Elementary Teachers' Sense-Making Around Teaching Math for Social Justice in Adaptive Professional Development

• In Event: Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice: Supporting Critical Mathematics Instruction Amid Racial Justice Protests

Abstract

Objectives
As educators and teachers grapple with issues on social justice, researchers are understanding how teachers make sense of these issues in order to implement TMSJ lessons. Most of the work, however, focuses on teacher preparation (Felton-Koestler, 2019). Perhaps the dearth of work with in-service teachers (ISTs) stems from deeply rooted barriers for teachers (Raygoza, 2016) and tensions in balancing mathematical and social justice goals (Bartell, 2013). There is a need to determine how ISTs address these issues. In this paper, I describe how ISTs make sense of mathematics instruction during the pandemic while drawing on the protests for racial justice. Specifically, I ask (1) what are the problem spaces teachers construct to address social justice; (2) how do they plan to address the problem spaces?

Working with eight ISTs, our research group supported developing knowledge-of-practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) where teachers “make problematic their own knowledge and practice as well as the knowledge and practice of other” (p. 273) in order to alter and transform their practice by foregrounding sociocultural aspects of teaching. I draw on Author A et al.’s (2020) rationale for TMSJ, namely building an informed society, connecting mathematics with students’ cultural and community history, empowering students to confront and solve real-world challenges, and help students to learn the value of mathematics as tool for social change.

Methods and Data Sources
Since 2018, the ISTs, two instructional coaches, and three university-based researchers worked in an adaptive professional development (PD) structure called Learning Labs (LLs; see Kazemi et al., [2017]). An adaptive PD is “readily responsive or adapted to the goals, resources, and circumstances of the local PD context. These models are based on general and evolving guidelines rather than specific content, activities, and materials” (Koellner & Jacobs, 2014, p. 51). I analyzed conversations in the LLs conducted in the Spring and Summer of 2020 because the ISTs talked about race and racism and changing their practice. I constructed problem spaces based on themes about (1) teachers’ goals, (2) conceptions surrounding the goals (e.g., beliefs about school and race), and (3) teachers’ plans to address the goals.

Conclusions
We identified some preliminary problem spaces: (a) personal beliefs about race, (b) the role of family and community in instruction, (c) the role of mathematics in students’ lives. These problem spaces address Author A et al.’s (2020) rationales for TMSJ. Each teacher expressed ways to address these spaces (e.g., how to engage parents with technology and interrogating their norms they set). Some initial ways to address these spaces mostly focus on engaging family and community in instruction. Because the teachers are currently planning, we expect to have more robust findings about their plans at the end of the year.

Scholarly Significance
In addition to contributing to the literature on how ISTs make sense of the rationales of TMSJ, we also demonstrate how adaptive PD allows teachers to make sense and grapple with deep pedagogical issues such as addressing important aspects of TMSJ, particularly connecting mathematics with cultural and community assets.

Author

• Eric Siy, University of Wisconsin - Madison