Investigating how Opportunities to Learn Culturally Responsive Teaching Influence Beginning Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Effectiveness and Retention

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This project aims to serve the national need for preparing and retaining an effective elementary school STEM teaching workforce. The project addresses the need for elementary school teachers to be prepared to provide culturally responsive mathematics instruction to diverse populations of students in high-need schools. Culturally relevant approaches have been shown to support students’ mathematics learning. However, teacher education programs vary in how pre-service teachers are prepared to use culturally relevant instruction. Also, little is known about how beginning teachers apply these teaching approaches in mathematics teaching in elementary school classrooms. This project will explore how teacher education programs differ in their approaches to preparing elementary school teachers for culturally relevant mathematics teaching. The project will also investigate how teachers’ use of culturally relevant instruction influences their instructional effectiveness, student mathematics learning, and teacher retention in the profession. This research has the important potential to identify elements of teacher preparation that support beginning elementary school teachers in becoming effective, inclusive mathematics teachers who are retained in the field. Results could be broadly relevant for teacher education programs across the nation. This project at the University of Delaware includes partnerships with seven teacher preparation programs across the states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona. The overarching project goal is to provide education policymakers and teacher education program leaders evidence about effective integration of culturally relevant instructional practices in pre-service teacher preparation programs and how preparation experiences translate into classroom practices used to teach mathematics in high-need elementary schools. The experienced research team aims to conduct a longitudinal, mixed-method research design that will, over three years, investigate a sample of 200 elementary school teachers. Teachers will include those working in minority-serving schools and prepared at minority-serving institutions. Investigations will span teachers' experiences during their final year of teacher preparation through their first two years of teaching. The research team will collect evidence about participating teachers’ opportunities to learn culturally relevant teaching and their attitudes towards culturally relevant teaching over time. Additionally, the research will collect classroom observation evidence to explore how teachers apply culturally relevant teaching practices in the context of their mathematics teaching, as well as access data on elementary school students’ mathematics learning outcomes. The research will use structural equation modelling to explore key mediating and moderating factors to understand how teacher education experiences influence beginning teachers’ effectiveness and retention. Further, the research will benefit from input and evaluation by an advisory board that includes experts in culturally relevant teaching, mathematics teaching and learning, and quantitative research methods. Findings will be disseminated to education policymakers and stakeholders, and program leaders overseeing teacher preparation through policy briefs, publications in practitioner-oriented outlets, and presentations at professional gatherings of teachers and preparation program leaders. This Track 4: Noyce Research project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.