Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms
eBook - ePub

Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms

Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy

Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen, Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen

Share book
  1. 296 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms

Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy

Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen, Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

This book provides a theoretical basis and practical strategies to counter resistance to learning to teach for diversity (in culturally and gender-inclusive ways), and resistance to teaching for understanding (using student-centered and inquiry-based pedagogical approaches). Teacher educators from across the United States present rich narratives of their experiences in helping prospective and practicing teachers learn to teach for diversity and for understanding in a variety of mathematics and science contexts. Mathematics and science education has been slow to respond to issues of diversity and equity. Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy helps to begin a network for support and collaboration among teacher educators in science and mathematics who work for multicultural education and equity. A unique and much-needed contribution, this book is an essential resource for teacher educators, K-12 teachers who work as student teacher supervisors and cooperating teachers, and graduate students in mathematics and science education, and a compelling text for science and mathematics methods courses.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms by Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen, Alberto J. Rodriguez, Richard S. Kitchen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Education & Education General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2004
ISBN
9781135620776
Edition
1

1
Teachers’ Resistance to Ideological and Pedagogical Change: Definitions, Theoretical Framework, and Significance

Alberto J.Rodriguez
San Diego State University

In my methods classes, students are required to write short reaction papers based on the assigned readings before we discuss them in class. They are expected to explain how the articles they read resonate (or not) with their own experiences as students and as individuals, as well as with their emerging teaching orientations. Consider the following excerpt from a reading reaction paper written by Luisa, a Latina prospective teacher. Luisa was one of five Latinas in an elementary science methods class with 17 other female students and 1 male student (who were of Anglo ethnic backgrounds):
I also believe that it is important for educators and teachers, as well as everyone, to embrace diversity and multiculturalism. A few weeks ago, I heard some of my peers discussing multiculturalism, and they were saying that they thought it was so “annoying” that the education department promoted multiculturalism, and that it was stupid, and when they wrote papers they wrote what their professors wanted to hear, not what they really felt. I thought it was sad, and a little scary, that these people are our future teachers and they thought the “whole diversity and multicultural thing was annoying and stupid.” It made me think that there are plenty of educators out there who also think like this, and there are even more children who will become the students of these teachers who will suffer because of their ignorance.
After having taught for more than a decade in postsecondary institutions in various cities in Canada and the United States, I have often heard and read comments like the ones Luisa mentions in the preceding quotation. A few times, 1 the comments are directed at me and meant to be personal because I am a Latino concerned with issues of social justice. One prospective teacher from the U.S. Midwest once wrote in his course evaluation, “Dr. Rodriguez is jamming multicultural education down our throats because he has a chip on his shoulder.”
Comments of this nature reflect some of the prospective teachers’ fears, frustrations, and anxieties as they attempt to make sense of what it means to be an effective teacher in a pluralist society. Whereas many prospective teachers embrace the goals of the teacher education programs in which they are enrolled, others (like the ones just mentioned) often resist learning to teach for diversity (i.e., teaching in more culturally responsive, gender-inclusive, and socially relevant ways) and/or resist learning to teach for understanding (i.e., using constructivist, inquiry-based, and intellectually stimulating pedagogical approaches).
In this book, we (the authors in this volume including myself) recognize that the use of the term resistance has some limitations, because it is not always easily apparent what the intentions of the individual might be. Prospective teachers may purposely refuse to teach for diversity and understanding for a variety of reasons, which are discussed later, or they may simply avoid using more inclusive, multicultural, and student-centered approaches because they feel that they lack confidence and/or skills. In any of these cases, we prefer to use the term resistance because it involves the individual’s agency, or conscious choice to take action or not, and in doing so become authors of their own texts. We also prefer to use the term resistance because it provides a better construct for exploring the prospective teachers’ thinking and professional growth, as they strive to align their belief systems and notions of good teaching with the expectations of their teacher education programs, programs that, in turn, are expected by teacher accreditation organizations, national and state boards of education, and national and state curriculum standards to prepare teachers as well-rounded professionals who are culturally inclusive and effective facilitators of knowledge in our pluralist society (Sleeter, 2001).
How then can teacher educators respond—and in essence positively counter—prospective teachers’ resistance to teach for diversity and for understanding? What are some examples of promising pedagogical strategies that teacher educators could use in their courses to help prospective teachers meet the expectations of their teacher education programs, supervising teachers, and state and national standards? How can teacher educators better prepare prospective teachers to meet the challenges of helping increase the achievement and participation of all students in mathematics and science?
We tackle these questions head-on by providing rich narratives of our experiences in helping prospective teachers learn to teach for diversity and understanding in a variety of science and mathematics contexts.
Hence, the first goal of this chapter is to provide a broad description of multicultural education and social constructivism as the two theoretical frameworks that link all of the chapters together. The second goal is to provide an advanced organizer for the other chapters by listing a compendium of the various pedagogical strategies used by the authors in either their science or mathematics methods courses. We hope that this advanced organizer will provide a quick reference guide for readers and encourage them to find out more about how to implement these strategies in their own teaching contexts.
Also, it is important to note that the authors of this volume may use different ethnic terms to refer to individuals’ cultural backgrounds. For example, I prefer to use the term Anglo, because this relates to the individuals’ ethnic and linguistic origins rather than their skin color. Although there is no perfect way to describe ethnic diversity, I believe these terms are more inclusive than using colonial and skin color-based categories such as black, white, red, brown, and yellow. Using individuals’ ethnic and cultural terms is a way to celebrate our rich cultural diversity instead of color coding it into colonial categories. Thus, readers may find the use of the following terms throughout this book, underrepresented or diverse students, First Nations (Native Americans), African or African American (Black), Latina/o (Hispanic), and Anglo (White).
In the next section, to facilitate discussion of the theoretical frameworks that guide the contributing authors’ work, and how these relate to the construct of teacher resistance, two broad categories of teacher resistance are presented (Rodriguez, 1998a).

