A Case Study of a Skillful Black Mathematics Educator

• In Event: Showcasing Black Brilliance: Presenting Scholars of Color Integrating Antiracist Agendas in Education Research

Abstract

Objective:
This study was situated within the urban school classroom of a Black veteran Mathematics teacher who embodied elements of a culturally relevant educator. The teacher recognized the historical educational narratives that construct Black students as mathematically illiterate and justify excluding them from high-quality mathematics instruction (Martin, 2019). She responded to this reality by embodying a culturally relevant pedagogy and remixed her practice to align with being a change agent. The purpose of this study was to explore how a Black educator embodied being culturally competent in her practice.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework:
Being a Black veteran mathematics teacher in an urban school carries with it a certain set of established beliefs about mathematics teaching, learning, and learners. This work is founded in culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) (Ladson-Billings, 1995) due to its’ stance that culture has place within the classroom, and in the context of this study, in the urban mathematics classroom.
While it is well established that Black students in urban schools benefit from CRP, how their teachers can realize CRP theory in their classrooms is less clear. The author contributes to this void by illustrating how a veteran Black mathematics embodies CRP and being culturally relevant for utilization in an urban mathematics classroom with her Black students.

Methods:
Case study methodology was employed. The research question that guided this study was 1) How does an experienced and highly-regarded Black mathematics teacher (Ms. Collier) embody CRP, namely culturally competence, in her practice.

Data:
This study was conducted in a large urban city in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The school was Hummingbird Academy (HA), where the participant Ms. Collier was in her 16th year of teaching. She was well respected in the school community for teaching practices that contributed to the school’s rise in mathematics performance ranking.
Data collected included classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with Ms. Collier, field notes, and memos. Classroom observations for the study took place for the duration of one curricular unit in which Ms. Collier integrated her students’ culture and lived experiences into lessons within the mathematics unit.

Results/Findings:
There were multiple themes discovered within the data that illustrated and connected with the literature on being a culturally competent educator. One theme was that Ms. Collier built strong relationships with her students. She made an effort to develop relationships outside of her classroom that built “a mutual trust and respect” beneficial for teaching mathematics. A second theme was the cultural representation. Ms. Collier remixed her mathematics lessons to include her students’ lived experiences and cultural backgrounds.

Conference Connection/Significance:
By developing strong teacher-student relationships and by remixing mathematics lessons to highlight her student’s culture, Ms. Collier reimagined her classroom as a space free of racial injustice. Ms. Collier embodied being an “agent of change” in her urban mathematics classroom (Villegas & Lucas, 2002b, p.5) and therefore embarked on continuous reflection and improvement of her practice in an effort to change the landscape of mathematics education for her Black students.

Author

• Kelly K. Ivy, University of the District of Columbia