Impact of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy on Black Learners Enrolled in Online Undergraduate Mathematics Classes

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) is an approach in education that emphasizes the integration of students' cultural backgrounds and experiences into the teaching and learning process. This article explores the significance of CRP in promoting inclusivity and equity in the classroom. Using qualitative methods, including literature review and library research, this study examines the theoretical framework, principles, and practical applications of CRP. The literature review reveals that CRP acknowledges the diverse cultural backgrounds of students and aims to create learning environments that validate and affirm their identities. By incorporating culturally relevant materials, teaching strategies, and assessment methods, CRP fosters student engagement, motivation, and academic achievement. Moreover, CRP encourages educators to critically examine their own biases and assumptions, promoting cultural responsiveness and empathy in teaching practices. The findings suggest that CRP not only enhances academic outcomes but also contributes to social justice and equity in education by addressing systemic inequalities and promoting cultural understanding and respect. However, challenges such as limited teacher preparation and institutional support for CRP implementation remain prevalent. Therefore, this study underscores the importance of professional development programs and institutional policies that prioritize CRP training and support for educators. In conclusion, CRP serves as a transformative approach to education that promotes inclusivity, equity, and social justice in the classroom. By valuing students' cultural identities and experiences, CRP creates more meaningful and empowering learning experiences for all learners, regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances.

PurposeThis conceptual paper, framed as a letter to educators, explores what the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) offers us as we reimagine our approaches to teaching and learning amidst a pandemic and during a time of physical distancing.Design/methodology/approachTo make my argument that CRP is a frame for teaching that is based in a particular set of beliefs and ideologies, I draw on my experience as a K-12 educator, teacher educator, and education researcher. In addition, I ground my argument in the extant research on the intimate interrelationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, themselves, and their students and the actions they take in the classroom.FindingsIn my discussion, I invite teachers to examine their beliefs, with the end goal of aligning these beliefs with those shared across the extensive scholarship on CRP. I argue that once educators have examined their beliefs with regard to teaching, learning and their students and aligned them with those presented in the literature on CRP, they will be in a better position to engage in online teaching that works toward achieving the seemingly elusive goal of educational equity. Furthermore, I make the argument that if we do not engage in this belief work prior to our transition to online instruction, we risk falling into online assimilationist practices that we know do not work and that reinscribe inequitable schooling experiences for our most marginalized students.Originality/valueThis paper will be useful for teachers and teacher educators who are committed to engaging in teaching (virtual, in-person, hybrid) during a time of collective crisis that is committed to bringing about educational equity. I present a new way of thinking about CRP as a set of beliefs and guiding questions to help educators align their beliefs with those presented in the literature on CRP.

This paper draws from a broader research project and reports on a qualitative case study that investigated instructional practices in grades 3–5 Two-Way Immersion (TWI) classrooms where the partner language is Spanish. Using Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) as the theoretical framework, the purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which CRP is utilized by TWI teachers. Semi-structured interviews, class observations, and documents such as lesson plans were used as primary sources and collected from nine teacher participants. Findings show that building a culture of academic success was prevalent across all classrooms. While there were some evidence of instructional strategies promoting cultural competence, culturally relevant literature and topics were limited. Across all classrooms, a focus on socio-political awareness was absent. After providing insight on how classroom instruction engaged components of CRP, this paper addresses implications for TWI programs and action steps to ensure all tenets of CRP are utilized.

Mathematics instruction is not race or culture neutral. For students who have been historically marginalized in mathematics classrooms, high-quality mathematics instruction, instruction that helps students build conceptual understanding, on its own might not be enough to disrupt inequities. These students might also need instruction that is culturally relevant, with teachers who demonstrate cultural competence, build critical consciousness, and support student learning. Our goal in this study was to understand which components of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) are captured and which are missed in a typical U.S. framework of high-quality mathematics instruction. To find the overlaps and gaps, we analyzed the mathematics lessons of three elementary teachers through both the lens of CRP and the Mathematics-Scan, a mathematics observation tool. We found the strongest overlap between the two frameworks in the patterns of strengths and weaknesses in the teachers’ lessons. When the teachers were delivering high-quality instruction, they were also often supporting students’ learning or showing cultural competence. When the teachers were delivering lower quality instruction, they were also often missing opportunities to enact CRP. At the same time, key elements of CRP including linguistic support for students, high expectations, critical consciousness, and nuances within cultural competence, were missed by the high-quality instruction framework. High-quality instruction was the foundation for CRP in the teachers’ classrooms, but CRP was more than just high-quality instruction. We conclude with recommendations for increasing the alignment between the frameworks and implications for international educators also grappling with equity in their own frameworks of mathematics instruction.

