Researching and Designing Connective K–12 Anti-Bias Mathematics Professional Development (Poster 2)

• In Event: Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement: Key Concepts, Applications, Developments, and New Directions

Abstract

A paucity of professional development (PD) research examines educational equity and mathematics instruction (Crockett & Buckley, 2009). Our paper uses connective and productive disciplinary engagement (CPDE) (Argarwal & Senguptal-Irving, 2019) to examine educators’ participation in PD activities on race, racism, and doing mathematics from a 3-year qualitative study. The PD goals were to develop insights on antibias mathematics teaching and leading centered on educators’ perspectives and practices, integration of the Social Justice Standards (Chiariello et al., 2016) and the Standards for Mathematical Practice (NGA, 2010), and connections to community and families. CPDE frames the sociopolitical dimensions of learning thus providing PD designers and researchers opportunities to examine a growing body of equity and mathematics PD.

Data are transcribed video records of PD facilitators (four self-identified white females and one Asian female) and K-12 educators (three self-identified white females, one Latino, three Latinas, and one Asian female). The eight educators (two elementary coaches and six teachers- two elementary, two middle, two high school) serve the district’s 95% multilingual, Latina/o students. We use qualitative methods to examine the PD written artifacts and interactions from the fourth and final two-day, first-year experience. Our analysis focused on the epistemic processes (and their diversity) of knowledge generation and historicity and identity in how educators took up uncertainties, drew on varying resources, and coordinated agency and accountability to document progress on our PD goals. We consider the social and sociopolitical character of activities and attention to how power shapes these processes.

We found that educators faced the uncertainties of racism and mathematics shaped by bounded views of race and school mathematics drawing upon limited material and relational resources elevating ideational resources (Nasir & Cooks, 2009). Race talk was simplified into assertions, such as not holding dominant racialized stereotypes and needing to examine privilege. We didn’t take up the sociopolitical dimensions of uncertainties as they arose. Uncertainties were not unraveled to take up explicit race talk and dismantle how histories of racism shaped educational spaces including PD, classroom instruction and student interactions, or systemic racism that maintained hierarchies, power, histories of who schools serve, and dominant views of school mathematics (Pollock, 2009; Watson, 2008).

The bounded framing of uncertainty was shaped by limited epistemic and cultural assumptions about racism and mathematics. These mirrored facilitators’ uncertainty about how to unpack racism in these spaces and support epistemic heterogeneity. For example, we did not challenge how the racialized discourses intertwined with limited epistemic diversity revealed assimilationist views of students and accountability to school mathematics. We didn’t unpack the ways that race plays in and through mathematics education and how mathematics education serves to maintain the race project (Martin, 2013). Our current research reveals the need to identify educator and facilitator resources to support the in-the-moment and longitudinal capacity for CPDE. In our presentation, we offer insights into our design shortcomings and the next steps to explore the role CPDE may play in designing resources for antibias mathematics PD and classroom experiences.

Authors

• Rebekah Elliott, Oregon State University

• Joan J. Hong, University of Maryland