Race Evasion and Race Cognizance in Elementary Math Teaching: A Study of White Teacher Candidates' Learning, Discourse, and Early Practice

Abstract

Within teacher education, work on mathematics teaching often occurs separately from work on issues of race and racism. Typically, mathematics content and methods courses tackle subject matter-specific concepts and teaching practices, while the history and current dynamics of racial inequity in education, if addressed at all, tend to be the domain of social foundations or multicultural education courses (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015). Challenging this separation, this dissertation offers a vision of teaching that can serve as a guiding framework in mathematics teacher education: race cognizant math teaching, or acting on the critical race ideology of race cognizance (Frankenberg, 1993) within the teaching of mathematics.

Set in a two-course elementary teacher education sequence that advances a version of race cognizant math teaching, this study explores the learning, discourse, and early practice of six white teacher candidates across those courses. Qualitative case study methods are used to pursue three research questions. First, how do focal teacher candidates take up course ideas and practices that have the potential to support race cognizant mathematics teaching, and what trajectories characterize this uptake? Second, what uptake of course ideas and practices is evident in focal teacher candidates’ early enactments of mathematics teaching? Third, how do focal teacher candidates engage with issues of race and racism in their talk and writing, and what does this reveal about their learning? Data sources consist of submitted course assignments (including video records of math teaching enactments), observation of class sessions, and four rounds of semi-structured interviews with focal participants.

This study’s findings both confirm and complicate existing research on white teacher candidates’ engagement with issues of race and racism. On the one hand, focal participants exhibited anticipated patterns of race evasion. Findings include patterns of generalized and flattened uptake of race cognizant course constructs, indirect and ambiguous race talk, and alignment with aspects of color-blind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2018). On the other hand, however, patterns of race evasion were not uniform, nor were they mutually exclusive with evidence of race cognizant uptake and discourse. For instance, in their early math teaching enactments, several participants made deliberate efforts to act on race cognizant aims and rationales, even though they were not explicit about their attention to race until pressed. In addition, even teacher candidates who were relatively consistent in demonstrating race evasive thinking and uptake of course emphases also had moments where they indicated that they were grappling with the pervasive and persistent nature of racism and its impact on mathematics teaching and learning.

An important conclusion of this study is that teacher candidates’ talk and writing about race and racism did not necessarily indicate a transparent or simple alignment with either race cognizant or race evasive ideology. Additionally, teacher candidates’ shifts towards race cognizant math teaching were not straightforward; progress was complicated by obstacles of enactment and conflicting ideas about race, racism, and mathematics teaching and learning. One implication is that teacher educators must combine consideration of teacher candidates’ language with careful attention to their practice and the ideological implications of how teacher candidates are understanding race, racism, and their roles and responsibilities as teachers. Teacher educators should also expect complexity, ambiguity, and shifts over time, rather than a binary or static division between race evasive and race cognizant learning and practice.