Black Mathematics Teachers' Flexible Language Use and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

• In Event: Teachers' Sense-Making About Black Language and Linguistic Justice Pedagogy

Abstract

Purpose
When students use Black Language (BL) to express themselves in mathematics, they are often perceived as disruptive (Joseph et al., 2019), less capable, and less intelligent (Lippi-Green, 2011; Mallinson & Charity Hudley, 2010). Most teachers are ill-prepared to support BL-speaking students (Gupta, 2010), and there has been little research on what mathematics teachers need to know to support speakers of BL (Mallinson & Charity Hudley, 2010). Addressing this gap, we investigate how Black-Language-speaking teachers support Black-Language-speaking students in mathematics.

Theoretical Perspective
Informed by Linguistic Justice (Baker-Bell, 2020), our analysis acknowledges forms of linguistic oppression unique to BL speakers: the normalization in schools, and harm to Black students’ educational, racial and linguistic identities. Simultaneously, Linguistic Justice provides images of Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, rejecting dominant linguistic hierarchies. We also draw on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, (CSPs; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014, 2017), emphasizing the sustenance of language as a key part of culture, because schools are often sites of assimilation and linguistic violence (Paris & Alim, 2014).

Data & Methods
We recruited 10 Black mathematics teachers of Black students, conducting interviews to understand how teachers view BL and its complexities in math education. Guided by grounded theory and constant comparison (Charmaz, 2006), we transcribed and open-coded interviews separately, meeting to share codes and develop overarching themes, constantly comparing data with literature.

Results
Teachers flexibly used BL to support their BL-speaking students in three key ways. First, to provide access; for example, teachers described using BL to help students understand opaque vocabulary. BL was a way to combat the linguistic marginalization common in mathematics (Wilson & Smith, 2022). Second, teachers used BL to build community. Teachers were attuned to their students’ emotional states in mathematics. Therefore, participants used BL to foster a sense of belonging for BL-speaking students — who one participant described as having been “so defeated and beat down” by mathematics classes over the years — by making clear to students that they belong in the classroom community. Finally, teachers used BL as a tool for liberation. They named ways that BL is marginalized, and deliberately used it to validate students’ language. Ms. Periwinkle describes using BL to validate students’ mathematical ideas describing a student who trailed off after explaining in BL: “No, not nevermind. Finish telling me what you said.” In these ways, teachers encouraged students’ authenticity and subverted the typical marginalization of BL.

Significance
Teachers’ attention to their students’ emotional responses and flexible use of BL to foster a sense of community exemplified linguistic justice pedagogy (Baker-Bell, 2020), bringing to life CSP. As teachers persistently elicited students’ mathematical sensemaking, validating both their ideas and chosen expression, they strategically disrupted the linguistic systems marginalizing BL-speaking students in mathematics. This paper contributes to our understanding of what CSP can look like in practice — particularly for Black students. Moreover, by illuminating how Black teachers use BL in mathematics to support their Black students, these findings stand to inform future design of professional development for other teachers of Black students.

Authors

• Amelia Q. Rivera, North Carolina State University
  Presenting Author

• Valencia Hicks-Harris, Empower All, Inc.
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Marshall, North Carolina State University
  Presenting Author