Postdoctoral Fellowship: STEMEdIPRF: Mentor Teachers Challenging Exclusionary forces in Mathematics Classrooms through Mentoring for Critical Math Consciousness

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

A Participatory, Community-Based Exploration of Mentoring of Prospective Mathematics Teachers In the last decade, there have been great strides to prepare future mathematics teachers to use justice-oriented pedagogies in their classroom. However, key partners in teacher preparation have been ignored in this work, the mentor teacher and the families of the PK-12 students. This project seeks to bring together secondary mathematics mentor teachers and the family members of 7-12 students to support future secondary mathematics teachers in learning about justice-oriented mathematics pedagogies. This project has the potential to provide a new model for secondary mathematics teacher education which centers community engagement and justice-oriented pedagogies. Through critical community-engaged scholarship and in collaboration with four secondary mathematics mentor teachers, who intend to collaborate with four groups of students and their families, this project is designed to advance in two phases guided by principles and processes of critical participatory action research (CPAR). In Phase I, the four co-researcher, mentor teachers intend to collaboratively investigate and document the ways that they engage in justice-oriented mentoring across a year-long inquiry community. In Phase II and the second year of the project, mentor teachers plan to invite students and their families to join the inquiry community to explore findings from Phase I CPAR work through new perspectives and to generate new insights through a second round of CPAR done collaboratively with mentor teachers, students, and their families. This project aims to provide invaluable insight into the ways mentor teachers and families can collaborate to engage in justice-oriented teacher preparation through the following outcomes: (1) a theory of community-engaged mentoring for prospective mathematics teachers, (2) an increased understanding of mentoring practices related to justice-oriented pedagogies, and (3) a new model for secondary mathematics teacher education which centers community engagement. This project is funded by the STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) program that aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field. 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.