Research Initiation Award: De/Reconstructing African-American Preservice Teachers' Mathematics Identities and Visions of Mathematics Teaching for Equity

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro NC

Investigators

Abstract

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University has potential broader impacts in a number of areas. The goal of this project is to examine the entering and evolving mathematics identities and visions of mathematics teaching of African American preservice elementary teachers as they engage in mathematics and mathematics education coursework informed by and co-designed with undergraduate elementary education students and research assistants. The project is a collaborative effort between the mathematics and the mathematics education departments at the institution. The primary goal of the project is to conduct a set of research studies in undergraduate mathematics-oriented spaces using qualitative longitudinal interview studies and mixed-methods studies incorporating longitudinal measures of student achievement in mathematics and mathematics education. The research team will develop a framework for trajectories of African American preservice elementary teachers entering and evolving mathematics identities and visions of mathematics teaching and design principles to guide the development of mathematics and mathematics education courses that attend to these trajectories. Contributions include the development of theoretical and conceptual tools related to African American preservice teachers that might improve the mathematics education communities’ efforts to both diversify the teaching workforce and promote practices, pedagogies, and epistemologies that meet the needs of African American students. Moreover, impacts of this study aim to inform and shape the practices and pedagogies of K-16 mathematics and mathematics education courses by offering an empirically-supported set of design principles and generalized recommendations to support local adaptations of resources for mathematics and mathematics education coursework that “allows Black learners to flourish in their humanity and brilliance” (Martin, 2018). 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.