CAREER: Equity Focused Elementary Mathematics: Creating Virtual Mathematics Communities in Rural Georgia
This project aims to provide in-service and beginning elementary school teachers increased opportunities to refine their mathematics teaching to support minoritized youth in racially diverse rural Georgia communities with less access to elementary mathematics specialists.
Sponsor
National Science Foundation Discovery Research PreK-12
$1,205,086Principal investigator
Susan O. Cannon
Assistant professor
Department of Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies EducationActive since
June 2023
Abstract
Access to high-quality STEM education is highly variable depending on where one lives. In addition, early career teachers need support during their first years of teaching to be successful and help them stay in the profession. This project aims to provide in-service and beginning elementary school teachers increased opportunities to refine their mathematics teaching to support minoritized youth in racially diverse rural Georgia communities with less access to elementary mathematics specialists.
This project follows and supports both beginning teachers (BTs) and elementary mathematics coaches (EMCs) over five years to develop and refine their mathematics teaching and coaching, respectively, using equity-based tools to guide reflection and conversations about both the BTs’ instructional practices and the EMCs’ coaching practices. The tools provide data to uncover biases and aspirational pedagogical targets for equitable discourse and task design.
The goals of the project include:
- Establishing a virtual distance learning community to support equity focused elementary mathematics coaches across rural counties in Georgia
- Developing and refining a fully online elementary mathematics and coaching graduate coursework sequence to prepare EMCs
- Implementing an innovative model of university supervision and induction for BTs
Over the five-year period, 10 EMCs will engage in coursework and be supported through a virtual community to develop elementary mathematics teaching and learning in their schools and districts. The coaches will support at least 10 beginning teachers to develop equitable mathematics learning communities as they enter the field during their first years of teaching. This approach is important because formalized induction support is rare in most districts in Georgia, and teachers are leaving the field in record numbers because they feel unprepared. Data sources will include videos of teaching episodes, teacher reflections, narrative interviews, and document analysis. The study will employ case study and narrative methodologies in analyzing the varied and rich data collected with BTs and EMCs.
The project’s goal of preparing and supporting EMCs has potential to dramatically shift the professional development of BTs, and to re-professionalize teacher education and provide more equitable mathematics education for all students. This proposed study could serve as a model to build additional networks of STEM coaches across rural areas.
This award is funded by the Discovery Research PreK-12 program (DRK-12) which 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.