Subject-Matter Experts in Urban Schools: Journeys of Enacted Identities in Science and Mathematics Classrooms

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2011 46: 845 originally published online 17 March 2011Urban EducationLi Ye, Maria Varelas and Raphael Guajardo

Identities in Science and Mathematics ClassroomsSubject-Matter Experts in Urban Schools: Journeys of Enacted

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Subject-Matter Experts in Urban Schools: Journeys of Enacted Identities in Science and Mathematics Classrooms

Li Ye1, Maria Varelas1, and Raphael Guajardo1

Abstract

This study explored how two mathematics/science subject-matter experts (Fellows) conceptualized urban classrooms and the students they worked with for a year, how they negotiated academic achievement with cultural and sociopolitical competence, and how their identities as educators were co-constructed and enacted. Using grounded theory, Fellows’ weekly journals were analyzed using Ladson-Billing’s three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy. The Fellows’ journeys point to the formation and presence of a prevalent tenet in their identities as urban educators, to the difficulty of integrating all three tenets, and to the tensions that educators experience as they try to become sociopolitically critical.

Keywords

culturally relevant pedagogy, identity and learning, mathematics, science

1University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:Li Ye, 4458 N. Tripp Ave., Chicago, IL 60630, USAEmail: [email protected]

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846 Urban Education 46(4)

There is a growing recognition that science and mathematics educators and education researchers need to better understand urban settings, including schools, and, thus develop ways for helping students who attend such schools not only “survive” in such subjects but also thrive. As Tate (2001) claims, “Urban science education is a civil rights issue” (p. 1015). Various initiatives attempt to answer this call in different ways. One feature of such initiatives is attend-ing to the depth and breadth of subject-matter knowledge that teachers of students in urban settings need in order to be successful. Along these lines, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has been supporting for 10 years a program called Graduate Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) that aims at strengthening K-12 science and mathematics education by supporting graduate students (aka Fellows) in sciences, mathematics, and engineering programs, having strong subject-matter knowledge, to work with teachers and their stu-dents in classrooms. In this study, we explored the journeys of two such Fellows who participated in one particular GK-12 program, a collaborative endeavor between a Research I University in a large city and the urban public school district of that city. Using a case study approach and situating our analysis within Ladson-Billing’s pedagogical framework for urban education and a sociocultural framework of identity construction, we studied the ways in which these two Fellows conceptualized urban classrooms and the stu-dents they worked with for a year, and how their identities as educators in such settings were co-constructed and enacted over time.

Theoretical FrameworkUrban Education

In an increasingly multiethnic nation, American public school student popula-tion is becoming more ethnically, racially, culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse. From 1993 to 2005, the percentage of total public school enrollment of non-White students increased from 34% to 43%, with minority students enrolling in schools with high minority student popula-tion—the majority (75% or more) of Black students and Latino/as attend schools with high minority enrollment (National Center for Education Sta-tistics, 2007). Thus, although diversity and homogeneity coexist in urban schools (Milner, 2006), White, middle-class norms and values are evident in such schools as well as in the greater American society. As students from non-dominant groups become part of a school system in which their own cultures, belief systems, values, and lifestyles are not privileged, they have to make some tough choices. They can try to assimilate to the dominant culture and



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cope with numerous cultural, racial, ethnic, and/or linguistic differences between themselves and their teachers in order to achieve academic success (Groulx, 2001; Ware, 2006). They can resist and be deprived of power and status (Fordham, 1996). They can chose alternatives that incorporate these two extremes to various degrees. How successful they become in school very much depends on the dialectic between what schooling offers them and what they want to take, both dimensions influenced by a myriad of factors.

For minority students, enhancement of mathematics and science educa-tion experiences and knowledge are critical because they can lead to improvement in academic progress and in career opportunities (Beane, 1988). Undoubtedly, though, mathematics and science teaching and learning is challenging across the board. In urban settings specifically, inadequate funding, teacher short-age, lack of resources, and several other systemic deficiencies deny minority students equal access to mathematics and science (Martin, 2000; Oakes, 1990; Silver, Smith, & Nelson, 1995; Tobin, Roth, & Zimmermann, 2001). Another part of the challenge relates to the range of learning styles, ways of understanding, beliefs, languages, and practices that students of color bring to schools (Barton, 2001). Only when diversity is valued and used to enhance learning can minority students have a better chance to succeed in urban schools.

Moreover, curricular issues have presented barriers to student learning in urban settings. There have been documented differences among curricula used in schools that educate students of privileged versus nonprivileged sta-tus (Lippman, Burns, & McArthur, 1996; Tate, 2001). For example, although urban students have access to various science courses, these science courses are mostly “dispensed” in disconnected and discrete chunks of academic knowledge, which makes it hard for students to make connections (Haberman, 1996). In addition, instruction in urban settings tend to be more focused on factual, procedural, and basic knowledge following the teach-to-the-test approach due to high-stakes accountability examinations (Settlage & Meadows, 2002; Tate, 2001). In contrast, nonminority, more affluent students tend to have more opportunities for inquiry and development of foundational think-ing skills, opportunities which are necessary for the development of scientific and mathematical knowledge and which may enable students to view science and mathematics as interesting, meaningful, and relevant to their lives (Barton, 1998; Hurd, 2002).

The teacher force in urban settings has also been considered as contribut-ing to the challenges that students of color face. It is well documented that teacher quality is the single most accurate indicator of students’ academic success and achievement rates (Brown, 2002; Carter, 2001; Delpit, 1995;




Haberman, 1995, 2005; Kozol, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2004). However, it is challenging to attract and retain highly qualified educators in struggling, inner-city schools, in poor neighborhoods (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Graziano, 2005; Haberman, 2005). Furthermore, there is a critical disparity in the race and ethnicity of teachers and students—although, as reported above, 43% of students in urban schools were minorities in 2005, 86% of all elementary and secondary teachers were European Americans a few years earlier (Gay & Howard, 2000). As teachers usually do not share cultural, ethnolinguistic, racial, and socioeconomic back-grounds with their students, they often mistakenly attribute students’ strug-gles to lack of ability or motivation, and many minority students are unjustifiably categorized as “at-risk” students (Groulx, 2001, p. 62). Prepar-ing effective, qualified, and culturally responsive teachers for students in urban schools, then, is a crucial step toward developing equitable and just schooling experiences for these students (Bergeron, 2008; Gay, 2000; Lad-son-Billings, 2001; Villegas, & Lucas, 2002).

Ladson-Billing’s Culturally Relevant PedagogyStarting in 1994 with her seminal book The Dreamkeepers and continuing all the way to 2001 with another book Crossing Over to Canaan, Gloria Ladson-Billings has offered us a framework of “culturally relevant pedagogy” (CRP) that is exceptionally powerful for students who are usually underserved, under-estimated, and underrepresented in mathematics and science fields, and their teachers. This framework, although very well known in multicultural educa-tion research and practice, has not been really used in science and mathematics education to conceptualize and study classroom practice, teaching, learning, and identity development of educators. The framework is based on three prem-ises about students and their teachers: (a) students should reach academic success, and, therefore, their teachers should aim at a high level of academic achievement; (b) students should strengthen their cultural competence, and, therefore, their teachers should sharpen their own cultural competence to be able to support their students in reaching this goal; and (c) students should develop sociopolitical consciousness in order to change the current social order, and, therefore, their teachers should themselves develop critical con-sciousness that would facilitate the development of their students’ agency.

