MCA: The Neurophysiology of Teaching Secondary Mathematics for Transcendent Purpose and Cultural Relevance

The project examines how teachers’ culturally supportive mathematics instructional practices engage and shape adolescents’ brain networks in ways that predict their math identity, achievement, and sense of purpose over time. The investigator also will assess the neurophysiology of how critical consciousness develops in mathematics teachers. The project synthesizes neurobiological, developmental, and culturally situated perspectives to explore adolescents’ and teachers’ socio-emotional cognition in secondary mathematics classrooms.

The project includes a professional development plan that will enable the investigator to receive disciplinary and research methodological training from a collaborating partner to ultimately create an asset-based cultural neuroscientific approach that is inclusive of the experiences of diverse and underserved youth. The training will be conducted in collaboration with the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education at the University of Southern California.

The project will forge new discovery on adolescent thinking as well as teacher thinking and how those beliefs position them to better support students.

The investigator will use observational methods to examine concrete and abstract processing opportunities in secondary math classrooms in conjunction with physiological and neuroimaging methods of adolescents recounting their experience of these classes to make meaning of the content. The research aims to (1) understand the multiple instructional attributes of teaching mathematics for transcendent purpose, and observe when and under what conditions mathematics teachers are leveraging those multiple instructional techniques; (2) assess the psychophysiology and neural networks at play when adolescent students recall their experiences of these classes and the meaning of mathematics they derived from them; and (3) assess the psychophysiology and neural networks at play through teachers’ explanations of why and how they teach mathematics for transcendent purpose.

The investigator will use the Belonging-Centered Instruction observational protocol, the investigator will evaluate videoed classrooms using state space grid analysis to study the co-occurrence of distinct instructional phenomena within a two-dimensional space. Participants will be recruited from mathematics classrooms in Ohio, New York, and the Algebra Project.

The combination of observational and neuroimaging methods can elucidate the link between teacher pedagogy and student cognition and address practical questions regarding how teachers can best position students to recognize and create big picture messages in math and for themselves. The project will allow the investigator to explore the social cognitive qualities of math classrooms and teacher pedagogy to understand how teachers synthesize concrete processing, abstract thought, and student affect into high-quality mathematics instruction.

This project is funded by the Mid-Career Advancement program that supports opportunities for scientists and engineers to advance and enhance their research program through synergistic and mutually beneficial partnerships.

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.