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This year-long case study involved the professional development of teachers in New York City elementary schools, who co-designed with researchers culturally relevant robot-coding mathematics activities to advance teachers’ understanding of culturally responsive mathematics pedagogy. Study findings indicated that co-designing culturally relevant robot-coding mathematics activities led to the development of teachers’ cultural competencies, deeper understanding of culturally responsive mathematics pedagogy and their students’ cultures, stronger agency, and ability to integrate culturally responsive pedagogy into their mathematics curriculum. Teachers also began to perceive the robot as a mathematical tool rather than a motivational add-on, and started to develop their own cultural lens while focusing less on school structure constraints. The study emphasises the importance of engaging teachers as active co-designers of culturally relevant coding curriculum in professional development programmes.
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This content will become publicly available on April 23, 2026
Learning trajectories of teachers’ cultural competencies in teaching mathematics with robots in elementary school
This study employed a mixed methods research design to explore the influence of a year-long professional development (PD) on the 1st grade team of elementary school teachers' cultural competencies as they integrated culturally relevant robot coding activities into mathematics instruction. Culturally relevant mathematics pedagogy (CRMP) promotes academic success by fostering conceptual understanding, leveraging students' cultural knowledge, building social connections, and engaging mathematics from a social justice lens through the core elements of demand, relevance, and agency. The results indicate that the PD sessions improved some of teachers' cultural competencies, such as competency in modeling high expectations and in drawing on student culture. In addition, teachers consistently demonstrated strong cultural competencies in establishing supportive classroom norms, promoting inclusive environments, and recognizing student differences. The observed CRMP scores reflect teachers’ growth trends in the demand dimension of implemented mathematics tasks. However, they struggled implementing mathematics tasks that reflect authentic relevance and agency, even though all three core dimensions of CRMP were evident in the designed tasks. Teachers' self-reports indicated a shift toward more student-centered instruction, which is consistent with increased tasks’ demand.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2147699
- PAR ID:
- 10579297
- Publisher / Repository:
- AERA
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- culturally relevant mathematics pedagogy learning trajectories robot coding mixed methods research elementary mathematics education teacher professional development
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Denver, CO
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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