Ladson-Billings’ (2001) emphasis on academic achievement implies clear academic goals, classroom time spent on teaching and learning, and teacher assessment of student knowledge and progress. However, an emphasis on academic success is not enough. When students of color go to school and



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become alienated because they are required to give up their own ways of living, use a different language, and adapt to different cultural practices, aca-demic success becomes particularly challenging. Teachers need to appreciate and value students’ own culture and be able to help students succeed by co-constructing a bridge between students’ own culture and language on one hand and academic practices on the other. Moreover, both teachers and stu-dents need to develop a deep understanding of sociopolitical issues that shape education and especially urban education. Schools should be places that pro-mote social justice and help students develop knowledge and skills of citi-zenship in a society that is in desperate need of racial, ethnolinguistic, and socioeconomic equity. Developing sociopolitical consciousness implies a call for teachers to “incorporate the required curriculum and associated aca-demic responsibilities with issues of social justice” (Ladson-Billings, 2001, p. 120). Indicators of sociopolitical consciousness include knowledge of the sociopolitical context in which one lives and teaches, a vested interest in the school community, the ability to make the curriculum relevant to the lives of students, and the realization that student learning is connected to the lives of students and teachers.

Ladson-Billings provides compelling and rich examples of shapes and forms that culturally relevant pedagogy took among the teachers she pre-pared in the project “Teach for Diversity (TFD)” (2001). In our study, we use Ladson-Billings’ “culturally relevant pedagogy” framework in a different, but related way—as a lens with which to examine how educators make sense of urban settings in which they work. We explore how her three CRP tenets are used by science and mathematics Fellows and how they become elements of their identities as educators.

Identity and LearningIdentity has been receiving increasing attention in the field of education. Iden-tity is a complex construct that shapes and is shaped by how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how we act (Tonso, 2006). Who we think we are and who others think we are mediate how we act; in return, the way we act mediate who we, and others, think we are, and our further participation in activities (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Varelas et al., 2007). Identity is a valuable construct that can offer us a lens for making sense of our actions in different contexts, can determine future actions we take, and can influence how we approach each other (McCarthey & Moje, 2002).

Identity, an ongoing socially constructed entity and both a process and a product (Bruner, 1990), is formed through the dynamic intersection of people,




time, space, and culture. It shapes and is shaped by languages, belief systems, discourses, practices, or activities in the specific communities that people inhabit. People may have multiple identities that may be foregrounded or backgrounded in particular activities at a specific time. The process of fore-grounding or backgrounding particular identities can be strategic and conscious.

Furthermore, identities and subjectivities are intimately tied to each other. Subjectivities refer to positions that are enacted in the moment and are oper-ated on a shorter timescale than identities, possibly changing in the flow of activity (Tucker-Raymond, Varelas, Pappas, & Korzh, 2007). Identities, comparing to subjectivities, are more stable and are accumulations of singu-lar moments where subjectivities are enacted. While helping to invoke and mediate subjectivities, identities negotiate positionalities as people gradually internalize the way they and others see themselves and construct their sense of place in specific contexts (Barton, 2001; Barton & Tan, 2009; Olitsky, 2006; Varelas et al., 2007).

Furthermore, identity development and learning are highly interrelated. We use our identities to mediate learning opportunities in a particular com-munity, and, in turn, our learning shapes our identities (Moje, Tucker-Raymond, Varelas, & Pappas, 2007). Thus, exploring one’s identity, or identities, and their shifts and development, can help decipher that person’s learning and making sense in a particular context. In this study, we explore how Ladson-Billings’ CRP tenets are intertwined in the identities that two science and mathematics Fellows portray through their ongoing journaling which gives us glimpses of their developing thinking and learning during their yearlong journeys in urban classrooms.

Research GoalsWe do not really know how, in what ways, and to what degree subject-matter experts who have not been trained as teachers and whose goals and aspirations do not include teaching in K-12 classrooms, but rather to work in academia, industry, and so forth, and contribute to the development of scientific, mathematics, and engineering disciplines, make sense of, and bring their subject-matter expertise in, urban classrooms. This study contributes to the sparse literature in this domain and offers an initial understanding of the vari-ous ways in which committed individuals, people of different race, culture, socioeconomic status, class, life experiences, and academic success from these of the students in the classrooms in which they work, engage with, enact, ponder, and struggle with the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy in



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urban settings. With two case studies, we examined how two Fellows nego-tiated subject-matter learning and academic achievement with cultural and sociopolitical competence and how they saw possibilities and challenges in the urban classrooms in which they worked through these lenses. The identi-ties these Fellows constructed, portrayed, and enacted as educators, influenced by their previous experiences as members of various communi-ties, help us explore ways in which content specialists may influence teaching and learning in urban schools.

MethodParticipants and Contexts

The yearlong project that provided the context of this study involved gradu-ate students in mathematics or science fields (Fellows) who teamed up with one or more classroom teachers in public schools. As content specialists, the Fellows’ major responsibility was to work under the guidance of, and in con-junction with, classroom teachers to contribute to mathematics and science education reform in various ways, including designing lessons, providing additional instructional resources for students, assisting whole-class activi-ties, facilitating small-group work, and at times leading classroom instruction. The classroom teachers facilitated opportunities for the Fellows to create, adapt, and present lessons or units that fit the curriculum objectives of their classrooms. Participation in the project required Fellows to be part of class-room activities for 10 hours each week and contribute 10 hours of preparation work outside the classroom.

In this study, we focus on two Fellows, Sherry and Jia.1 Sherry is White; she was a 2nd-year master’s student in the Department of Earth and Environ-mental Sciences. Jia is Chinese American; she was a doctoral student in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. They were both in their mid- to upper 20s. As part of the project work, Sherry worked in a 9th-grade class in a neighborhood urban high school, Project High, with 97% African American and 95% low-income students, about a mile away from a prominent magnet high school. The school was built in 1923, and it was expanded in 1978. It had about 1,200 students—not a very large school by this city’s standard. It had four times the high school dropout rate of the state average, a mobility rate of 44%, and a reported Chronic Truancy Rate of more than 12%. The Chronic Truancy Rate was almost four times the city school average but typical of the other high schools in this portion of the city. The school had not made adequate yearly progress in reading or mathematics




and had been identified for restructuring. In the year before Sherry’s involve-ment, only 4.8% of the 11th graders met or exceeded state standards in math-ematics and only 6.6% of the 11th graders met or exceeded standards in science. Sherry worked with one high school science teacher, Maxine, with four class sections of earth science. Maxine, a White woman in her early 30s, was established in her teaching career and had worked with other Fellows in previous years. Maxine was comfortable enough with students and commit-ted to the school community to supervise one of the school’s sports teams. Due to the school teaching schedule, Maxine and Sherry had one period each morning to plan instruction together and prepare the classroom materials and lab for the next lesson. This contributed to good consistent communication. Sherry formed a comfortable, trusting, and productive relationship with Maxine. Other than assisting with teaching duties in the classroom, Sherry also helped Maxine to design and implement projects using various equip-ment available in the school, for example, using water tables with student groups to explore stream erosion, a lesson that Maxine wanted to do but did not have time in previous years to prepare.

