Supporting Beginning Teachers With the Ethical Dilemmas of Equity-Oriented Mathematics Teaching

• In Event: Centering Justice: The Political and Ethical Commitments in Teaching, Learning, and Learning to Teach

Abstract

Working within systems of schooling in which discourse and practice often emphasize fixing students’ deficits can bring challenges for teachers committed to creating ambitious and equitable classroom mathematics communities (Jilk, 2016; McDermott, Goldman, & Varenne, 2006). Beginning teachers may face many ethical dilemmas as they attempt to enact a vision of asset-based mathematics teaching that is sometimes in contradiction with common practice in schools. At the same time, the support new teachers receive is rarely geared toward navigating these dilemmas (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). In this paper, we present findings from a design-based approach to supporting first-year teachers to collectively grapple with the ethical dilemmas of teaching toward a vision of ambitious and equitable math teaching that is sometimes in tension with aspects of schooling.

This study was informed by social approaches to design grounded in a sociocultural view of learning that emphasize designing systems to afford new forms of activity (Engeström, 2011; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016; Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010). Three central principles underlying design were: 1) Participants should be activity involved in designing the supports they need, 2) Artifacts and tools should emphasize assets rather than deficits, 3) Community conversations should treat the ethical dilemmas that arise in equity-oriented mathematics teaching as opportunities for learning.

During the 2016-2017 school year, the lead author served as facilitator, co-designer, and researcher of a learning community for six first-year elementary school teachers from the same preparation program, all committed to creating asset-based classroom math communities. Teachers participated in monthly meetings where they discussed stories and artifacts from the classroom and investigated mathematical content together. Data sources include video recordings of meetings and audio recordings of interviews with participants. The authors identified moments when participants described ethical dilemmas and analyzed the discursive practices participants used when grappling with these dilemmas.

Preliminary findings indicate that engaging with ethical dilemmas not only supported teachers to maintain their commitments to ambitious and equitable teaching; this new form of activity also provided opportunities for learning as teachers collectively refined their ways of seeing and making sense of students, mathematics, and teaching. In particular, as teachers grappled with the ethical issues that arose in the daily work of teaching, they co-constructed ways of seeing the classroom that focused on what students are doing (as opposed to what they are not doing) and on why student actions might be sensible in a classroom learning ecology. These new ways of understanding students countered deficit perspectives of students from nondominant communities and fostered more empathetic ways of relating to students’ experience as mathematical learners.

First year teachers are often left mostly on their own to navigate the ethical dilemmas they encounter as they try to put their commitments to justice and equity into practice in school contexts where sorting and ranking student performance is pervasive. This study suggests that when beginning teachers have opportunities to engage with these dilemmas with like-minded colleagues, ethical dilemmas can become opportunities to learn to see students in more generative ways.

Authors

• Mallika Scott, California State University - Fullerton

• Celeste Gonzalez, Polytechnic School