Positionalities and Pedagogical Responsibilities for Asian/American Math Teachers (Poster 3)

• In Event: Everything Everywhere All at Once: Asian Math Ed Edition

Abstract

Teachers’ sensemaking about their pedagogical responsibilities — who and what they feel beholden to — are linked both to their instructional choices and to their ability to sustain themselves in the profession (Author et al., 2021). However, mathematics teachers rarely have the opportunity to articulate and collaboratively interrogate their pedagogical responsibilities. This is particularly important in light of how mathematics education exists as a dehumanizing and violent space for many students and teachers of color, and as part of burgeoning movements to rehumanize and redignify mathematics education (e.g., Goffney & Gutiérrez, 2018); in these contexts, what are mathematics teachers’ pedagogical responsibilities?

Although Asian Americans are often stereotyped as being good at mathematics, as other posters in this session mention, they are also positioned in and through mathematics as either being too much (too rational, too successful) or too little (insufficiently social, insufficiently creative) to fully qualify as human beings (Shah, 2019). Consequently, people who identify as both Asian American and mathematics teachers are situated at a unique intersection of ideologies, narratives, and experiences. How do they make sense of how their positionalities shape and are shaped by their pedagogical responsibilities?

This poster builds on a growing literature examining how Asian American teachers make sense of their identities in relation to their pedagogical practices (e.g., Chow, 2019; Kokka & Chao, 2020) by examining their pedagogical responsibilities. It investigates how three undergraduate preservice teachers – two of whom identify as Asian American and one who identifies as an Asian international student – explicitly link their positionalities to their pedagogical responsibilities. Using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2014), I analyze a conversation that these PSTs offered up as their final reflection in an undergraduate course on the ethics of teaching mathematics.

Preliminary findings suggest that PSTs associated their racial identities with their relationship-building with students and with their pedagogical and ethical responsibilities to challenge stereotypes, make learning mathematics a more humanizing process, advocate for students, serve as role models, and foster more inclusive classroom spaces. Additionally, PSTs identified both ways in which racial stereotypes might make it harder for them to enact their pedagogical responsibilities and ways in which their racialized experiences might serve as resources in doing so.

Given the interactions of Asianization in the United States and the dehumanizing qualities of mathematics education as it currently exists in the United States, Asian American and Asian in America mathematics teachers inhabit a unique and political position in negotiating their pedagogical responsibilities in relation to their racial identities. And, in a contemporary political and economic moment where many teachers are leaving the profession, it is especially important to engage aspiring mathematics teachers with the moral and ethical commitments that ground them in their work and can help them persevere through the challenges of entering the profession.

Authors

• Grace A. Chen, New York University

• Shiyan Liang, Harvard University

• Katie Pan, New York University

• Minjung Shin, UCI