In contrast, Jia worked in an 8th-grade class at a brand-new urban ele-mentary school, Demo Academy, located next to sizable public housing projects. Most of the students lived in these projects. This school of 600 students included grades prekindergarten to 8th. The student body was 99% African American and 96% low-income. The chronic truancy rate was almost six times the city average; and the student mobility rate was 14.6%, lower than both the city school average and the state average. Demo Academy was able to exceed the school system’s target for student attendance, but in reading and mathematics the school as a whole fell far short of meeting the percentage necessary to meet state standards. In the year of Jia’s involve-ment, the state report card for this school indicated that 52.9% of 8th grad-ers met or exceeded state standards in reading and 44.8% in mathematics. However, the state averages in reading and mathematics for 8th graders were 79% and 78%, respectively, meeting or exceeding standards. The school had an Academic Early Warning status that year.2 Jia was involved in both mathematics and science lessons. Jia’s collaborating teacher was Ms. Parker, a White woman with more than 33 years of teaching experience in public schools. Ms. Parker’s specialization was teaching mathematics; her original “love” was music, and her undergraduate major was in music. She was hired to be the school’s mathematics specialist but was assigned to teach 8th-grade mathematics and science that year. Jia and Ms. Parker shared the same subject-matter interest, mathematics, and intense focus on the students, and together these contributed to the fruitful, durable, and almost intimate partnership that they established.



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Data Sources and Analysis

During their program year, all Fellows, including Jia and Sherry who are the focus of this study, attended a weekly seminar at their university in which they discussed issues of teaching and learning cutting across all three tenets of Ladson-Billing’s culturally relevant pedagogy, but these issues were not labeled and categorized according to Ladson-Billing’s framework. As part of the seminar, Fellows were expected to write reflective weekly journals. Fel-lows were given a list of prompts that they could consider when writing their journal entries (see appendix), but they were also allowed to write about anything they wanted without addressing a specific prompt. The journal prompts invited Fellows to reflect on students as individuals and/or group learners (of science or mathematics), their own pedagogy, their learning and understandings about urban education, their collaboration with others at vari-ous levels, successes and challenges they had encountered in the urban classrooms in which they were working, and so on.

The main data source for this study was the journal entries written by the two Fellows throughout one school year. Sherry wrote 28 journal entries, and Jia wrote 35. The length of the journals ranged from one to three double-spaced pages. The analysis of the journal entries was informed by documents, understandings, and knowledge that the researchers had accumulated for these two Fellows. These included conversations with the Fellows and their collabo-rating teachers, classroom observations, any teaching plans Fellows had developed, and seminar discussions. The second author (Varelas) was the seminar leader for the second semester of the academic year (Spring semester) that ended with Fellow presentations on their classroom contributions over the year. The third author (Guajardo) visited and observed the Fellows several times in their classrooms. Both the second and third authors had several con-versations with the collaborating teachers of these two Fellows.

A qualitative, interpretive analytical framework was used to study the data, relying on grounded theory techniques (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and constant comparative analysis (Glaser, 1965). Specifi-cally, we used a case study research approach that allowed us to investigate how the two Fellows functioned “in the real world over a significant period of time” (van Lier, 2004, p. 196) using multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 1989). Each Fellow was treated as a case that we sought to understand and to compare and contrast with the other Fellow. In many ways, both Fellows were successful in their program work, and we sought to explore what their differences were, how they were expressed, where they may have come from, and what implications they had for their practice in urban classrooms.

We conducted the data analysis in the following way. Initially, the first author (Ye) read the two Fellows’ journals and wrote a two-page summary




capturing in general what each Fellow had reflected on. Then, all three researchers discussed these summaries and brainstormed on questions that the ideas, which the Fellows shared, raised in the researchers’ minds. Such pon-derings included what “urban” meant to each Fellow, whether each Fellow focused more on successes (possibilities) or challenges, whether each Fellow took a wondering stance or a more definitive stance on issues she raised, and so on. After that, Ye used open coding to identify and name ideas that were found in each Fellow’s journal entries. Examples included build relationships with students (Jia), cultivate students’ critical thinking skills via the project on the public transportation fare change (Jia), make connections between stu-dents’ out-of-classroom lives and classroom learning when planning activities (Sherry), and wonder about effectiveness of assessment (Sherry). We then proceeded to axial, selective coding relating ideas and themes to Ladson- Billing’s CRP tenets, aiming at understanding the Fellows’ journeys of con-struction of urban science and mathematics educator identities.

FindingsFigure 1 shows how the two Fellows’ journal writing related to the three CRP tenets across the academic year. For a particular journal entry that is denoted by the month and week on the horizontal axis, the one or more symbols depicted represent the issue(s), idea(s), topic(s), or event(s) that the Fellow brought up in that entry. The shape of each symbol tells which CRP tenet the issue mostly foregrounds. As it is apparent from Figure 1, Sherry and Jia raised, discussed, struggled with, or attended to issues that fell into different tenets. Their jour-neys of evolving identities as urban educators looked quite different. On one hand, Sherry addressed extensively academic achievement and at times engaged with issues related to sociopolitical awareness. Jia, on the other hand, focused mostly on issues that revealed her own cultural competence and, simi-larly to Sherry, on issues that related to sociopolitical awareness. To better understand these findings, we will first turn to each of the Fellow’s journey, and then we will discuss how the two relate to each other.

Sherry’s Urban Educator IdentityIn Project High, Sherry stepped into the role of a content expert with a sup-portive, experienced, and caring science teacher, Maxine. In her journals, Sherry wrote mostly about the successes and challenges of assisting the teaching of environmental science. Her frequent references to inquiry may be due to her own conceptualization of scientific practice that she was living as a graduate student. In her journals, Sherry referred to two realms of inquiry:



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Figure 1. Issues discussed in the two Fellows’ journals throughout the year organized in the three CRP tenetsNote: ▲ ∆ = academic achievement (AA), ♦ ◊ = cultural competence (CC), = sociopolitical consciousness (SC), filled symbols = Sherry, unfilled symbols = Jia.

teaching students how to make scientific inquiries and inquiring into her own work in the classroom. Both levels of inquiry shared important similarities, major parts of the inquiry cycle that never ends. Figure 2 depicts the inquiry cycle that Sherry was enacting in Maxine’s classroom as revealed in her jour-naling. In terms of inquiring into her own classroom contributions, Sherry’s inquiry stance led her to make keen observations on student academic achieve-ment and to make sense of related issues discussed in weekly seminars. This guided her design of more appropriate and engaging activities and their implementation in Maxine’s classroom. Such enactments were followed by her reflection on, and her analysis of, successes and challenges that led to new observations. For Sherry, that was also the crux of scientific activity that she wanted the students to experience.

Embarking on the Journey With High Expectations and UncertaintiesSherry had been a teaching assistant at the university before joining the project. During the summer introductory meetings, Sherry, with other Fellows and




Figure 2. Sherry’s inquiry cycle

project staff and faculty, watched and reflected on the video Fish is Fish, where Leo Lionni’s book with the same title is dramatized. In this story, the frog described the creatures on land to its friend, the fish, after it returned to the pond. Although the frog’s description of these creatures was accurate, the fish imagined these creatures as fish with the human features attached. For example, the fish imagined people as fish with two hands that could also walk with their two feet.

The video inspired Sherry to reflect on two key teaching issues: explana-tion and connection building. Sherry commented on what teachers should be cautious about when they explain something to students. “As a teacher, your knowledge prevents you from seeing the perspective of the student who does not yet know. So even though you may think you’ve explained something well, you may overlook a critical piece of information” (June 16). Therefore, Sherry thought, “teachers have to try different methods [to explain a certain concept] and see what works best” (June 16). Moreover, she wrote that teach-ers should understand “a student’s background and what his preconceptions may be” (June 16) to help make the new concept relevant to the student.

