Equity and Access: Empowering Change Agents

Teacher Education Quarterly, 2015

Teacher education is critical in preparing teachers to implement equitable instructional practices and thus contributes to improving educational and social conditions for underserved children and youths (Jacobsen, Mistele, & Srirman, 2012; Zeichner, 2009). Although the preparation of teachers to work with diverse student populations has been the subject ofa growing body of research (e.g., Cochran-Smith, Fieman-Nemser, McIntyre, & Demers, 2008; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005), few studies to date have explored conditions under which mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) can help teachers (1) develop equitable mathematics pedagogy (McLeman & Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, 2012; Strutchens et al., 2012). Although this literature illuminates important instructional practices of MTEs who teach through an equity lens, a systematic and broad-scale examination of these practices, including potential challenges, could inform mathematics teacher education by unpacking commonalities and differences in way...

2013

Hostetler (2005) describes "good" education research as that which attends to the well-being of students, teachers, and communities. In this essay, the author proposes measuring equity-based research in mathematics education against Hostetler's standard. She argues that current equity-based research has not adequately addressed the mathematical experiences of marginalized students due to its primary focus on the "achievement gap." Such a focus leaves the social and political hierarchies that produce marginalization intact and unquestioned. She presents methodological diversity as a strategy for reconceptualizing mathematics education research in a way that addresses the more foundational quality and opportunity gaps that are at the root of equity issues in mathematics education. She also offers embracing methodological clarity, shifting the site of research, and pursuing interdisciplinary opportunities as three ways in which mathematics education researchers ...

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 2015

In this article, the author provides insight into the pedagogical processes for dele-gating mathematical authority to students, through the use of specific classroom structures, as a means to strive toward equity. Employing qualitative methods, the author analyzes transcripts of classroom video, along with field notes and teacher and student interviews, collected during one semester of the participating teacher’s Algebra I course. The author addresses how the teacher’s practice was striving to-ward equity through the use of classroom structures that delegated mathematical authority to students. Analyses revealed that the teacher delegated mathematical authority through the use of student presentations, Shuffle Quizzes, and Participa-tion Quizzes. Each instance featured was chosen to highlight a different facet of the ways in which delegating authority repositioned students as competent sense-makers.

Doctoral Dissertation, 2013

Attention to the pursuit of equity has been a growing priority for mathematics classrooms in the last two and a half decades. While classroom discourse has become a central feature of classrooms that strive toward equity, one continuing concern for classroom researchers in mathematics education involves understanding how and when group interactions support or interfere with student learning. In this dissertation, I respond to these calls by simultaneously offering perspectives of mathematical learning from underrepresented students alongside empirical evidence of these students’ transformative classroom experiences. In this study, I used ethnographic methods to analyze student and teacher classroom interactions and interviews during the first and last units in a semester one Algebra 1 class where learning was facilitated primarily by student-led whole class and student-student small-group interactions. In Paper 1, I propose a combined analytic framework for studying classroom interactions by coordinating Status and Positioning Theories. In Paper 2, I investigate the teacher’s classroom structures and pedagogical practices to reveal a process for delegating mathematical authority to students. Students' perceptions reveal the classroom structures, and pedagogical practices expand what counts as mathematical smartness in this classroom. In Paper 3, I investigate students’ changed perceptions of competence over the course of the study. I find that the development of specific social and sociomathematical norms mediated students’ perceptions of improved competence in this classroom. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that this teacher’s practice strives toward equity by expanding mathematical smartness and changing students’ perceptions of competence in mathematics. I suggest that future work should analyze the systemic inequities that lead to uneven representation of any groupings of students in tracked classrooms. I also argue that future work striving toward equity in mathematics education should further investigate empirical evidence of additional processes for delegating authority to high school students, additional classroom structures and pedagogical practices that expand mathematical smartness, additional social and sociomathematical norms that can mediate students’ perceptions of competence, and additional classrooms that contribute to successes for all students in high school mathematics.

2015

Author(s): LOUIE, NICOLE L. | Advisor(s): Schoenfeld, Alan H | Abstract: What does it mean to be “good at math”? Traditionally, schools have valued getting the right answer quickly—a perspective that excludes important aspects of mathematics, as well as many students. This multi-site case study investigates how teachers work together to redefine mathematics and mathematical competence. The study involved more than a year of ethnographic observations and interviews at two diverse urban high schools on the West Coast of the United States, where teachers expressed strong commitments to serving all students, especially students from non-dominant backgrounds. The dissertation tells a complex story of teacher learning, as viewed through the lenses of classroom instruction (Chapter 2), collegial conversation (Chapter 3), and the organization of teachers’ professional support networks (Chapter 4). Drawing on scholarship that takes learning as a negotiation of meaning through engagement in s...