RESISTANCE TO LEARNING TO TEACH FOR DIVERSITY AND UNDERSTANDING

When the word resistance is used as a key term for conducting a bibliographical search in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database ((http://askeric.org/plweb=cgi/fastweb?search) something really interesting happens. A list containing more than 6,900 documents is produced! This clearly indicates that at least in the last three decades the term resistance has been a key subject of study in education. This is also apparent when the word teacher is added to the same ERIC search. The result is a list of 2,574 documents dealing with teacher education and resistance in a variety of ways (e.g., teachers’ resistance to teaching for diversity, students’ resistance to learning the prescribed curriculum, resistance to dominant discourses, and so on).
It is odd, however, that the construct of resistance is not as predominant a topic in either the chapter titles or indices of important syntheses of educational research like those found in the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks & Banks, 1995), the Handbook of Research on Teaching (Richardson, 2001),1 or the Handbook of Research on Science Teaching and Learning (Gabel, 1994). So, though teacher resistance to teaching in culturally and gender-inclusive ways (teaching for diversity), as well their resistance to teaching using student-centered and inquiry-based approaches (teaching for understanding), may be addressed in these handbooks or syntheses of educational research in one way or another, there is a need to make more predominant and more clear what educational researchers and educators mean by resistance in teacher education, Most important, there is a need to provide a synthesis of how teacher educators are responding to teachers’ resistance. This volume begins to address these issues by providing a compendium of promising pedagogical strategies used by teacher educators in a variety of contexts.
The urgency to explore more effective ways to prepare teachers to teach for diversity and understanding is even more apparent when we consider the pervasive educational inequalities in our schools. These inequalities continue to prevent many traditionally underrepresented students from fully participating and finding academic success in science and mathematics classrooms (Rodriguez, 1998a, in press; Secada et al., 1998).
It is no wonder that in recent years, national standards and professional organizations in science and mathematics require that teachers be prepared to teach in more culturally sensitive and responsive ways (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989, 2000; National Research Council [NRC], 1996). Similarly, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires teacher education programs to include courses on multicultural education and/or provide activities and experiences aimed to increase the prospective educators’ teaching abilities and dispositions to work with culturally diverse students. In the United States, 25 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia require prospective teachers to complete multicultural education requirements (usually in the form of a university course) before certification (Sleeter, 2001). Even national teacher organizations, like the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), have put forward position statements that explicitly explain the importance of preparing teachers to teach for diversity. For example, one of the NSTA’s goals is to make certain that ethnically diverse children have “access to quality science education experiences that enhance success and provide the knowledge and opportunities required for them to become successful participants in our democratic society” (NSTA, 2000).
More recently, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act states that the gap in student achievement in the United States must be eliminated within 12 years, and that schools must make adequate yearly progress toward this goal (The White House, 2002). The NCLB act also mandates that schools failing to make adequate progress will be put in either the “identified for improvement category,” or be reorganized under an improvement plan. Whereas this new national policy evokes many questions regarding the significant financial and professional development support necessary to meet the prescribed goals within 12 years, we cannot avoid the obvious question: What role should (or must) teacher education programs play in helping prepare new generations of teachers to meet the challenges posed by the NCLB act? This takes us back to the core of this volume. If national policies and teacher education programs are expecting that teachers be well prepared to teach effectively in diverse school contexts, how can teacher educators manage teachers’ resistance to teaching for diversity and understanding? In this book, we provide a variety of suggestions for addressing this important question.
So, what is multicultural education, and why do some prospective teachers resist learning to teach for diversity?