Before entering the high school class, Sherry was certain that “inquiry means simply to investigate the answer to a question. It starts with a natural curiosity and everyone has experience of inquiry in their daily life” (August 22). However, Sherry reported that she was uncertain about what inquiry-based learning was and had difficulty finding inquiry-based activities, especially for abstract topics, such as the internal structure of the earth (August 22).



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Although she met with Maxine twice in the summer before school began, Sherry still did not have enough knowledge about designing ability-appropriate activities for students because “it is difficult not to over- or underestimate the students’ abilities at this point” (September 5).

Up to that point, Sherry had mainly written about students’ academic achievement. However, she was implicitly revealing sociopolitical con-sciousness too. She did not overlook the challenges of an urban context, as at the same time she did not lower her expectations of students and she did not espouse the stereotypical deficit model. Sherry set high academic goals and standards for her students. She planned to challenge both poorly per-forming and successful students because she believed that “the students will only perform as well as you expect them to” (September 5). She under-stood that “students need to be challenged . . . [because otherwise] they will lose interest” (September 5). Before school started, Sherry had positioned herself as an urban educator who was committed to figuring out ways to effectively work in a challenging urban context by prodding all students to achieve.

Keep Inquiry Cycles RollingSherry engaged more with cultural and sociopolitical issues after settling in Project High, although academic success remained her first goal. While con-tributing as a subject-matter expert, Sherry tried to make sense of the urban classroom. On her first day in the classroom, she witnessed a fight. Maxine assured her that this was the first fight in her class in 5 years. Sherry listened to Maxine and wrote in her journal that she was not going to let the fight affect her goals at Project High and that she was not going to start lowering her expectations (September 16).

Sherry focused on observing students’ responses to learning activities so that she could figure out what the students’ knowledge and skills were to design more appropriate instructional units. During the activities in “The Dynamic Earth” unit that involved measuring the mass and volume of stones, she was frustrated that even the “brightest students had difficulties fulfilling the tasks” (September 19). She further reflected,

In the instructions, I explained, step by step, how to do this [measure the volume] . . . Even though the directions were explicit, everyone still asked me how to measure the volume. I still do not know why this was such an issue . . . Maybe it was due to their poor reading compre-hension . . . (September 19)




She also seemed to come down on the students for lack of preparation.

Many students don’t come to class prepared with basic tools like a note-book and something to write with . . . I get the feeling that many students just want to get through the day. They are not prepared for class and if they graduate, they will not be prepared for college. (October 3)

However, in her previous journal entry, she had revealed a sense of socio-political awareness of the realities in some urban schools, identifying institu-tional factors that may encourage or even cause students’ lack of preparation.

I think the students at Project High have a lot to complain about. Besides the schedule change, they still do not have lockers after the fourth week of school. They also have not been issued their textbooks yet . . . I really believe that the students are not going to take school seriously if the school does not take them seriously. They are only going to do what is expected of them, and not issuing textbooks and lockers sends the mes-sage that they are not expected to study. (September 26)

Sherry did not just blame students for poor schooling ethos. For her, stu-dents had a role to play, but schools should inspire students to want to learn and support them in reaching this goal. As Sherry felt she was not in a posi-tion to remedy such school problems, she put her efforts into improving her own pedagogy and helping students understand scientific ideas.

The discussion during the 4th period was special because I ended up talking about my own experience with earthquakes. I was born in San Francisco and lived there until 1990, so I was there for the 1989 earth-quake during the World Series. One of the students asked how buildings get destroyed during an earthquake, so I started talking about what hap-pens during an earthquake and what I remembered about the 1989 earthquake . . . I do not know why I never thought to share my experi-ence with the students before. I think that was the best part of the class, and Maxine agreed. It really got the students’ attention. I think some of the students respect me more now because of it. (October 14)

As time went by and while participating in the weekly seminar discussions, Sherry developed a better understanding of inquiry-based learning. “I think it means the students have to figure things out how things work, instead of the traditional style where you tell them how things work and then ask them to



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apply that knowledge” (October 21). Sherry then decided that she could better support student learning in the classroom by offering students opportunities to engage in inquiry rather than giving them answers right away. The activity of estimating the age of rocks demonstrated such progress.

We intentionally did not tell them how to do this [inquiry and read the charts]. I figured if it was too difficult, we could help them out but I really did not want to give it away in the beginning. I was confident the students would be able to figure it out and they did! That made me so happy. It was not that it was too easy either. (October 28)

At other times, Sherry found that students’ poor skills inhibited their inquiry. She decided to infuse basic skills, especially basic mathematical skills, in activities in order to help students improve in both basic skills and inquiry simultaneously.

Several skills were utilized in this lab . . . Although I am hesitant to start using more math because I am worried it will be hard for the stu-dents, I know we cannot avoid it and they really need to learn it. There were some very basic calculations in the lab, such as computing an average of two numbers. (November 11)

However, Sherry felt frustrated when she realized that several factors prevented her from achieving her goal. She observed that it was difficult to balance the time needed for development of basic skills and for inquiry within a 45-min class period. “They are honestly so behind in everything, sometimes I feel like I do not know where to start” (November 11). Further-more, according to Sherry, other issues, such as, poor attendance, change of teachers’ schedule without an advance notice, students’ low completion rate of their work (November 25), all worked against her helping students build basic skills while learning by inquiry.

Sherry’s emphasis on academic success and her determination to help stu-dents academically was imbedded within her perception that students in Proj-ect High had far fewer opportunities to develop academically than students in more privileged schools. She trusted students to be able to engage in inquiry themselves if they were given the opportunity and received guidance along the way. Furthermore, she did not stay away from helping them improve their prior knowledge and understandings that may be crucial if they were to be successful in more open-ended and less prescribed teaching. Thus, although Sherry was communicating via her journaling a more explicit emphasis on




academic achievement as a tenet of successful teaching and learning in urban schools, she was implicitly and quietly also revealing her developing socio-political consciousness.

Sherry returned to her previous major emphasis, the importance of connec-tion building. However, due to the fact that she never knew which students were going to attend class on any given day, it did not make much sense to her to make one activity connect to the next one. She revised her instructional plans to make each activity stand alone by itself (December 9). Although this approach to planning did not directly follow Sherry’s original emphasis on connection-building, it had the potential for enabling students who showed up in class on a given day to understand more readily what was going on.

In addition, connection building had two dimensions for Sherry: building connections between what students had previously learned and what they were learning then, and linking students’ experiences outside classroom to what they were learning in the classroom. Sherry noticed that one challenge of urban science education was “making environmental science concepts rel-evant to students who are essentially cut off from nature” (Sherry wrote in an article she published with her collaborating teacher in the Spectrum: The Journal of the Illinois Science Teachers Association in 2007). Thus, Sherry thought of a project that would engage her students in studying “the environ-ment [a vacant lot] right across the street [from their school]” (December 9). This vacant lot project would serve two goals. First, it would give students opportunities to practice making scientific arguments that were based on evi-dence. Second, it would help students make connections between their out-of-class experiences to their classroom learning.

