The Culturally Sustaining Mathematics Education Project to Enhance Mathematics Pre-Service Teacher Preparation

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving the preparation of K-12 teachers to teach mathematics. K-8 pre-service teachers often struggle to deeply understand the mathematics that they will teach as future teachers. Additionally, Secondary Mathematics Education majors and Mathematics majors sometimes lack the deep understanding of foundational mathematics that is necessary for success in upper level mathematics courses.

For students historically underrepresented in mathematics, mathematics learning may seem disconnected from real life experiences. This project seeks to help students at a minority serving institution deepen their mathematics understanding and performance so that they can be successful in their math courses and in their future careers. The project plans to transform mathematics learning by connecting students’ personal identities and cultural understandings of the world to their mathematics understanding.

The lessons will be student-centered so that students can use their prerequisite knowledge and discuss their ideas freely as they solve authentic problems individually or through group work.

The project seeks to transform the Mathematics for Teachers course instruction and curriculum with culturally sustaining pedagogy and inquiry-based teaching and learning methods. Mathematics Education faculty will collaborate to revise the Mathematics for Teachers courses, which serve elementary education and middle grades education majors. The revised courses will implement culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) and inquiry-based instruction.

Secondary Math Education and Mathematics majors will serve as peer tutors for the revised courses. Both tutors and learners will develop their mathematical proficiencies and identities in a culturally sustaining mathematics learning environment. The purpose is to improve K-8 preservice teachers' learning outcomes, to increase the mathematics proficiency of K-12 pre-service teachers and mathematic majors, to increase the passing rate of K-8 pre-service teachers enrolled in Math for Teachers courses, to increase the number of students retained in Elementary Education majors and Middle-level mathematics majors from freshmen to sophomore year, and to improve the mathematics identities of K-12 pre-service teachers and mathematic majors.

This project hopes to produce a model that supports the mathematics learning of students who have been historically underserved in mathematics by connecting students’ personal identities and their mathematics learning experiences. The project will examine undergraduate preservice teachers’ and mathematics majors’ mathematics learning and achievement in the context of a historically black university, where 81% of the undergraduate students are from racial and ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in mathematics.

The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. Partial funding for the project is from the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program.

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.