SANTA CRUZ — The National Science Foundation recently awarded more than $4 million in grant funding to UC Santa Cruz to support a project aimed at addressing systemic racism and ableism in K-12 math education. UCSC assistant professor of elementary mathematics education Paulo Tan leads the project.
“I really want teachers in mathematics education to have better ideas, resources and pedagogies to teach all of their students,” said Tan. “The big hope is that we can challenge the systemic barriers in math education in a meaningful way.”
Tan points out that students who are perceived as having a high ability in math are pushed ahead while those seen as having less ability are separated physically and by the curriculum they are taught.
“Race has a lot to do with it,” said Tan. “We look at math tracking and can see that Black and brown students are typically tracked into lower classrooms. Those who are non-white are seen as less able and are disproportionately identified as having emotional behavior disorders and having an intellectual disability.”
The research project will span four years and partner education researchers with Black disabled students from Oakland public high schools and others in Virginia and North Carolina, to discover and identify dysfunctional education practices to develop new professional learning resources for teachers.
Tan recently joined the faculty at UCSC and formerly served as a public school math teacher himself. Through his time as a teacher, he saw firsthand how some students are perceived as better at math based on identity markers such as gender or race, and if a student has a disability.
“I myself wasn’t prepared to teach all students and particularly students with disabilities, and so I knew I needed to learn more,” said Tan. “At the same time, I think the National Science Foundation and other organizations are realizing that this work is important.”
Tan will be joined by University of Virginia associate professor Jonee Wilson and North Carolina State University professor Jessica Hunt, who each bring their own perspective and expertise to the project.
“As a research team, we have a lot to bring to the table,” said Tan. “I am focused on the intersection of racism and ableism. Jonee Wilson does work with math coaching with a focus on equity, and Jessica Hunt also brings a lot of expertise in thinking about students with disabilities in mathematics.”
Tan and the researchers have decided to work closely with students to establish more inclusive teaching methods in mathematics, because they want to avoid imposing ideas that may seem correct to researchers but not to students.
“This idea that we are learning with our research participants is really important and they are part of the research process itself,” said Tan. “This research will look more at how students can inform the coaching models. They will be central to the research team.”
Now that the researchers have locked in funding, and the locations for the project have been decided, the first year of the project will focus on establishing relationships.
“We are just getting things started now,” said Tan. “Our first stage is to form partnerships with schools, teachers and students to build trust and reciprocity. We are not there to just take information but to provide support for teachers and students, and we see them as future co-researchers.”
Following the first year, Tan and the team will begin analyzing the data they’ve collected with the help of the Black disabled students they will be working with. From there, they plan to establish new coaching methods to help math teachers instruct students without bias.
“Shifting the paradigm is really going to be challenging because of the way that we think about Black disabled students and students with disabilities in general, and how we think about research,” said Tan. “Going against the grain is going to be challenging.”