The vacant lot was the perfect place to demonstrate the relevance of environmental science in an urban setting—one that was part of stu-dents’ everyday environment that would normally be overlooked . . . [And it] would be a valuable resource for studying a number of topics in environment science, such as components of ecosystems, interde-pendence of organism, energy flow . . . (from Sherry’s article in the Spectrum)

Instead of ignoring her students’ everyday experiences and ways of liv-ing, with this project Sherry legitimized her students’ urban living experi-ences and celebrated them as worthwhile contexts for science learning. This is a sign, dim as it may look, of Sherry’s emerging and developing cultural competence.



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A Fruitful but Challenging Journey

Sherry’s emerging identity as an urban educator kept revolving around aca-demic achievement with some hint of cultural competence and sociopolitical awareness. She felt helpless whenever she focused on sociopolitical issues, realizing that she was not in a position to solve problems. She kept focusing on issues on which she felt she could have an impact—improving student explanations, engaging students in inquiry-based learning, and helping stu-dents make connections.

Sherry continued her emphasis on academic achievement by focusing on the importance of explanation on student learning. She observed how one girl, Macie, reasoned similarly to Sherry’s own explanation two days earlier. When Macie came to ask for clarification on a question in her lab, Sherry casually asked her how the gills of a fish worked. Macie offered a detailed explanation on how fish used its gills to breathe while holding the fish in her hands, echo-ing ideas that Sherry had brought to the class earlier. Sherry commented on two important understandings she developed from this observation.

One is the power of explanation . . . Providing more details and expla-nation, like telling a story, can help the students remember the concepts better . . . Another important concept is the value of handling tangible objects to make learning science less abstract. It wasn’t until Macie picked up her fish and started studying the gills that she was able to recall what they were for. (January 13)

The following week, Sherry also noted her own development in presenting students with explanations that help them learn and understand concepts.

The reading for last week’s seminar discussed the importance of expla-nation in science, and how scientific phenomena can be explained like telling a story. I did my best to incorporate this insight when teaching the students about corals. I explained things in different ways, using a lot of descriptions . . . I think the students learned a lot about corals. I say this because the next day . . . I asked the students what they remembered from my presentation. I was pleasantly surprised at how much they remembered. (January 20)

Sherry also engaged with the construct of questioning, an important part of scientific inquiry. She brought this up by asking questions herself.




I am curious now, how do teachers get their students to ask good ques-tions? At what point will students recognize if a question is scientific or not? And do they see the difference between the types of questions they ask and those that are posed to them by the teacher? (January 20)

Furthermore, Sherry continued her attention on academic achievement by wondering about, and experimenting with, assessment. She realized limita-tions of activities and labs that ask students to “fill in the blank” and of assessment instruments that only include multiple-choice questions. She realized that students rarely had experience with or were assessed for higher level thinking (January 27). From one seminar discussion, she took the strat-egy called “sketch to stretch, wherein the reader draws how they picture what they are reading in their mind” (March 3), adapted it, and used it as a more valid assessment tool for student thinking. She noted that it was a tool that did not depend on students’ writing skills and that it only required basic drawing skills and thus offered students a different form of expressing their thinking.

Although for Sherry, academic achievement was the CRP tenet that defined her urban educator identity, she was also slowly developing her own cultural and sociopolitical competence. She found many potentially strong learners among the African American students in her classroom. She felt sad and sorry to see the “smart” and “willing” learners get “bored” at school and she felt that they had “not been challenged at all” (February 3). Sherry wrote that their students wanted to learn and were able to reach high goals, but they lacked an effective support system to help them achieve. Sherry tried to be supportive; however, she encountered many distracting factors hindering teaching and learning. For example, the large class sizes with students of various levels of abilities and needs made it difficult for her to enact what she had planned. Some students did not make much progress, and Sherry was critical of herself for that as well as frustrated and stressed out (March 10).

Despite occasional frustrations, Sherry adjusted and continued to work on planning her favorite activity—the vacant lot project—that she had conceived during the fall semester, a project that would allow students to connect their out-of-classroom experiences with their classroom learning. According to Sherry, the project was very challenging to implement. Sherry needed to con-sider logistical issues like “the size of each class, the attendance, the avail-ability of materials and time, etc., as well as students’ behavior and motivation, and personality conflicts between students” (March 17), in addition to super-vising students to and from the vacant lot. After a long planning period, in April, Sherry and Maxine finally took all classes outside to conduct the vacant



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lot project that lasted several class periods. For Sherry, the project was a suc-cess as it “gave students an opportunity to further develop valuable learning tools that are fundamental for the process of scientific inquiry” (in Sherry’s article in Spectrum). Students practiced making “scientific arguments based on evidence, not their personal experience, and to offer explanations on how plants can grow through the asphalt in the vacant lot” (in Sherry’s article in Spectrum). Although with this project Sherry boosted and extended her own and her students’ cultural competence as she scaffolded them to use places in their own neighborhood to do science, for Sherry this project was about inquiry as a scientific practice. This indeed epitomizes Sherry’s urban educa-tor identity construction, as a person who foregrounded academic achieve-ment, subject-matter learning, and high standards with an ambivalent, implicit, emerging, and rather amorphous cultural and sociopolitical competence that can be detected in her reflections, actions, and decisions.

Jia’s Urban Educator IdentityJia believed that “it takes only one adult in a child’s life to influence them positively” (July 15) and she wanted to be that person. For Jia, relationships were critical—personal relationships and mathematical relationships. Jia wanted to help her students develop a positive relationship with mathematics, a field that she considered to be about relationships and patterns, but she also wanted to build close relationships with her students. In some ways, each was a goal in itself, but each was also a means for reaching the other goal.

Figure 3 visually summarizes main elements of Jia’s identity as an urban mathematics educator. Jia’s overall aims for building students’ personal and mathematical relationships included goals such as gaining students’ trust, helping students become self-confident, helping them become interested in and have ownership of mathematics, encouraging students to understand the necessity of being responsible for and persistent in their learning, and guiding students in making good decisions. The cryptography project that Jia adapted for, and implemented with, her students was particularly important for her journey as an urban educator.

Furthermore, three themes centered on relationship building emerged chronologically during her journey. The first was being close to students as she started building relationships with them and constructing and revealing her developing cultural competence. The second was seeing students’ strengths and needs via the Cryptography Project and the assistance she was offering to individual students, focusing on strengthening already formed relation-ships and considering all three CRP tenets. The third theme was attending to




Figure 3. Elements of Jia’s identity as an urban mathematics educator

individual strengths and needs, thus deepening relationships and expanding her sociopolitical awareness about factors inhibiting students’ academic achievement.

Be Close to Students: Relationship BuildingJia’s approach to educating the African American students she worked with was founded on being close to them, not just physically close (sitting next to them when she was explaining something to them), but conversationally, intellectually, and emotionally close. As a Chinese American in the African American classroom, she struggled to understand what it meant to be seen as “different” from the majority. Cultural consciousness was one of the CRP tenets that took front stage as Jia was composing her urban educator identity. Even during the summer workshop at the start of the project before Fellows worked in classrooms, Jia began to construct and share how she was seeing urban classrooms during the discussion on the video Fish is Fish. Unlike Sherry whose reflections on the video were mostly related to understanding, explaining, and communicating scientific ideas, Jia focused on cultural dif-ferences, racism, and discrimination.

