Seeing Mathematics Through Different Eyes: An Equitable Approach to Use with Prospective Teachers

Teacher educators need to prepare prospective teachers by encouraging them to critically examine their current beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics while also providing opportunities for prospective teachers to develop an equity-centered orientation. Attending to these practices in teacher preparation programs may help prospective teachers observe actions that occur in classrooms and determine effective strategies that provide the opportunity to enhance all students’ access to high-quality mathematics instruction. As mathematics teacher educators, we must recognize what prospective teachers attend to as they direct their attention to various classroom events and how they relate the events to broader principles of teaching and learning. In this chapter, we investigate what prospective teachers attend to in a classroom vignette of a student who is above grade level in mathematics and exhibits disruptive behavior during instruction. Keeping everything constant in the vignette except the student’s race and sex, we examined prospective teachers’ responses when the student was an African American male, White male, African American female, and White female. By attending specifically to race and sex, we explored whether prospective teachers demonstrated (1) an equity-centered orientation toward mathematics instruction or (2) deficit views of students based on race, sex, or the intersection of the two. Using a constant comparative method, the data were coded and analyzed using the equity noticing framework. The results indicate that prospective teachers are beginning to attend to cultural influences and their responses reveal differences not only between races but also between males and female

Friendships and Group Work in Linguistically Diverse Mathematics Classrooms: Opportunities to Learn for English Language Learners

This ethnographic study examined students’ opportunities to learn in linguistically diverse mathematics classrooms in a Canadian elementary school. I specifically examined the contextual change of group work, which influenced the opportunities to learn for newly arrived English language learners (ELLs). Based on analyses of videorecorded interactions, this study revealed a shift in these ELLs’ opportunities to learn from when they worked with teacher-assigned peers to when they worked with friends. In both settings, ELLs tended to be positioned as novices. However, when working with friends, they accessed a wider variety of work practices. In friend groups, ELLs were occasionally positioned as experts and had more opportunities to raise questions and offer ideas. In contrast, when working with teacher-assigned peers, ELLs tended to remain in the position of being helped. In some teacher-assigned groups, interactions were characterized as authoritative, and ELLs’ contributions and ideas were rejected or neglected without relevant justifications or mathematical authority established by their peers. The findings will contribute to ongoing discussions on group work and friendship in linguistically diverse classrooms.Ye

Research on equitable mathematics teaching practices: Insights into its divergences and convergences

This paper reviews the research on equitable mathematics teaching practices that focus on providing fair opportunities to learn for all children. The studies conducted with in-service teachers are examined in descriptive, integrated and critical ways to explore the differences and similarities across the body of research. Three divergent themes are identified from the literature according to how the mathematical learning is conceptualised: social, cultural and critical. In the first part of the review, the studies are synthesised and also the reflective conversations are presented for each perspective. The second part of the article focuses on the similarities where three convergent themes are identified across the scholarship: (1) gatekeeping primacy of mathematics, (2) regenerating exclusions through psychological registers and (3) positioning teachers as objects of research and subjects of change. These convergent themes make visible the limitations of the literature that need further interrogation. Further research is required to study how these convergent themes are historically emerged, accumulated and still existed in the contemporary practices to expand the teacher education research for equity and social justice