Investigating race consciousness within teachers’ and leaders’ visions of equitable mathematics instruction in the U.S.

Abstract

We report on an effort to characterize (changes in) teachers’ and school and district leaders’ race consciousness within their visions of equitable mathematics instruction. We analyzed interviews conducted over multiple years within a project in an urban school district in the U.S. that focused on racism and racial equity in secondary mathematics and included multi-week professional learning opportunities for teachers during the months between school years. Our analysis yielded a 4-level trajectory modelling the development of race consciousness in participants’ discourse. Distinctions across levels pertain to the presence of race in individuals’ discourse, the directness with which they talk about race, and the extent to which they locate sources of an historical accumulation of racial inequity within systems.