Since I’ve moved here to this city, I’ve been realizing that I’ve been “living in a bubble.” As I was growing up, I was constantly surrounded by people that thought the same way as I did. As a result, I thought that



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everyone in the world thought like that. I believed that since neither I nor my friends or family were racist, then no one else in the world was racist . . . Living in the Midwest, I’ve met people who do discrimi-nate against what they don’t understand, and it opens my eyes to reality. (June 16)

As Jia started working with the 8th-grade students at Demo Academy, she realized that this school was a very different environment than the “bubble” in which she was living, a mainly artistic enclave of mostly White artists and college students in the east end of a predominately Hispanic community. She thought that her students were living in their own different “bubbles” grow-ing up in very poor conditions, living in public housing projects one of which was scheduled to come down displacing residents, at times being under some kind of house arrest to avoid violence outside their apartments, stigmatized by society’s ways of thinking about them. Jia sought to build trusting rela-tionships with the 8th graders in order to enter their world and achieve deeper communication. Cultural and language barriers confronted her first. This was a personal challenge.

I learned some really interesting cultural boundaries between me and the kids. They made some historical African jokes that I didn’t under-stand . . . Besides the cultural barrier, I also experienced a “language” barrier. I couldn’t understand what some of the students were saying sometimes because of their accents. The slang was bearable, but I just couldn’t recognize the words that they were using. (September 6)

In the 1st week, Jia experienced unexpected discrimination from her African American students. “Diamond initially made fun of the fact I was Asian by mimicking Asian language. I was shocked that someone who probably deals with racism everyday would be racist himself” (September 6). As Jia had to figure out on the spot how to address Diamond’s behavior, she knew that cultural identity would play an important role in shaping who she was becoming as an urban educator. “I simply answered, ‘I would never do that to you.’ And looked at him for a while, Sally [another student] responded by saying, ‘That’s not even funny.’ Together I think we managed to make Diamond regret what he said” (September 6).

Jia used several strategies to build close relationships with her students. For example, she kept a daily log of each student’s activities and progress following Ms. Parker’s example (September 6), sat beside one student at a time and helped him or her solve math problems (September 16), and attended students’ extracurricular activities because of her interest in their




lives (September 30). Jia started feeling that students were recognizing her sincere interest in them, and, thus, started getting closer to her, asking for her help during the mathematics class. However, although Jia was feeling good that students trusted her and wanted to work with her on mathematics problems, she was also aware of the challenge of classroom management and, thus, kept positioning herself as a “tutor” in the class.

See Students With Different Strengths and Needs: Relationship StrengtheningAfter spending approximately one month becoming familiar with the school, students, and teachers and building relationships, Jia began to implement her cryptography project. “Cryptography is the science of sending secret mes-sages. People have used it for thousands of years. For instance, soldiers used it to send messages so the enemy would not know their plans” (September 30). Jia had started planning the cryptography project in the summer. She thought this project would underscore different mathematical skills, empower students because it was “college level” mathematics, and make it fun for them to learn mathematics because this project showed students the usefulness of mathe-matics in their lives. Furthermore, it was appropriate for students of different ability levels because it “can be easily molded to fit the level of the students” (August 12). Jia reflected that the project was a watershed for many students, especially for the “trouble-makers.” She reported that students were “com-pletely interested!” and the kids she had expected to goof off “did extremely well with this project” (September 30). In addition, this project provided “trouble-makers” with the space to “act out” positively. The so-called “trou-ble makers,” like Damon, started to help others after finishing first.

Damon finished his worksheet pretty early and started wandering around the room. I called his name and he immediately got really defensive saying, oh I was just . . . I told him, “Damon I was just going to say since you’ve finished your worksheet maybe you could go around and help other people.” I was afraid of the response, but he said ok and started working with Sebastian of all people!! . . . Initially, I really didn’t like him, but he’s growing on me . . . I think his mind needs to be stimulated more than the others in the class. Perhaps that’s why he acts out most of the time. (September 30)

At the start of the project, Jia found real satisfaction in working with her students. “Things are going really great at Demo Academy. I cannot wait until



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future cryptography lessons with the kids” (September 30). However, after a month on the cryptography project, Jia found that students were not as much engaged in the project as earlier. She became frustrated because she attrib-uted the diminishing engagement to lack of persistence rather than interest into something she had spent much time planning. “I think anytime they encounter something that they don’t get right away, they give up. That’s what really frustrates me about my kids” (November 4). Jia, thus, decided that she would simultaneously help students learn mathematics and be per-sistent. Jia planned to achieve this goal by switching back to her one-to-one tutoring approach partly because it was hard for her to deal with classroom management issues when she was teaching the whole class. She also thought that the “one-to-one approach opens up students to learning” (November 4).

The cryptography project and working individually with students helped Jia strengthen the relationships she was building with her students. A signifi-cant part of Jia’s developing identity as an urban educator was attention to individual students’ development, and especially the growth of struggling or resistant students, like Teresa who was not interested in mathematics at the beginning.

I remember I would frown upon Teresa because of her misuse of class as a time to complain about how “math is stupid” (September 16) . . . Teresa is not a strong math student. It was my help during the lesson on combining like terms that gave her the confidence she needed to get to where she is now. Since winter break she has been consistently work-ing hard on her math. She very proudly told me on a Thursday that the day before she did the Daily Reinforcer a series of about 10 math prob-lems all by herself. Even though I “wasn’t there.” She quickly added, “I didn’t get all of them right, but I did them all.” There’s an important distinction that she learned: the difference between working hard and just doing something to get it right. She no longer complains about how “math is stupid,” instead she complains about how her “brain hurts.” I smile every time I hear that; a clear sign of how hard she is working. (March 24, project paper)

Her collaborating teacher, Ms. Parker, in a conversation with project staff volunteered the major impact Jia had on a number of students who Ms. Parker thought she could not influence. Jia’s care for her students was very clear. Jia saw her students as capable African American learners instead of needy and disadvantaged. They brought resources with themselves in the classroom that she sought to discover. Jia celebrated their achievements along the way,




as she helped them become even prouder of who they were as, at the same time, she scaffolded them in becoming more academically competent in mathematics in addition to preparing them for the end-of-the-year test which would determine who will graduate from 8th grade. Cultural com-petence was explicitly manifested in Jia’s identity as an urban educator.

As Jia celebrated her students’ strengths and progress, she also realized shortcomings. Although it felt very rewarding for her to see students improve because of her efforts and help, she realized that students started depending on her and her help after she began working individually with students. This perception influenced her actions as she started encouraging her students to work by themselves and ask for help after exhausting what they could do on their own (November 25, December 2). Another challenge Jia encountered was that some students interpreted her spending time with others in the class-room as abandoning them, something that upset Jia (November 4). This chal-lenge was intermingled with another tension—Jia’s students expected an immediate response when they asked for help. “They needed to learn patience!” but Jia also worried that in the process of learning to be patient, her students may give up either asking for help or thinking (November 11).

Jia wrote twice that her students gave up easily but needed to be persistent when things were not easy (November 4, February 3). She wanted to both teach students to make good decisions and to encourage them to be more per-sistent. The students themselves had to make the decision to become more persistent or to give up. The students needed to take ownership of their lives in and out of the classroom. For Jia, making good decisions was related not only to academic achievement but also to cultural competence and sociopolitical awareness. Jia strived for a delicate balance between students carving their own path toward success and her role in guiding them, nudging them, and pushing them toward hard decisions. The African American students with whom she was working needed to be challenged. She deeply believed they could not only learn mathematics but also excel in it, and so she had to help them reach their potential. They were bright and willing learners and they needed to be given a chance. However, she also saw herself as an educator who would privilege student choice over teacher imposition. She had written in her journal about a time when she was working with Damon, who felt so frustrated he wanted to give up solving a hard mathematics problem he had chosen.

