UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item This is the Remix: A Math Teacher's Reflective Journey Through Fine-Tuning Her Culturally Relevant Teaching(2023) Ivy, Kelly Kristina; Brantlinger, Andrew M.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While many educational institutions have updated their strategic plans mandating culturally responsive teaching (CRT) or culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), mathematics teachers are reluctant to embrace CRT/CRP, approaching the teaching and learning of mathematics from deficit paradigms that reflect the pedagogy of poverty. Culturally responsive mathematics teaching (CRMT) is necessary because it promises to promote meaningfulness for, accessibility to, and high levels of engagement with school mathematics for Black, Latinx, and other historically marginalized students. However, to date, there have been numerous theoretical arguments for, but few empirical examples of CRMT, and, as a result, many mathematics teachers are uncomfortable employing CRMT. This qualitative case study examines how an experienced and highly regarded Black urban middle school mathematics teacher (Ms. Collier) understands the theoretical and empirical literature on CRP and how she changes her teaching during and after implementing a CRP curriculum unit with her Black and Latinx students. In the context of this study, I offer Ms. Collier’s journey of embracing CRMT by “remixing” her mindset as a mathematics teacher by reading and discussing CRP and CRMT literature and then remixing her curriculum and instruction in response to her “remixed” understandings. In sum, using frameworks such as Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Responsive Mathematics Teaching, and Teacher Change Theory, I explored Ms. Collier’s theory-to-practice applications of CRT. The dissertation results are organized into two parts corresponding with different study phases. Part 1 focused on Ms. Collier’s fine-tuned understanding of CRP, and Part 2 focused on Ms. Collier’s perspectives on her experiences implementing CRMT with her Black and Latinx students. Data were collected from four sources: conversations, semi-structured interviews, written reflections, and memos. Key findings indicate that Ms. Collier was, in fact, a Dreamkeeper, understanding Ladson-Billings’ foundational CRP tenets of Academic Achievement, Cultural Competence, and Critical Consciousness. Findings also crystallized two new tenets of CRP I advance that are present but not explicitly named in the literature: Classroom Domain and Teacher Mindset. In addition, salient themes demonstrating each domain of Teacher Change Theory emerged, with Ms. Collier experiencing a meaningful change in perspective: It's about the curriculum AND who the person is. With this study, I challenge the idea of reducing CRP to a set of practices. My stance is that CRP is more so a process of being for the teacher because this body of work studies the more significant issue of mathematics education for Black and Latinx students. As a mathematics teacher who understands the many stereotypes and stigmas that Black and Latinx students face in the learning and doing of mathematics, Ms. Collier expressed a clear awareness of the impact that culturally relevant instructional and relational practices could have on her Black and Latinx students.Item Critical Montessori Education: Centering BIPOC Montessori Educators and their Anti-Racist Teaching Practices(2023) D'Cruz Ramos, Genevieve; Liu, Rossina Z; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While many BIPOC Montessori educators engage in anti-racist and culturally responsive teaching, Montessori education remains predominantly race-evasive. As a philosophy, it is rooted in colorblind perspectives in its focus on "all children" and lack of explicit centering of BIPOC students’ experiences. Teaching must account for race and racial lived realities in order to better support BIPOC students’ ways of knowing in culturally relevant and sustaining ways. This study seeks to center the voices of BIPOC Montessori educators and disrupt the pattern of Montessori research conducted without a critical racial lens. Framed by Critical Race Theory, this study focuses on the strengths, assets, and anti-racist teaching practices that one BIPOC educator brings to her classroom. I use critical ethnographic methods to better understand how a BIPOC Montessori teacher at a public charter Montessori school interprets and enacts the Montessori method to support BIPOC students. I consider how her racial identity informs her practices, and the structural barriers she faces at her school when enacting anti-racist and strength-based approaches. The guiding research questions of this study are: How does a Black Montessori teacher interpret the Montessori philosophy to more relevantly support her BIPOC students? How does she practice the Montessori method through culturally relevant and sustaining practices? What are the structural barriers that continue to challenge her as a Black educator doing her work? My analysis suggests that the teacher maintains