Supporting Beginning Teachers to Reimagine Mathematics Classrooms Through Engaging With Mathematics as Learners

• In Event: Reimagining Teachers as Critical Mediators and Theorists of Learning Within Complex Political and Ethical Ecologies

Abstract

Justice-oriented teacher preparation programs are working to prepare novice teachers to create more humanizing learning communities in which each student can bring their full selves to learning (e.g. Andrews et al, 2019). Creating these types of caring and rigorous communities in the mathematics classroom requires expanding valued ways of knowing and doing mathematics to draw on the diverse resources each student brings to mathematical learning (e.g. Featherstone et al., 2011). However, many pre-service teachers have never had the opportunity to participate in expansive mathematics communities as learners. Here, I present an analysis of the learning that can become possible when beginning teachers engage in ongoing mathematical activity as a site to critically reflect on and interrogate the ways mathematics classrooms can reproduce or disrupt processes of marginalization.
This study was informed by social approaches to design grounded in a sociocultural view of learning that emphasize designing systems to afford new forms of activity (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010). The author served as facilitator, co-designer, and researcher of a learning community of six first-year elementary school teachers. Three principles that guided the design of this community were: 1) Co-designing in solidarity with teachers (Philip et al., 2016), 2) Engaging in mathematics as learners, 3) Treating mathematical activity as a site for exploring political and ethical dimensions of learning. Teachers participated in monthly meetings where they collectively engaged with mathematical content to make connections to children’s experiences as mathematical learners and to critically examine their teaching practice. Data sources include video recordings of meetings and recordings of interviews with participants. Data were analyzed to examine the ways teachers drew on their personal experiences as mathematical learners as a resource to deepen their reasoning about their teaching decisions.
I found that engaging in mathematics as learners supported teachers to align themselves with their students and to critically reflect on their teaching and on systems of schooling. Over the course of the year, teachers came to more deeply relate to why students’ actions might be sensible within a given learning ecology by drawing on their own experiences as mathematical learners. As participants came to connect with their students as learners, they began to examine the ways particular teaching practices, curricular materials, assessments, and dominant narratives about mathematics might be affording or constraining student engagement with mathematics. This led to shifts in participants’ teaching practice toward disrupting narrow definitions of mathematics and of mathematical competence to foster communities in which each student meaningfully contributes to collective mathematical learning (Author, 2018). These findings suggest that when teachers engage deeply with an expansive view of mathematics as learners, this collective activity can support teachers to critically reflect on what currently exists, and to foster new possibilities for mathematical learning.

Author

• Mallika Scott, California State University - Fullerton