Teacher Collaborative for Culturally Relevant Mathematics and Science Curricula

To be effective, teachers need a strong theoretical understanding of the frameworks that support success for all students, especially those students historically underserved by schools. Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) is a framework that puts students and their experiences at the center of teaching. Culturally relevant math and science teaching (CRMST), more specifically, describes equitable science and math teaching practices that support student success in schools.

This project involves elementary teachers in a 3-day conference focusing on CRP and CRMST. The conference is designed to form a teacher collaborative to share experiences and resources, learn from one another, and create their own culturally relevant science and math units for use in their classrooms. To boost teacher learning, the conference includes a variety of workshops and activities led by local and national content area experts, teacher educators, and STEM teacher-leaders who use culturally relevant science/math curricula in their classrooms.

In the year following the conference, teachers will be strategically supported to continue designing and implementing CRMST through monthly teacher collaborative meetings and in-classroom support. At the end of the project year, teachers will participate in a public curriculum fair that showcases their projects and allows them to share what they have learned.

The research component of this project will use culturally relevant pedagogy and a framework that describes trajectories of development for CRMST as theoretical and analytical frameworks. In particular, the latter framework describes levels of engagement with key ideas from CRP and attends to, for example, whether teachers engage with transformative decision making, grapple with issues from an individual or structural perspective, and recognize tensions and discomfort in their learnings about CRMST.

The research will focus on learning more about how teachers benefit from collaborative opportunities and how they develop understandings about CRMST. Data sources will include: culturally relevant mathematics and science curricula (CR-MASC) units, classroom observations, field notes, and surveys collected from the teacher participants. Findings about practices and structures that support teachers’ movement towards CRMST, as well as exemplary CR-MASC units, will contribute to research and practice in teacher education aimed at improving science and math learning experiences for marginalized learners.

The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of STEM subjects 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.

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.