Teacher Shifts in Noticing Toward Rehumanizing Mathematics

• In Event: Attending to the Political and Ethical Dimensions of Teacher Learning

Abstract

Purpose. Mathematics education has served as a system of invisible racism (Leyva, 2017; Martin, 2008), in which black and brown communities are viewed as “problems” to be solved (Du Bois, 1968). Often perceived neutral, it has exacerbated violence against students, especially racially marginalized bodies. As cultural and political beings, teachers participate in this process by holding narrow notions about learning mathematics, whose voices count in mathematics, and who gets to be and do mathematics (Gutierrez, 2018). We theorize that teachers’ ideologies about mathematics serve to minoritize students through their noticing practices in classroom interactions.

Grounding framework. We center teacher noticing, or how teachers “read” the classroom in moment-to-moment activity, as a point of entry to examine, critique, and expand towards the disruption of these ideologies (Author, 2012). Expansive noticing, therefore, involves increasing awareness of who, what and how we notice—to intentionally rehome our attention to take into account political and historical realities of schooling. It also involves rehumanizing mathematics Gutirrez (2018), or re-coupling mathematics with its political and ethical history, alongside the re-imagination of what mathematics education can be.

Method. We follow a growing cadre of researchers who use participatory approaches to teacher learning that center members of communities in the research and teaching process (Bang, et al, 2016; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016; Zeichner, Payne & Brakyo, 2015). As Bullock (2012) proposed, "scholars outside of mathematics education or education in general bring different sets of knowledge that can inform issues of equity in mathematics education" (p. 34). We argue a participatory approach involving teachers, community youth leaders and researchers (Erickson, 2002; Fine & Torre, 2002)—what we refer to as “noticing teams”—can be one model to both disrupt and expand teachers’ noticing practices.

Data. Data includes video recordings and artifacts from two 2-day Summer Institute meetings at two sites. The main focus of the Summer Institute involved the “noticing teams” generating a noticing for rehumanizing framework (Gutiérrez, 2018) and the community-based model for professional learning. We analyzed both the Summer Institute video data, the artifacts generated in these meetings, and the materials created for conference presentations to provide insight into developing ideologies.

Findings. We report three emerging findings of the study. First, we identify aspects of the participatory model that were crucial to the process of facilitating teacher learning, including a focus on the involvement of community stakeholders, the development of language to articulate the dehumanization of mathematics, and collectively imagining and rehumanizing education (Gutierrez, 2018). Second, we underscore teacher’s awareness of their historical selves and how their personal histories, mathematics context and explicit and implied pedagogical commitments directly related to their classroom interactions. Third, we demonstrate shifts in teacher understanding of their own embodiment of dominant ideologies, including the recognition of the pervasiveness of whiteness in the classroom.

Significance. Findings of this study contribute to research on noticing, providing a theoretical framework grounded in the work of teaching and youth organizing, as well as an expanded model for professional learning.

Authors

• Victoria M. Hand, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Elizabeth A. van Es, University of California - Irvine

• Elizabeth Mendoza, University of California - Irvine