RESISTANCE TO IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE

The oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor
 To affirm that men are persons and as persons should be free, and yet do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce. (Freire, 1989, p. 34)
This statement by Paulo Freire is at the crux of what it means to work for social justice in our everyday lives, and it also illustrates why perhaps the most difficult type of teacher resistance to manage is resistance to ideological change (resistance to teaching for diversity). This is defined as the resistance to changing one’s beliefs and value system. Some prospective teachers who show resistance to ideological change might articulate a kind of “rugged individualism” by stating that what all students need to do is “to work hard enough” to be successful in science and/or mathematics or in life in general (Rodriguez, 1998b). They might also state that the students’ language abilities, gender, ethnic backgrounds, or socioeconomic status do not matter, as long as they work hard enough. In addition, as mentioned previously, teachers may show resistance to ideological change not because they disagree with this orientation, but because they may lack the awareness, confidence, and/or knowledge and skills to implement more culturally responsive and socially relevant curriculum.
Since the early 1970s, research on multicultural education has been aimed at raising awareness about equity issues in all areas of education (Grant, 1999). Banks and Banks (1995) described multicultural education “as a field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates, for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic and women studies” (p. xii). Similar definitions have been put forward for multicultural mathematics and science education in an effort to make more explicit the importance of increasing the participation of underrepresented students in these curriculum areas. A second goal has been to increase underrepresented students’ academic achievement and career opportunities in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (Atwater & Riley, 1993; Rodriguez, 1998a).
A growing body of research on multicultural education in the past four decades has increased our understanding of the sociocultural, historical, institutional, curricular, and economic factors that influence the achievement and participation of underrepresented students in mathematics and science. Similarly, many studies have also described the strong resistance prospective and inservice teachers wield against learning to teach for diversity—against ideological change—and against the notion that all children can learn (Ahlquist, 1991; Cochran-Smith, 1991, 1995; Goodwin, 1994; Jordan, 1995; McIntosh, 1989; Rodriguez, 1998a, 2002; Scott, 1995; Sleeter, 2001; Sweeney, 2001; Tatum, 1992). The bulk of these studies have focused on documenting teachers’ resistance to ideological change and/ or the difficulties they encounter in trying to transfer what they learned in the university context about teaching for diversity to their school teaching contexts. Most of these studies provide rich descriptions and are very informative, but what is needed is more explicit suggestions for how to counter prospective teachers’ resistance to ideological change in positive and effective ways. Educators, policymakers, and researchers face a sociocultural conundrum when they expect prospective teachers (who are mostly members of the culture of power) to teach science and mathematics in culturally relevant ways to students who are increasingly from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (Mendoza Commission, 2000).
This is one of the challenges that the authors in this volume wish to meet by describing their promising strategies of counterresistance, that is, pedagogical strategies designed to positively address prospective teachers’ difficulties, concerns, and/or direct opposition to the notion that all educators can (and should) ...

Table of contents