The number of international students in the United Kingdom’s (UK) higher education (HE) sector has significantly increased, yet research on pedagogical frameworks for these students remains limited, particularly within the context of private business schools. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the application of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) for international students in a UK HE private business school. CRP is a pedagogical framework that supports students’ intellectual, social, emotional, and political development by integrating their cultural backgrounds into teaching practices (Ladson-Billings, 2009), emphasising the importance of aligning teaching content and students’ cultural backgrounds (Yu, 2022). Using qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed through thematic analysis with a deductive coding approach based on the three tenets of CRP: academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Findings suggested that participants, who were lecturers, were drawn to tenet 2, cultural competence, but also indicated challenges to incorporate CRP principles for international students within the UK HE private business school context. Contrary to the original CRP framework, findings in this study suggested that students and institutions, along with lecturers, should share the responsibility for students’ academic success. Unlike CRP in the United States (US) context, participants hesitated to discuss social issues with international students in the classroom. Given the challenges identified in this study, further study is necessary to reconceptualise CRP for international students, not only within UK HE private business schools but across the broader UK HE landscape.

Background: Teacher education programs (TEPs) have a mandate to prepare teachers qualified to educate culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. In addition, the demographic imperative compels TEPs to recruit preservice teachers from underrepresented communities; yet, just as youth of color are marginalized in schools, so too are teacher candidates of color (TCCs) marginalized in TEPs. Just as conventional TEP curriculums fail to decenter dominant social groups, so too do many teacher educators fail to enact asset-based pedagogy. A teacher quality gap and culturally rooted disenfranchisement persist. Purpose: I examine how TCCs are prepared to teach critically in demographically pluralistic schools and how one teacher educator of color attempts to close the teacher quality gap with a diverse preservice teacher cohort through the application of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Although asset pedagogies are widely accepted as best practice in P–12 classrooms, there exists a dearth of research on their impact on postsecondary spaces. Moreover, multicultural education scholarship focused on the experiences of TCCs is limited. Research Design: Drawing from a larger critical ethnographic study of two diversity courses in an urban TEP, this article explicates one teacher educator’s application of CRP. I utilize the core tenets of CRP—academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness—to bridge the gap between theory and practice through illustrations of intentional critical pedagogy. Data were analyzed from field notes, interviews of students and faculty, course assignments, readings, syllabi, evaluations, and other relevant artifacts. Results: Findings indicate that modeling CRP is paramount to developing culturally relevant pedagogues and that making known the interdependence of CRP’s three fundamental pillars is central to transformative learning experiences for preservice teachers. Although challenging, CRP at the postsecondary level is an achievable endeavor that requires increased faculty innovation, reflexivity, and humility. Conclusion: The project offers practical applications of CRP that are adaptable to most teacher preparation courses. Recommendations include a call for more studies that examine the use of asset-based pedagogies in higher education, especially in TEPs.

In collegiate mathematics, college algebra continues to be a barrier to graduation for students (specifically non-science, mathematics, engineering, and science majors). Each year, nearly half of enrolled students struggle to “pass” this course with a grade of C or better (Herriott, 2006). Using innovative constructed lessons geared towards African American students, this research study was designed to investigate the effects of a sequence of such lessons grounded in the principles of culturally relevant pedagogy on students enrolled in an introductory college algebra course at a historically Black college/university. Using critical race theory as a lens, along with culturally relevant pedagogy, this study explored students’ abilities to apply mathematics to address contentious and present-day sociopolitical problems through eight in-depth semi-structure student interviews. Further, findings also suggest the need for collegiate mathematics instruction to have more emphasis on cultural components to build students’ sociopolitical consciousnesses, because this is integral in helping students be able to think critically and use mathematics in their everyday lives. Students in this experimental course were able to discuss difficult issues, such as the pervasiveness of racism in America (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004) and the importance of cultural identity for African American students (Martin, 2009).

Selected Regular Lectures from the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education

Computer-based virtual learning environments (CBVLEs) have attracted attention as a learning innovation that can foster students’ self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Research on the instructional design regarding these aspects of learning in a virtual learning environment is rather piecemeal. This study investigates the instructional design of a CBVLE for mathematical medication learning by nursing students in vocational education. The instructional design was based on a task-centered approach, and students’ future learning tasks formed the backbone. We examine the extent to which the CBVLE fostered the nursing students’ mathematical learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation, and the ways in which the design components of the CBVLE met nursing students’ satisfaction. In total, 118 nursing students were assigned to four groups, with or without extra support from worked examples, and were trained via the CBVLE on mathematical medication learning tasks over four consecutive weeks. Students were pre- and post-tested on their mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation. Students also rated their satisfaction with the instructional design. Our results showed that the CBVLE fostered nursing students’ mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation, but no significant differences were found between the four conditions. Overall, student satisfaction was above average. The design components were able to predict nursing students’ mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation.

