In 2004, a team of Center for Mathematics Education faculty and graduate student researchers embarked on an ambitious research effort titled the Case Studies of Urban Algebra I Teachers Project. The main purpose of the project was to document the practices and perspectives of 'well respected' teachers of Algebra I in urban schools populated predominantly by African American and Latino students. Over a three-year period, the project team conducted approximately eight interviews and 30 classroom observations (most of which were videotaped) for each of the six mathematics teachers in the study, all of whom are African American. Multiple goals related to the project were been established over time, however, for the purposes of describing the ways the research team developed conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches in their efforts to responsibly study and articulate the roles African American mathematics teachers play in the lives of their African American students, two goals came to play a central role:
• Identifying ways in which African American mathematics teachers in a specific academic and social context assist their African American students in negotiating identities that have historically been constructed in isolation or in opposition to one another – namely becoming and being an African American adolescent while simultaneously becoming and being a mathematics learner.
• Identifying the knowledge, resources, experiences, and rationales African American mathematics teachers draw on as they engage in this identity socialization work in this particular academic and social context.
The Case Studies of Urban Algebra I Teachers research team has presented findings at many national mathematics education conferences and is currently submitting multiple manuscripts for publication.
Read more at Teacher College Record.