Teaching Toward Equity in Mathematics

This research is a qualitative case study examining changes in urban Canadian elementary teachers’ conceptualizations of equity and approaches to pedagogy in their mathematics teaching in relation to their involvement in multiple professional learning contexts. The study focuses on four major professional development (PD) efforts in which five focal teachers participated over a school year. Data sources include researcher observations, field notes, video-recordings of PD sessions and classroom mathematics teaching, as well as a series of one-on-one interviews. Data analysis revealed three main ideas related to equity that were adopted by focal teachers: 1) the importance of developing awareness of students and their communities; 2) teaching strategies to scaffold students’ development of mathematical proficiency; and 3) strategies for structuring student-driven, inquiry-based learning for mathematics. The multiple contexts of professional learning presented contradictory messages. Thus, teachers took up some ideas and left others behind and sometimes took up ideas that served conflicting goals of education. Future studies of teacher PD should focus on the teacher’s perspective and the role of any individual PD within the multiple contexts of professional learning in which teachers participate.Ph