Integrating culturally relevant context into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education has the potential to promote meaningful learning for students. We investigated two case studies on implementing culturally relevant technology-enhanced learning, utilizing GeoGebra while exploring a tessellation project. To support our investigation, we conducted interviews, reflective practices, and document analysis. We analyzed the data by employing thematic analysis involving coding and descriptive analysis. We identified three main themes and eight sub-themes, namely the planning of learning, learning experiences, and action plans. We focused on the similarities and differences in the perspectives of urban and rural teachers and the significance of tessellation context in culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). The results from teachers’ feedback revealed a positive impact on students, especially in raising their awareness and empathy for their cultures and surroundings, providing insights into the similarities and differences between rural and urban schools. The findings showed the significance of tessellation context in CRP, which could contribute to promoting quality and understanding in middle-level education, especially between the ages of 10 and 15. However, we recognize that CRP not only fosters a positive learning environment but also requires further exploration for broader implementation across diverse contexts.

In this article, the authors explore using a conference workshop setting to engage mathematics teachers, who serve largely underserved student populations, in culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). The conference workshop encouraged the exchange of information among teachers of similar grade levels and classroom contexts. The authors' analysis of the findings highlight improvements in teachers' perceptions of their CRP knowledge as well as beneficial features of the conference workshop. These features include the creation of networks among mathematics teachers and team leaders, new post-conference mathematics lessons to implement in the classroom, and encouragement for the expansion of relationships and engagement in the classroom. While some teachers found their new knowledge of CRP served to validate current practices, others found that the conference workshop provided a language with which to integrate successful practices into the mathematics classroom.

OF DISSERTATION A MIXED METHODS APPROACH TO INVESTIGATING COGNITIVE LOAD AND COGNITIVE PRESENCE IN AN ONLINE AND FACE-TO-FACE COLLEGE ALGEBRA COURSE Most research on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) has uncovered many instructional design considerations for learning complex tasks. Additionally, the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) framework describes many of the learning experiences in online education. A gap existed in the literature for investigating cognitive load over the duration of a college algebra course and for investigating the relationship between cognitive load and cognitive presence. This research study has addressed this gap by investigating cognitive load and cognitive presence in an online and face-to-face college algebra course. The results of this study revealed that face-to-face students earned statistically significant higher final course grades and homework grades than the online students. The face-to-face math course was slightly more efficient because it produced learners who exerted similar cognitive load as learners in the online course but the learners in the faceto-face earned higher performance score. Online discussion prompts that ask student to apply their solution or defend their solution engaged students in cognitive presence differently. When students were prompted to apply their solution to a real world scenario, most students reached resolution in their initial posts, but they were often not cognitively present in their followup posts. When students were prompted to provide a defense of their solution, most of the posts demonstrated cognitive presence, but not as many individual students reached resolution. Additionally, students progressed through the stages of cognitive presence when an instructor asked them a specific question about their math problem or real life scenario in a timely manner. When instructors post questions to their students that directly ask for an application of their hypothesis or an explanation how they arrived at their hypothesis, students can reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. When instructors post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence, students do not post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. Lastly, this study did not find a strong linear relationship between cognitive presence and cognitive load.

Blended learning is one of the modalities used to enhance students' learning experiences in the 21st century. South African educators who migrate to countries overseas have mixed feelings about their teaching using technology in schools. This chapter presents findings on implementation of blended learning in mathematics classrooms from the perspectives of two South African educators working in an international school in Saudi Arabia. The study was done using a qualitative case study within an interpretivist paradigm and it was guided by the technology acceptance model. Two South African educators teaching at an international school in Saudi Arabia were purposively selected to participate in the study. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and document analysis. A significant contribution of the study was the development of a model which shows that perspectives of the educators on blended learning hinges on two entities: technology acceptance and educators' self-efficacy.

PurposeThe use of technology in education is still seen as a symbol of modernity in Indonesia. Without adequate technological infrastructural support from institutions, teachers develop ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the affective domain in learning mathematics with technology across genders and across two student groups, where in one group the students shared learning devices, while the other group of students used individual devices.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods and is based on data collected from five secondary schools in Indonesia.FindingsThe findings reveal attitudinal differences are associated with technology usage in mathematics classrooms. Quantitative measurements across four attitudinal subscales—mathematics motivation, attitudes to the use of technology in mathematics, technological confidence and mathematics confidence—indicate that affordances in technologies influence boys and girls attitudes; while qualitative data share further insights on gender perspectives related to attitudinal differences.Research limitations/implicationsAppropriate pedagogical approaches with equitable access to technologies are important for engaging students in learning mathematics with technology.Social implicationsThis empirical study reveals aspects related to student participation with technologies in classrooms, which has important implications for student development.Originality/valueThe study contributes to literature on mathematics education related to the use of learning technologies in secondary schools of a developing country.

Strengthening Online Education Approaches in Institutions of Higher Learning