Developing Mathematics Teachers Responsive Pedagogies for Linguistically Marginalized Students

Mathematics teachers rarely receive adequate preparation or support for teaching multilingual students and, as a result, these students (hereinafter linguistically marginalized students) often have diminished access to quality learning opportunities compared to students from dominant language backgrounds. Yet, many mathematics teachers are teachers of linguistically marginalized students. When teachers do receive professional development in supporting multilingual and other linguistically marginalized students, it is typically content-neutral and sometimes at odds with notions of quality mathematics teaching, making it difficult to apply in practice. In this project, researchers will develop and investigate a novel professional development model to support mathematics teachers’ learning of responsive pedagogies for linguistically marginalized students. Working with secondary mathematics teachers in diverse settings in North Carolina, the project team will develop a series of workshops on linguistically responsive pedagogies tailored to participants’ challenges and school contexts. In addition to these workshops, as teachers enact linguistically responsive pedagogies in their classrooms, the research team will support their learning with video-coaching. Central to this model is classroom video as a key resource for teachers’ learning, building on the conjecture that by providing a window into students’ experiences, video can help develop teachers’ insights for responsive pedagogies. This project will contribute to large-scale efforts to improve mathematics education and address longstanding opportunity gaps across the nation, offering a professional development model to foster linguistically responsive and asset-based forms of mathematics teaching. Using design-based research methods, the research team will investigate the overarching research question: How do secondary mathematics teachers learn about supporting linguistically marginalized students? To investigate this question, the project team will use ethnographic data collection methods to capture the development of teachers’ learning trajectories. These data will be analyzed using qualitative methods including case study, ethnomethodological, and conversation-analytic approaches. Simultaneously, researchers will engage in conjecture mapping to understand elements of the model’s design that support teacher learning as well as the mediating processes of learning, iteratively refining the model as the project continues. The primary outcomes of this 3-year study include: a portrait of the challenges and opportunities that mathematics teachers face in supporting linguistically marginalized students, a replicable model of professional development for teachers’ learning of responsive pedagogies, and theory about the nature of—and conditions necessary for—mathematics teachers’ learning to support linguistically marginalized students. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.