her classroom space as a tangible and intangible cultural space that reflects and maintains her students' identities; that her own identity as a Black woman deeply contribute to the school's work around anti-racism and culturally responsive pedagogy; and that there are external barriers that both the teacher and the school face, that prevent them both from fully achieving culturally responsive teaching practices. At the core of the study, I seek to understand the possibilities and challenges of Montessori education from the perspective of BIPOC Montessori educators, and how we could learn from them to better support BIPOC students. I hope to begin a path toward more counter-stories in the Montessori community to specifically support BIPOC Montessori educators and understand the structural barriers they face to anti-racist teaching in Montessori programs in the United States.Item FORMATIVE-HOME CULTURAL INFLUENCES OF SCIENTIFIC SENSE-MAKING: A CASE STUDY ON THE AFFORDANCES OF PEDAGOGICAL “BIO MECHANISTIC THOROUGHNESS” (“BMT”)(2020) Powell, Kweli Bennett; Chazan, Daniel; Elby, Andrew; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Science education research continues to struggle with clarifying the formative-home culturally pedagogical merits of everyday, vs formal science vocabulary focused, classroom discourse (ex. Hammer, et al, 2005; Warren et al, 2001). More broadly, cross-contextual cultural pedagogical efficacy is a resonant aim for education scholar-practitioners in general, regardless of topic (ex. Chazan, 2000; Howard, et al, 2017). While a bio-mechanically thorough (BMT) methodological lens could offer robust theoretical insight into these questions, such an application has yet to become widely evident. In this dissertation, I apply a bio-experimental theoretically based case study approach (Yin, 1989) to interrogate the BMT-causal African-American cultural dynamics of two science sense-making transcripts. The first transcript (2010) featured a first year cohort of teachers as they engaged in the same science sense-making discourse that we researcher-trainers aimed for them elicit in their classrooms. Findings indicate that, from a BMT-aligned perspective, the learning practices of the two African-American (formative-home) cultural participants (out of 5), indeed evinced signatures of their formative-home culture’s discursive-behavioral influence. The second transcript (2012) featured a first year cohort of teachers as they engaged in a facilitated science sense-making structure identical to that applied in 2010. Again, BMT-informed findings indicate that the learning practices of the three African-American participants (out of 6) showed signatures of said culture’s motivating impact. Further notably, relative to the first (2010) context, the 2012 cohort evinced markedly more on-topic discursive-learning per unit time. This dissertation models the affordances of a BMT-aligned case study lens (Yin, 1989) for understanding the culturally causal dynamics of productive sense-making. Results suggest that the distinction between the two transcript outcomes rooted in a deeper sense of ‘starting familiarity' or 'communalism' amongst the focal cultural participants in the 2012 group, a factor shown to uniquely resonate among African-American learners (ex. Boykin, 1994; Seiler, 2001). These findings demonstrate how science sense-making educational contexts that cultivate 'everyday', thus including formative-home culturally rooted, discourse can facilitate learning. This model can inform the development of cross-contextually robust forums for sense-making based teacher-preparatory policy, regardless of topic.Item Cultural Relevance and Montessori(2006-12-11) Massey, Corinne Margueritte; Johnson, Martin; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This master's thesis research consists of a study in which the theoretical and practical congruencies between Equity Pedagogy, an essential component of multicultural education, and the pedagogical elements of Montessori Education are examined. The goals of this study are multi-tiered, existing on both a practical and an intellectual plane. On a practical level, the goals relate to Montessori classroom practice and Montessori teacher education programs. In considering the praxis of a small set of public school teachers, the practical relationship between Montessori and Equity Pedagogy begins to emerge. Praxis was explored using non-intrusive observational techniques with no videotaping. The researcher observed the teacher's manner of addressing the students in a variety of classroom contexts. Student's actions were recorded only as they are pertinent to the teacher's praxis, and identifiable student characteristics were not recorded. At no time during classroom observations will the researcher interrupt or attempt to intervene in teacher-student interactions. Interviews will follow observations in order to examine any discrepancies between teacher praxis and teacher ideology. This research will present an ethnographic case study of the public Montessori program in a suburban county bordering on a large city.