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Presumed proficiencies, credentialism, and the pedagogy of poverty: Mathematics teachers from selective alternative route programs

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Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of how school mathematics credentials, particularly calculus, coupled with elite college degrees can allow for presumed proficiencies, resulting in acceptance to a selective alternative route program (SARP) for secondary mathematics. However, such credentials do not guarantee deep mathematics knowledge nor effective teaching, particularly in low-income schools serving a majority of Black and Latinx students. We present a portrait of two NYC Teaching Fellows secondary mathematics teachers, their mathematics preparation and credentials, and how their supervisors viewed them. We further present findings from two years of classroom observations and show that these SARP mathematics teachers resorted to the direct, procedural teaching style they had known themselves, held superficial mathematical understandings, regularly made math errors, and often struggled to coherently answer students’ mathematical questions.

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Notes

  1. All names in this paper are pseudonyms.

  2. At the time Karen and Diane were trained and credentialed, NYCTF collaborated with four local universities to enroll their students for master’s degrees in mathematics education.

  3. US CLEP examinations are administered by a not-for-profit College Board that develops multiple choice examinations for college course content.

  4. Research used in this paper is US based and for the US context.

  5. As of 2018, the US public school population is comprised of 48% White students, 28% Latinx, 15.4% Black students, and 5% Asian students (NCES 2018).

  6. R stands for researcher.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by National Science Foundation grant award numbers 1535219, 1535251 and 0333753.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mathematics Department, 1156 Ingersoll Hall, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 5600 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11210, USA

    Laurel Cooley

  2. Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, 2226 Benjamin Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Andrew Brantlinger

  3. Research Foundation of City University of New York, New York, USA

    Sarah Hannaford-Simpson & Rushna Shahid

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  1. Laurel Cooley
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  2. Andrew Brantlinger
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Correspondence to Laurel Cooley.

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Cooley, L., Brantlinger, A., Hannaford-Simpson, S. et al. Presumed proficiencies, credentialism, and the pedagogy of poverty: Mathematics teachers from selective alternative route programs. J Math Teacher Educ 24, 61–87 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-019-09449-w

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