CAREER: Equity Focused Elementary Mathematics: Creating Virtual Mathematics Communities in Rural Georgia

Access to high quality STEM education is highly variable depending on where one lives. In addition, early career teachers need support during their first years of teaching to be successful and help them stay in the profession. This project aims to provide in-service and beginning elementary school teachers increased opportunities to refine their mathematics teaching to support minoritized youth in racially diverse rural communities in Georgia that have less access to elementary mathematics specialists. This project follows and supports both beginning teachers (BTs) and elementary mathematics coaches (EMCs) over 5 years to develop and refine their mathematics teaching and coaching, respectively, using equity-based tools to guide reflection and conversations about both the BTs’ instructional practices and the EMCs’ coaching practices. The tools provide data to uncover biases and aspirational pedagogical targets for equitable discourse and task design. The goals of the project include: a) establishing a virtual distance learning community to support equity focused elementary mathematics coaches across rural counties in Georgia, b) developing and refining a fully online elementary mathematics and coaching graduate coursework sequence to prepare EMCs, and c) implementing an innovative model of university supervision and induction for BTs.

Over the 5-year period, ten EMCs will engage in coursework, and be supported through a virtual community to develop elementary mathematics teaching and learning in their schools and districts. The coaches will support at least ten beginning teachers to develop equitable mathematics learning communities as they enter the field during their first years of teaching. This approach is important because formalized induction support is rare in most districts in Georgia, and teachers are leaving the field in record numbers because they feel unprepared. Data sources will include videos of teaching episodes, teacher reflections, narrative interviews, and document analysis. The study will employ case study and narrative methodologies in analyzing the varied and rich data collected with BTs and EMCs. The project’s goal of preparing and supporting EMCs has potential to dramatically shift the professional development of BTs, and to re-professionalize teacher education and provide more equitable mathematics education for all students. This proposed study could serve as a model to build additional networks of STEM coaches across rural areas.