NO MORE GHOSTS IN MATH CLASS: USING A CRITICAL COUNTERNARRATIVE METHODOLOGY TO EMPOWER TEACHERS AS CREATORS OF BELONGING AND AGENTS OF CHANGE

This study examines the impact of professional development based on a critical counternarrative framework on teachers’ perceptions of student belonging. The work of teachers comprises a vital part of the pedagogical core—the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and skill, student engagement, and the level of content. As teacher practices have become more collaborative over time through the formation of professional learning communities in schools, the collaboration tends to focus more on the selection, delivery, and assessment of content in classrooms than engagement or professional skill-building. Lost in the shuffle are Black and Latino male students themselves: often playing a passive role in a school experience that is done to them, not with them—ghosts that inhabit their own hallways. An indignant hierarchy of needs that makes achievement a condition of belonging has led to disparate outcomes in pursuits of advanced coursework (e.g., AP and IB classes) and STEM fields after high school. This professional development engaged four high school mathematics teachers on a learning journey to create belonging for Black and Latino male students based on a critical-counternarrative framework. Through the framework, they reflected on their own math experiences and their racial situatedness in math spaces. They considered counternarratives from multiple students’ perspectives, and learned about successful belonging interventions, then co-constructed intervention for their classrooms, where over 80% of students are non-White. Though teachers initially thought their practices were conducive to creating classroom belonging, they later realized that belonging cannot exist without a shared dialogue between teacher and student. Teacher shifts are analyzed with respect to the components of the counternarrative framework. Implications for the researcher (and micro-, mezzo-, and macro- level contexts) are considered, and recommendations for future research are shared.