An Action Research Case Study: A Sociocultural Perspective on Native American Students Learning Mathematics in a Public Elementary School Classroom

This dissertation is a qualitative study utilizing action research methods to develop a case study on the experience of urban public elementary school Native American students in collaborative mathematics activities. Data was collected with observations, mathematics assessments, and interviews to study how public school Native first graders experience collaborative mathematics activities when culturally modified with Indigenous ways of knowing and being? A major challenge in analyzing this work was finding a theoretical framework that could explain the experience of Native students in a multicultural public school. Sociocultural theory was selected because it operationalizes the key features of the study: Indigenous ways of knowing and being and the joint activity of learning mathematics in a public school classroom. The study suggests that Native students were heterogeneous learners and responded to cognitive pluralism, a variety of instruction, student practice options and assessments, in differentiated ways. Furthermore, the collaborative activity of learning mathematics was influenced by the affective factors developed in classroom culture. The teacher designed the classroom as a caring community that acknowledged students’ cultures with an appreciation and respect for the reality of student lives. The findings from this study suggest that collaborative mathematics activities can promote Native students’ learning when teacher and student participation is varied in style and function, and when this joint activity is nested within a larger context of a supportive community classroom. Key to this premise is the concept of nested joint activities; where the synergy of learning operates within and between joint activities.Educational LeadershipDoctoralUniversity of New Mexico. Division of Educational Leadership and Organizational LearningChávez, Alicia F.Kitchen, RichardCeledón-Pattichis, SylviaMinthorn, RobinNelson-Barber, Sharo