and facilitate posing questions from the journal entry data (Bazeley, 2013).

Preliminary analysis reveals that TCs simultaneously became both more self-affirming and more self-critical of their classroom practice in ways that they identified as supporting them to grow in their journeys of becoming transformative urban school mathematics teachers committed to social justice. They reported that watching their practice allowed them to “slow down” and notice pedagogical moves and curricular implementation that they engaged in but had not yet taken the time to think deeply about, and what they could do differently in their teaching in the future.

This study sheds light on the potential for classroom video self-study early in secondary mathematics teacher education as a tool for supporting TCs to see themselves as capable, life-long, reflective, critical educators; this is a significant takeaway because the literature on becoming social justice-oriented mathematics teachers identifies a number of challenges for teachers getting started with and sustaining this work (Authors, 2016; Bartell, 2013; Brantlinger, 2013; Gregson, 2013).

Author

• Mary Candace Raygoza, Saint Mary's College of California