Now, out of everyone in this room, I would say that you are one of the few who can do this problem, because you’re bright. But if you’re going to get frustrated, then I would say let’s do the easier problem, because it’s not worth getting worked up over. It’s completely up to you. I’ll help you do whichever one you want to do. (November 4)



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Damon chose to continue working on the hard problem. For Jia, it was very important that Damon had control over his life because he had had a “hard life. His mother was an alcoholic who had abandoned him and his father has been in jail for the past 11 years” (November 4). For Jia, her stu-dents’ mathematics learning was only one part of the bigger picture but one that she wholeheartedly worked to support.

Attend to Individual Students: Relationship MaintainingAs her journey in the 8th-grade classroom at Demo Academy unfolded, Jia continued to maintain the personal and mathematical relationships she had established with the students. Her students knew that Jia cared about them and felt safe to share with her their frustrations, which allowed Jia to get to know them better and attend to their needs, like in the case of Walton. Walton was a smart boy who loved mathematics and always wanted to move on to the next lesson. From a conversation Jia had with him, she found out that he wanted to take the constitution test, the test that students had to pass to graduate 8th grade and enter high school. He was ready to give up because he had no materials to study. He was too shy to ask the social studies teacher for help. Jia encouraged him to talk with his teacher about it and she told Walton that she would talk with the teacher as well (February 17). Jia was supporting her students beyond just strengthening their mathematics learning.

Jia’s sociopolitical awareness was growing along with the development of her urban educator identity. Jia saw problems in school practices that were adopted to support student success. Jia noticed that during the “drama class,” students practiced how to apply for part-time jobs. Jia shared her worries about it. She worried that the “drama class” was not what it was supposed to be and students were cheated out of that learning experience. Moreover, she also worried about possible ramifications of pursuing part-time jobs. “I have a feeling training these kids to take on these jobs will be enticing enough for them to continue these types of jobs for the rest of their lives rather than con-tinue their education” (February 24). While acknowledging the value of suc-cess in finding part-time jobs (“keep students occupied, teach them responsibility, and give them some needed income”), Jia thought that it was important for teachers to stress that “these jobs that they’re trying to get should be viewed solely as support while they pursue their career” (February 24). Jia feared that taking on such jobs would give students money fast, but there would be no room for advancement. She drew a graph (Figure 4) to illustrate the difference between service jobs and professional jobs.

Jia was also critical of other practices that impacted student learning. She noticed the frequent absences, without any advance notice, of health teachers




from a local university. Students were looking forward to the lessons with the university health teachers, but they were denied this opportunity repeatedly, given the message that they were not a priority.

This not only hurts the relationship that could be developed between Ms. Parker and the kids, but also hurts the seriousness of the issues that are being discussed. If they say they’re coming and then don’t, the kids learn not to trust them . . . So as a result of the university instructors’ inconsistent attendance, the kids take neither the people, nor the sub-jects seriously. (February 10)

Jia’s sociopolitical awareness was also intertwined with her emphasis on student academic achievement, learning mathematics, and succeeding in developing fundamental understandings. Jia knew that public transpor-tation was part of her students’ everyday lives. When a public transporta-tion fare hike took place, Jia wanted her students to think about who would be mostly affected by the new policy. Jia had done her own thinking and calculating and she had come to the conclusion that poor families who lived in particular parts of the city would be mostly affected by the new fare structure. Jia started designing a mathematics project to raise students’ awareness on this issue and strengthen their critical consciousness. Her mathematical goals for the project were to help her students develop skills of navigation, critical thinking, and problem solving while reviewing per-centages (April 7). However, this project also included an activity where the students would write a letter to the transit authority presenting their

Figure 4. Jia’s Illustration of differences between service jobs and professional jobs



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objections to the fare hike because it unfairly affected people who pay cash to ride the transportation system. Jia ended up not having class time to implement this project before the end of her school involvement for that year, but she implemented it during the next academic year.

The public transportation fare increase project is yet another indication of Jia’s strong cultural and sociopolitical consciousness that she was developing as part of her urban educator identity. For Jia, academic achievement was closely and integrally intertwined with the need to attend to who her students were, who she was to them, where her students came from, how they lived their lives, what affected their lives, and how they could become successful African American mathematics learners and learners in general. Her own critical consciousness was coming through her journaling loud and clear, at times overshadowing her mathematics identity that, in some ways, she was taking for granted.

Discussion and ImplicationsThe two case studies we performed portray how two subject-matter-oriented graduate students, with strong affiliations with science or mathematics fields, came to make sense of the urban classrooms in which they worked and con-structed identities as urban educators. The two Fellows did not have any inclination or preparation in becoming K-12 teachers, but they would eventu-ally join professional scientists and mathematicians who at times are asked to be involved and potentially shape K-12 science and mathematics education as members of various institutions, such as colleges and universities, organi-zations, industry, or businesses. Thus, by exploring the positions and actions that these two Fellows took as they worked in environments that were not familiar to them and with students who had very different life experiences as members of socioecomonic, racial, cultural, and ethnolinguistic groups, we learn about the diversity of ways in which such educators attend to the three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy.

The two Fellows’ yearlong journeys have not only similarities but also marked differences. Both Sherry and Jia maintained high expectations for their students. Throughout the year, they worked hard to strengthen their students’ scientific or mathematical knowledge by following and expand-ing the curriculum while developing and implementing particular proj-ects. These projects offered them opportunities to enact not only their academic expertise but also their cultural and/or sociopolitical compe-tences. Each started her journey by focusing on different CRP tenets. Sherry seemed focused on academic achievement issues, but Jia’s cultural consciousness was manifested right from the start. As their journeys




continued, they both not only deepened their respective foci but also imbued them with sociopolitical awareness, which was becoming part of their identities.

Sherry’s academic achievement emphasis centered on inquiry, inquiry as a scientific practice that she wanted her students to experience and master and inquiry as a teaching approach to help students learn science meaning-fully. Her yearlong journey was a never-ending inquiry cycle. Inquiry topics emerged during her inquiry process and were taken up, and other topics were revisited more than once. In contrast, Jia’s cultural competence was devel-oped and expressed in forming relationships with her students to help them construct relationships with, and master, mathematics. After the first few days, students sought ample contact with Jia during mathematics class; in turn Jia stepped in their world inside and outside of mathematics class time, (e.g., having lunch with them, going to the gym with them, and going out of town with them chaperoning for their 8th-grade graduation trip), to further develop these relationships on the students’ own terms. Jia’s yearlong jour-ney was a progressive strengthening of her conviction toward closeness and caring. Jia gravitated toward working individually with students, getting closer to them by first meeting them (physically, intellectually, and emo-tionally) where they were, and forming and intensifying trusting relationships.

We do not know what caused these differences, but we do know that iden-tities are shaped by a variety of psychological, social, cognitive, affective, cultural, racial, gender, and contextual factors. Sherry was quiet and shy. She had faced academic challenges when she was in high school and her mother had to move to a new city to change schools and get Sherry “back on track.” Academic achievement was what had contributed to major changes in her life and paved her path to eventually becoming a graduate student in a science field. In contrast, Jia was people oriented. One of her hobbies was photogra-phy mainly of her friends, family, and food that she exhibited in her online and regular art shows. She felt that her elementary and secondary school experiences in either private or public schools had not allowed her to have interactions with African Americans. In terms of the school contexts, Sherry had four 9th-grade classes to work with, the high school reality, and, thus, fewer opportunities to get to know her students. Jia stayed in one classroom and had more time with her students.

