Lift Every Voice: Storytelling from Rural Texas Teachers (Poster 5)

• In Event: Decolonizing Mathematics Education Through Storytelling: A Tool for Exploring Identity, Justice, and Community

Abstract

Stories from a two-year professional development (PD) project capture the character of learning and teaching from rural teachers’ perspectives and add depth and context to project outcomes. Teachers’ stories reveal to researchers “what sticks” and why, unexpected outcomes, and better understanding of intended outcomes.

Teacher narratives support understanding of rural teachers' lives (e.g., Burton et al., 2013) and how rural teachers navigate the advantages, disadvantages, and community relationships in their classrooms (Gallo, 2020; Preston, 2012). Stories can provide a counternarrative to the view that rural teachers are resistant to change or are deficient in some way (Burton et al., 2013).

Our PD was designed to empower teaching mathematics in ways that made sense to teachers. I acknowledged that rural teachers often work in isolation and have few opportunities to work with other teachers because they are one of a few or the only math teacher at the middle grades or do not have professional development opportunities in their small, remote districts. I also recognized that middle grade mathematics lessons were often procedural without connections, and that many middle grade students were not successful in mathematics.

The two-year project included two intensive summer workshops, 2-day follow-ups in spring and fall for each year, and reflections and assignments submitted online during both years. Quantitative results were promising, but they lacked the context of teacher's perspective. Stories collected during and after the project added to our understanding of the impacts our PD made on teachers in their rural contexts. Teacher stories were documented in two ways. During meetings we routinely asked teachers to report out how they were implementing what they learned in lessons by asking “Who has a story?” And, at the end of our work with them, three of the teachers drafted essays reflecting on using what they learned in their classrooms.

Stories featured in this study include video-taped testimonials from project meetings and teacher authored essays which provided detailed accounts of teacher-identified experiences.

We learned that teachers were reflective about how the problems worked for students, and that changes were made based on student engagement and understanding. As they challenged students and themselves, they learned about student thinking, often revealing strengths not observed before. Notably, teachers’ stories were often about students identified as low achievers who succeeded once teachers offered opportunities to solve problems and responded to student thinking. Rurality played a role in how teachers framed their math tasks, and the relationships teachers had with the community, other teachers, and their students.

Narratives provided depth to our quantitative results showing growth in teacher knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practices (Author). Stories serve more than researchers interested in the results of their work by putting learning into context to remind us of the daily lives of teachers. I believe stories need to be shared in full, so that teachers can learn and share from each other. Stories are necessary to understand how teachers navigate the challenges of student-centered problem-solving teaching in rural settings.

Author

• Debra Plowman, Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi