Identifying, Measuring, and Defining Equitable Mathematics Instruction.

Abstract

Many scholars have studied the problem of persistent inequitable educational opportunities and outcomes in the U.S. They have presented analyses of the causes of these inequities and proposed solutions ranging from increasing school funding to studying participation structures in classrooms. This dissertation takes the perspective that inequities are produced inside of classrooms as well as through the complex interplay of social and economic factors and argues that instructional practice is an important site for study and intervention. Therefore, although there exist numerous definitions of and strategies for working toward equity for underrepresented minority students, serious attention to instruction is crucial. This is specifically accomplished by studying the mathematical knowledge and skills, along with cultural awareness and sensitivities that would produce equitable, high quality teaching. In this dissertation, equitable teaching is defined as focused on quality mathematics and distributed intentionally to ensure that all students learn. This study probes the interplay in instruction of attention to equity and to the quality of the mathematical content, with a focus on what constitutes equitable mathematics instruction for students in elementary classrooms. Specific instructional practices are evaluated to determine whether and how particular teaching practices provide leverage and create access to the mathematics content for different groups of learners. This study has two central features. The first details the construction of the set of Mathematical Quality and Equity codes, analytic video codes focused on issues of equity. The second section comprises analyses of three paradigmatic examples of instruction. One is of a teacher with high MKT (Karen); a second a teacher who has clear commitments to students and to equitable access (Rebecca), and a third a teacher who has both high levels of MKT and of commitment to students and to equity (Lauren). The analyses illustrate the central hypothesis in my dissertation, that teaching mathematics in equitable ways requires both attention to the quality of the mathematics combined with sensitivities to issues of equity and diversity for students. This dissertation contributes to the empirical examination of instruction and its contributions to equity.