This study helps us unearth and document ways in which educators’ iden-tities, culturally relevant pedagogy, and urban schools intersect and interact with each other. First, Sherry’s and Jia’s journeys show us that educators’ identity has some type of core, a particular theme that is played out over and



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over in who they are and what they think about schools, students, and class-rooms. The core gives consistency and coherence to the identity as, at the same time, it may interfere with, and limit, the extent to which other dimen-sions would and could be considered. This does not mean that the theme is static, unchangeable. Sherry’s identity as an urban educator morphed around inquiry, but her notion and enactment of inquiry both in the science domain and in the classroom domain deepened over time. Jia’s identity was built around relationships, relationships between herself and her students, and between her students and mathematics, which took various shapes and forms as time went by. The cores of their identities were dynamic, constantly nego-tiated in the context of social interactions. However, although dynamic, these cores tended to be associated with a particular tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Thus, second, this study points toward the difficulty of integrating all three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy. Sherry’s emphasis on inquiry stemmed from her understanding of inquiry in scientific practice and, along with the emphasis on academic achievement that she had experienced in her own life, lent itself to her attending heavily to academic achievement while in the classroom. Jia’s emphasis on building relationships among people (her students and others in her own personal life) lent itself to cultivating the cultural competence dimension of her pedagogy. Honest, strong, and enduring relationships are not possible unless people examine who they are and want to become relative to others, where they belong or want to belong, and what communities they are members of or want access to, issues deeply associated with cultural consciousness. As these emphases, these cores of educators’ identities, morph, it is difficult for other tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy to come to the front. It seems like there is a tendency toward some tenets and not others, and this tendency leads to the unlikelihood that educators will attend on their own equally to all three tenets.

Third, it seems that sociopolitical consciousness was for Sherry and Jia the dimension of culturally relevant pedagogy that pushed them to experience tensions, becoming for them the hub where they had to negotiate seemingly opposing expectations, goals, and actions. Students struggled with basic skills and, thus, frequently struggled with inquiry. However, lack of basic skills had been perpetuated by their schooling, and, thus, somehow it had to be addressed along with foregrounding inquiry—not an easy task for Sherry. Students were developing a dependence on Jia, similar to the dependence that society culti-vates for nondominant groups by not empowering them to make their own life choices, and that had to be addressed along with Jia’s necessary scaffolding so that relationships (mathematical and personal) could be built.




These understandings extend, we believe, previous research (Christodoulou & Varelas, 2009) with a different, larger set of similar Fellows (9 Fellows were studied), which has shown that when science and mathematics experts work in urban classrooms, subject matter and learning of the subject matter were not the only dominant considerations. Rather these Fellows privileged student-centeredness of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, without, though, critically analyzing existing practices and policies. The present study helps us shed more light on the intricacies of a student-centered approach using the lens of culturally relevant pedagogy and appreciate the complexities of each of its tenets and their interplay.

AppendixPotpourri of Journaling Prompts

1. Focus on a particular student. What strikes you about this student and why?

2. Focus on a particular topic, concept, skill, and so on in science or mathematics. What can you say about it relative to how students understand it?

3. Focus on something you did in the classroom. How do you feel about it? What went well? What would you change next time? Why?

4. Write about something you learned from interacting with a teacher. 5. Write about something new you came to realize about students as

science and math learners. 6. Any new or revisited thoughts on urban education? 7. What are you wrestling with as a Fellow and why? 8. Write about yourself as a learner of pedagogy as you work in urban

classrooms/settings. 9. If you had a magic wand, what would you change in an instant

and why?10. Have you read anything interesting recently about schools, kids,

teachers, education? Where? What was it about? What reactions did you have?

11. Collaboration with various people and at various levels is/should be at the heart of the program. Write about your collaboration with somebody in the context of the program.

12. Think about a wonderful moment you had working in the classroom/setting. Describe it. Who was involved? What made it wonderful? Can it be replicated? Why/why not?



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13. Select a concept, skill, idea that you think students (one, some, many, all) seem to be learning. How do you know that they are learning it? Give examples and be specific.

14. Listen to students talk about something related to science or math-ematics. What do they talk about? How do they talk? How do they interact with each other? What did you learn from that listening?

15. As you observe whole-class instruction, pay attention to classroom discourse. Notice . . . Who talks? Who doesn’t? For what purpose? Who gets validated? By whom? Who’s in? Who’s out? How may these observations be related to student learning?

16. As you observe small-group work, notice . . . Who contributes? How? Who are the leaders? Who are the followers? What gets accomplished? What can/should be changed and how?

17. Focus on an activity/project/task that you have developed or helped develop. What led you to this? What design principles did you use? What goals did you have in mind? How did you expect it to turn out in the classroom?

18. Reflect on something that did not go as planned. Describe it and think about why it turned out to be differently from what you expected.

19. Write about the interests, strengths, passions of the students in the classroom(s) you’re working in. What are they? How do you know? How may these interests and strengths be related to mathematics and/or science?

20. Einstein once said, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” Offer an example (WITH justification) of something you’ve observed in the classroom(s)/setting(s) you work in or something you’ve done that fits Einstein’s sense of teaching.

Authors’ Note

The data presented, statements made, and views expressed in this article are solely the responsibilities of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their author-ship or the publication of this article.




FundingThe author(s) disclosed that they received the following support for their research and/or authorship of this article: This study was part of a project funded by a 5-year (2004-2008) U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) GK-12 (Graduate Fellows in K-12 Education) grant (DGE-0338328).

Note

1. All names (Fellows’, schools’, teachers’, and students’ names) are pseudonyms.2. Schools that did not meet adequate yearly progress as specified by the State Board

of Education for 2 consecutive years received an Academic Early Warning status in the following year. If after 2 more years they did not show adequate yearly progress, they received Academic Watch status, and if they continued in the same trajectory they were restructured according to a plan developed together with the district.

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Bios

Li Ye is affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently a teacher at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Her research interests center on developing and studying ways in which students in urban school classrooms, and especially young English language learners, reach their potential and experience aca-demic success. She studies questions that emerge from a sociocultural perspective, multimodal theory, dialogically oriented practice, and culturally relevant pedagogy.

Maria Varelas is a professor of science education at the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at UIC’s College of Education, a UIC Honors College faculty affiliate, and a University of Illinois faculty scholar. She studies science learning and teaching in urban school classrooms and collaborates with teachers, as well as science and sci-ence education faculty, on research and teacher education. She has co-led multiyear National Science Foundation grants totaling over $6 million, and she has (co)authored over 50 journal articles and book chapters.

Raphael Guajardo started out as a high school social studies teacher and an elemen-tary school teacher in urban schools, and later served as a public school principal for twenty years. He was the project coordinator of the GK-12 program that provided the context for this study. His research interests include the reform of K-16 science teach-ing and the use of cooperative learning in school and college classrooms in order to strengthen student participation and achievement.



Documents

Subject-Matter Experts in Urban Schools: Journeys of Enacted Identities in Science and Mathematics Classrooms