Urban Mathematics Teachers' Role Identity and Situated Actions When Teaching Mathematics for Students of Color

• In Event: Identity, Motivation, and Situated Action in Educational Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
What makes for effective mathematics teachers of marginalized youth? We investigated 1) teachers’ role identity (RI) as mathematics teachers, and 2) how these role identities’ manifest in situated actions of teaching mathematics in an urban school with concentrated poverty. We took a dynamic systems approach on teacher RI to answer these questions, and considered teachers’ critical consciousness in how their beliefs, values, and goals informed their perceived action possibilities with their students in specific situations.

Theoretical Framework
We drew on the intersection of two theoretical perspectives: teachers’ RI guided by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017), and culturally responsive pedagogy in mathematics (Bonner, 2014). Kaplan and Garner (2017) emphasize teachers’ beliefs, goals, self-perceptions, and action possibilities as components of teachers’ professional RI. Following Bonner (2014), we investigated these RI components relative to teachers’ cultural responsiveness through building trusting relationships with students as mediating learning in the mathematics classroom.

Methods
For the present study, we conducted an in depth analysis of semi-structured interviews for three secondary mathematics teachers from one large urban district who showed responsive care practices for their students. The interview protocol explored (a) teachers’ self-construction as mathematics teachers, (b) their ontological and epistemological beliefs about their students’ cultural context and teaching in an urban school, and (c) their action possibilities in specific instructional situations.

Results
All teachers’ RIs were centered on a perseverance ethic of mathematics, with ontological beliefs of mathematics as a series of cognitive challenges for productive struggle, and self-perceptions of intrinsically enjoying this struggle and deriving satisfaction in persevering through challenges (Table 1a). Three teachers’ ontological beliefs also demonstrated a critical consciousness (Valenzuela, 2016) involving a critique of the pervasive socio-economic injustices in their school’s surrounding neighborhood, but, in addition, resistance to the idea that this adversity is determinative of their students’ potential for success. These ontological beliefs were aligned with the teachers’ goals to both challenge and support their students’ perseverance to overcome their challenges. The RI framed teachers’ situated interpretation of a student’s struggle, situated goal for that student, the situated action to pursue that goal. For example, Teacher E described a specific situation of a student not completing his homework assignment (Table 1c). The teacher described his situated response to the student as clearly expressing expectations for task completion while also conveying empathy and willingness to persevere in supporting the student through his challenges. All three teachers described such situated actions that reflected their purpose to partner with the students to provide them agency through education that combats unjust social structures.

Significance
We illustrate how teachers’ RIs that involve a critical analysis of injustice combined with conception of mathematics as requiring perseverance in framed their empathetic action possibilities and situated actions to both challenge and support struggling students.

Authors

• Lavina Sequeira, Felician University

• Jamaal Matthews, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor