Moving Culturally Relevant Pedagogy From Theory to Practice: Exploring Teachers’ Application of Culturally Relevant Education in Science and Mathematics

Abstract

This article reports on urban elementary teachers’ understandings of cultural relevancy and the practices they enacted after a professional development on culturally relevant education (CRE) and cognitive apprenticeship. Focus group interviews support that participating teachers understood some principles of CRE but did not always match the theory to practice before our professional development. After training, video data of teaching support that this divide was mediated. These findings point to a need to engage in explicit theory-to-practice research about cultural relevancy in urban science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching. Implications are provided relating to teachers planning lessons purposefully to infuse cultural relevancy into their STEM classrooms.

Keywords

science scale construction mathematics identity teacher development urban education

Introduction

American schools continue to blossom with diversity, but as diverse students populate today’s classrooms, instruction needs to reflect distinct cognitive and cultural nuances. For years, scholarship praising the virtues of culturally relevant and culturally responsive instruction has served as a solution to meeting the needs of our nation’s growing diversity in schools (Aronson & Laughter, 2016; Gay, 1980, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995, 2014). Unfortunately, the importance of cultural relevancy in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning is among the least studied areas of research. Thus, there remains the need to address the interdisciplinary bandwagon of STEM education that is prevalent in many current educational policies (McGuinn, 2012) for effective urban education.

Even as new analyses are being published on the influence of culturally relevant tenets in science education (Brown, 2017), the importance of culture and its influential role within the fundamental way students learn STEM is lacking and liminal (Rodriguez, 2015). With some exceptions (e.g., Emdin, 2010; Milner, 2011; Rodriguez, 2001), STEM education remains stagnant to infuse cultural relevancy within its urban education research. While English education researchers have long argued the benefits of teaching students literacy practices while allowing students to appreciate their own culture (Duncan-Andrade, 2007; Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002), STEM education has been slow to follow suit.

In an effort to address this concern, we adopt Christine Sleeter’s (2012) argument for applying cultural relevancy in education that suggests researchers provide evidence-based assessments of academic impact of cultural relevancy principles to compliment the research highlighting its positive affective impact. We add onto this framework by also studying how culturally based tenets of teaching and learning can be fostered within STEM teachers through a professional development designed to help them adopt this paradigm into their practices.

While data support that research can be enhanced by the inclusion of theory-to-practice studies of culturally relevant principles (e.g., Adjapong, 2017), the literature on urban STEM teacher learning about these principles is sparse. Thus, this research article reports on two intentions to address this lack; namely, (a) what teachers know about using culturally relevant education (CRE) in their STEM teaching and (b) how teachers apply this knowledge. Given that this research draws on Gloria Ladson-Billings’s theory of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and Geneva Gay’s articulation of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), we adopted Aronson and Laughter’s (2016) argument about CRE to ground both foundational theories within the purpose of this study, the professional development given, and the conceptual framework used to analyze collected data. Three research questions then informed our inquiry:

Research Question 1: What do elementary teachers know about cultural relevancy in STEM teaching?

Research Question 2: How do elementary teachers envision applying cultural relevancy in STEM teaching?

Research Question 3: After participating in a professional development, what principles of cultural relevancy did teachers actually apply in their urban elementary classrooms?

Literature Review

In a recent review of research on cultural relevancy, Aronson and Laughter (2016) challenged researchers to translate our knowledge of CRP to teachers in an effort to better serve diverse student populations. They conclude,

If we truly wish to teach our diverse students populations effectively, we need to invest in quality teachers prepared and equipped with necessary tools to promote student success and counter educational reforms that consider students’ education secondary to return on investment. (p. 199)

Their argument assumes that all teachers have the preparation to reach urban students, but that is not always the case in STEM. Scholars have reported the positive impact when teacher education programs utilize cultural relevancy to educate new elementary STEM teachers (Ramirez, McCollough, & Diaz, 2016), and research on CRE within STEM has shown promise to highlight the power of adopting culturally relevant tenets for teaching diverse students (see Brown, 2017, for a recent metasynthesis). In much of the existing STEM education research, however, CRE involves small-scale case studies of teacher practices (Adams, 2016; Emdin, 2010; Rodriguez, 2001; Rodriguez, Jones, Pang, & Park, 2004).

In a study that integrated science, mathematics, and critical literacy, A. Adams and Laughter (2012) used activities requiring students to analyze a fictitious text that integrated science and mathematics, showcasing student insights about bias as a component of scientific research. Others, like Rodriguez et al. (2004), studied a social transformative constructivism framework that called for students to construct knowledge in ways to feel empowered to use scientific knowledge in their own community. Dimmick (2012) also provides another study of environmental justice to engage students in an empowering science and mathematics education by designing projects to help them draw a connection between environmental science and mathematics and their own learning. Thus, STEM education research has found that cultural relevancy has the potential to allow students to gain a rich understanding of STEM and its connection to their local communities.

Turning to STEM teacher education, while some scholars focus on teachers’ ideologies about teaching and learning, Johnson, Brown, Carlone, and Cuevas (2011) offered a framework for teaching STEM at the university level that called for CRE that improves students’ understanding of STEM inside and outside of the classroom. These authors’ Transformative Professional Development framework attempted to help faculty rethink science and mathematics to build relationships between students, faculty, and the community. While apparently being pushed at the undergraduate level, the poignancy of this call for cultural relevancy is not sufficiently heard within K-12 STEM teacher education research base.

STEM teacher education is often seen in elementary contexts within the novel use of technology such as robots and game design with weak ties to culturally relevant principles (e.g., Kim et al., 2015; Leonard et al., 2017), but the focus is on STEM as a culture of indoctrination rather than the culture of the students’ lives as valuable areas of inquiry. These inquiries lack interrogation of students’ cultures in STEM teacher education and actively avoid recent calls for embracing cultural relevancy (Young, Young, & Paufler, 2017) and social justice–oriented goals (Sondel, Koch, Carrier, & Walkowiak, 2017) in STEM teacher education. Moreover, it neglects the positive effects reported by diverse urban K-12 students when this latter, more critical, application of cultural relevancy is incorporated into STEM learning environments (e.g., King, 2017) and the nature of identity formation as a function of STEM education structures that have been highlighted as crucial for studying urban students’ identities vis-à-vis belonging in STEM fields as directly connected to racialization (Nasir & Vakil, 2017).

To this end, we, like Christopher Emdin (2010), have drawn insight from critical literacy studies and call on teacher educators to extend their notions of STEM teacher education. Emdin (2009) has argued for a more complex understanding of diverse urban contexts as sites where hybrid cultures emerge. Indeed, our view as researchers of the term “urban” is akin to Emdin’s (2016) argument where urban is a coded term for poor Black and Brown youth that “white folks” struggle to connect with because their practices mask existing power relations and deny the realities borne and fostered within urban classrooms. Given the small number of studies on cultural relevancy in STEM teacher education research must consider how to draw connections between the interdisciplinary field of STEM education in an effort to educate teachers to bridge the theory-to-practice divide. It is here where we turn to emphasize the literature base of mathematics education to guide the infusion of cultural relevancy in STEM teacher education with the additional integration of cognitive apprenticeship.

Cultural Relevancy in Mathematics: What We Know About Pushing Theory to Practice

Research on cultural relevancy in mathematics education has been more progressive compared with its scientific counterpart (Enyedy & Mukhopadhyay, 2007; Tate, 1995; Timmons-Brown & Warner, 2016). For example, Tate’s (1995) seminal article focused on the need for teachers to bridge the theory to practice relationship between CRP and mathematics that revealed a richly nuanced appropriation of mathematical reasoning, creation of algorithms, and statistical reasoning that were rooted in African American culture. Scholars have also integrated culturally relevant principles into mathematics in pursuit of social and cultural contexts that offer an empowered alternative to students (Moses & Cobb, 2001). Moreover, Civil and Khan (2001b) found that allowing students to use math in the context of family conversations and experiences with gardening projects enhanced their appreciation of both their community and the math discipline. Others, such as Nelson-Barber and Estrin (1995), have also outlined how Native American culture and epistemic frameworks were deeply rooted in rich mathematics culture.

Ultimately, CRP mathematics education research has identified the synergies between the cognitive activities of mathematics and the nuanced cultural existence of students of color, which has provided valuable insight for understanding how to train mathematics teachers. To approach STEM teacher education in relation to cultural relevancy, though, requires a different approach due to its devotion to interdisciplinary practices for students to learn particular skills. This required the notion of cognitive apprenticeship to inform our own research project.

Cognitive Apprenticeship

One consideration in response to the critique suggesting CRE needs to better incorporate learning integrates cultural relevancy within contemporary learning frameworks such as cognitive apprenticeship (i.e., Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1988). This approach to teaching provides a paradigm for explaining how learning occurs in the context of meaningful interactions. Originally framed as an extension to constructivist theories, Collins et al. (1988) argued that the contextualization of learning through meaningful tasks allows students to be aware of their own learning process:

To make real differences in students’ skill, we need both to understand the nature of

expert practice and to devise methods that are appropriate to learning that practice. To do this, we must first recognize that cognitive strategies are central to integrating skills and knowledge in order to accomplish meaningful tasks. They are the organizing principles of expertise, particularly in such domains as reading, writing, and mathematics. (p. 2)

Although STEM was left out of their original framing, their paradigm is useful when thinking about how to educate urban teachers to respond to the realities of their students’ lives to foster fruitful STEM learning. Their position advocated for the placement of apprentices (students) in situations where they could become aware of their learning and acquire knowledge as a requisite component of engaging in meaningful tasks. Given that this theory of learning was articulated in the abstract, they also provided practice-based phases that teachers and researchers could use to track the emergence of cognitive apprenticeship within real-world contexts.

The first phase of this framework was rather than teaching concepts in the abstract, students should be taught in the context of meaningful problems. The second phase of learning involved Modeling, or teacher-centered activities. In the third phase, coaching, the teacher shifts the activities toward student-centered activities where the master helps the apprentice in “choosing tasks, providing hints and scaffolding, evaluating the activities of apprentices and diagnosing the kinds of problems they are having” (Collins et al., 1998, p. 3). Finally, this approach closes with the set of activities that scaffold learning goals pushing students to refine their thoughts with a teacher’s aid. The idea here is to allow the student to become expert by enabling them the time to do it on their own. In the context of teaching, this would involve students having the opportunity to be involved in explanation, evaluation, and careful argumentation about a phenomenon.

The cognitive apprenticeship framework has been colloquially described as the “I do it, We do it, You do it” approach to teaching; however, the cognitive apprenticeship framework finds its inclusion for this research in how it describes the importance of students being aware of the value of their learning in apprenticeship contexts. Ultimately, research on learning in this fashion has affirmed both the efficiency of learning (Chi, Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994; Collins, 1991) and the relevance of the content for students (Aronson & Laughter, 2016; Esposito & Swain, 2009). The question that remains unexplored is what is gained by integrating of CRE within cognitive apprenticeship (CA)?

Melding CA and CRE

As described above, one of the long-standing critiques of CRE involves its connection to learning outcomes (Sleeter, 2012). Given the years of research on the impact of cognitive apprenticeship instruction and its connection to learning (Collins, 1991; Dennen & Burner, 2008), an integration of cognitive apprenticeship with culturally relevant principles may influence how STEM education can be situated beyond a theoretical realm of learning and be contextualized within students’ lived realities and their communities.

In other words, as students are being provided problems that create the necessity for learning, an integrated framework would cast these problems in culturally relevant ways because would teachers toggle back and forth between the teacher-centered “Modeling” phases and the student-centered “Coaching” phases, all the while asked to create CRP versions of modeling and coaching activities. Finally, to integrate these two phases, the “Scaffolding” portion of these types of lessons would require the teacher to use a diversity of formative and summative assessments that would allow students to explain phenomenon in socially and culturally relevant ways.

We adopted an integrated model of cultural relevancy and cognitive apprenticeship to emphasize within a professional development program provided for elementary teachers that were being asked to teach STEM. For example, as our participating teachers attempted to design lessons plans, they did so with the intent of creating lessons that were both culturally relevant and designed to create learning central to cognitive apprenticeship teaching. In doing so, we focused on the tenets of cultural relevancy and cognitive apprenticeship highlighted above to guide our professional development purpose and modes of inquiry. Given that we use Aronson and Laughter’ (2016) framework, below we provide our own conceptual framework interpretation of CRE to clarify our meanings and uses of the term in relation to our professional development model, research design, and data analysis.

Conceptual Framework

As a paradigm, teaching that is culturally responsive focuses on instruction that is committed to student empowerment. Similarly, CRP was designed to enable students to transition from passive recipients to acquiring meaningful knowledge that allows them to see themselves as social justice agents. While complementary, there are distinct nuances pertinent for understanding their uses in this project. Below we offer our interpretations.

Gloria Ladson-Billings’s (1994) landmark text and associated studies (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014) called educators to understand CRP, which asked educators to use pedagogy that used the content to empower students socially, intellectually, and politically. As students gained academic skills, they were to simultaneously gain a rich understanding of their role as agents of change. Geneva Gay (1980) offered a similar framework on teaching, which she named culturally responsive teaching (CRT) where her more practice-oriented approach encouraged teachers to use instruction to validate students’ culture—as similar theoretical ground seen currently in asset-based pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2014). Gay’s scholarship asked teachers to use transformative teaching that would show students the value of their own culture, while simultaneously teaching them the content. Aronson and Laughter’s (2016) recent review of CRE synthesized these to frameworks in a way that we propose using the nuances of each of these theories in our analysis.

For the purposes of this study, we adopted Aronson and Laughter’s (2016) idea of combining the macro-scale and paradigmatic thinking of CRP with the classroom-focused CRT into a theory-to-practice framework: CRE. In short, to be effective in the classroom, we posit that urban STEM teachers must develop a deep understanding of how the content impacts the culture of their students (CRP), while also understanding what pedagogical moves they must make to improve student learning in relation to students cultural and linguistic practices that are brought into the classroom to be subsequently leveraged by the teacher (CRT). It is through the infusion and integration of these two elements that we found a clarity in how Aronson and Laughter’s (2016) proposition for CRE could make sense in terms of our project. This integrated framework is how we as researchers have approached both the elements of CRP pertinent to our professional development program and the analysis of the data collected for this project. We now turn to elaborating on the research design.

Method

This qualitative study integrated interview and video data to explore what teachers knew about and did with cultural relevancy in teaching. To gain a perspective that was capable to assessing both theory and practice, we used a one-shot case design with two analysis methods (interviews and video analysis). Figure 1 provides an overview of our research project.

Figure 1.

Overview of study design.

To get a clear sense of the teachers’ understanding of CRE and their practice, we followed a group of teachers over a course of a year to gain insight about how they understood and used cultural relevancy in their urban elementary teaching.

Participants

This project followed the teachers of the Dashawn Holloway School.¹ The school is a STEM charter school for Grades K-5. The school is located in a large metropolitan city in Northern California with a population of more than 400,000 people. The school served a 100% African American male student population, as it was a charter school designed to get African American males involved in STEM opportunities. At the time of this study, the school was nearing the end of its first academic year. The participating teachers were from a variety of different backgrounds and professional preparation experiences. As seen in Table 1, eight of nine participating teachers were of African American decent. They also brought to the classroom a variety of training experiences (see Table 1). Most were either from Teach for America (TFA) or graduates from the local State University’s elementary education program. This variety of experiences provided a rich participant pool for our professional development.

Table 1.

Overview of Research Participants.

Grade	Pseudonym	M/F	Race	Background
1	Chloe Butler	F	African American	5th-year teacher. Served as one of the founding teachers. Credentialed at local university.
1	Lisa Bettis	F	African American	Former 4th-grade teacher. Taught for 3 years. Credentialed at local university, new to the area.
3	Barry Malcolm	M	African American	1st-year teacher. Working in TFA first year program.
4	Ray Maxwell	M	Caucasian American	1st-year teacher. Working in TFA first year program.
3	Jordan Nance	M	African American	1st-year teacher. Working in TFA first year program.
K	Serrita Patterson	F	African American	25^-year veteran teacher who was vital to the design of the school.
4	George Randle	M	African American	14-year veteran teacher who was credentialed at a local university. He was hired to serve as a mentor teacher for the younger teachers.
2	Sallie Mason	F	African American	7-year veteran teacher. Who was credential through a local teacher educational program.
Coach	Clark Canton	M	African American	Teacher specialist.

The Professional Development

The school founders asked the first author to provide professional development about cultural relevancy for the school’s teachers. This author agreed to provide this development within the CRE paradigm elaborated in the conceptual framework section above with no compensation. The school and teachers agreed to be the subject of this research study as a component of this professional development. Each of the teachers in the study indicated they participated in previous instruction about culturally relevant teaching. Their previous training involved instruction about CRE in their teacher training programs (both traditional and TFA). They also participated in a school-sponsored training about CRE instruction for the school. Despite these training opportunities, the teachers noted that the professional development never addressed how to apply CRE instruction to mathematics and science teaching. Thus, the first author was asked to offer a STEM specific professional development about CRE.

The professional development involved four stages: First, the teachers participated in prefocus group interviews in teams of three to discuss what they knew about CRE; second, the teachers participated in a professional development program that taught them about CRE and cognitive apprenticeship teaching approaches.

For the CRE training, the teachers were involved in a day-long session that explored the principles in the readings reviewed, sample videos, and concluded with the establishment of working groups for teachers to apply the training techniques. For the second day of training, held a week later, teachers were taught the four-stage cognitive apprentice teaching approach. Participants were taught to organize their lessons into four components: (a) establishing a problem, (b) modeling activities, (c) coaching, and (d) scaffolding activities. Similar to the first session, this 8-hr training involved teachers working on applying these principles in small groups. The third phase of lesson planning involved the teachers delivering a draft lesson plan to the research team for review. Fourth, and finally, the teachers allowed the research team to visit their classroom the day they taught the CRE lesson. The videos were coded and analyzed using event map analysis methods (Bleicher, 1994; Green, Camilli, & Elmore, 2012).

Data Collection and Analysis

Research Questions 1 and 2—Interviews

These semistructured interviews involved 10 questions about the CRE approach using the prompting strategy outlined by Kvale (1983). The interviewer asked each group the same questions and used prompts for clarification (Basch, 1987; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Next, the interviews were transcribed and reviewed for accuracy. After the initial review, we engaged in a two-tiered analysis of the data using a domain analysis approach (Spradley, 2018). In domain analysis, the research team codes the distinctions between themes based on theoretically significant themes. In our case, the focus was identifying patterns and reasoning patterns associated with CRE. After initial analysis of the data, we coded the primary categories into subcomponents based on emerging patterns. This two-tiered analysis served as the foundation of our interview analysis.

Research Question 3—Event mapping

To explore what practices teachers used in their analysis, we used a video analysis method known as event mapping (Green et al., 2012; Hammersley, 2003). In event mapping, the video is converted into code-ready data by creating a map of the events in the classroom. Event mapping is a multiunit coding process that focuses on analysis classroom video using a four-category coding system. The basic unit is a Sequence Unit. A sequence unit is marked by changed in topic, speaker, or tone of voice. Each time a new sequence is identified, the coder created a new time stamp and also created a code summary of the video activity that was coded by type. The second tier of the video coding process involved identifying clusters of sequences that combined to achieve a given end. For example, if a series of sequences were used to review homework, the macro analytical category of the Phase Unit would be added to label the series of sequences. After one member created the maps, a second team member reviewed video and the event map for reliability. After the initial review, the team met to review discrepancies in the coding. Using event maps, we were able to create an index of the language used throughout the lessons (Bleicher, 1994; Green et al., 2012).

An event map has three components: time, phase units, and sequence units, each of which will be elaborated on after Table 2 below provides an example of this process.

Table 2.

Sample of an Event Map.

Day	Time	Phase description	Sequence description	Notes
1	0:00-0:08	Pre-Class Activities	Video begins
	0:08-1:48	Pre-Class Activities	Students come into classroom. Students walk in and sit in their desks.
1	1:49-6:55		Introduction to topic subtracting decimals in the context of buying shoes for a birthday present with a gift card.	Relates to student’s knowledge of shoes. Establishes problem.
1	6:56-13:22	Modeling Activities	Watch video and fill in blanks about decimals.	Students are using handout to write answers.
1	13:23-15:16	Modeling Activities	T asks class to list the steps to subtracting decimals, calls on Ss to answer.
1	15:17-23:05	Coaching Activities	T writes sample problems on whiteboard, calls on volunteers to come to board to work out the problems.	Student wants to contribute, may be influenced by video.
1	23:06-33:33	Coaching Activities	Ss pick groups and work in groups to solve the subtraction problem

In the time column, the research tracks and indexes how each interaction was framed by classroom talk. The sequence units are summarized versions of the video transcript and are delineated by changes in the speaker, changes in topic, and changes in the tone or direction of conversation. Using the event maps as our primary video data source, we began our taxonomical analysis of the teaching practices used by the teachers. After identifying phase units and sequence units, we engaged in a detailed taxonomical analysis of the types of sequence units. We grouped the sequence units into categories based on similarities. For instance, a sequence where the teacher explains a culturally relevant problem to start a cognitive apprenticeship lesson would be put into the “CRE Establish a Problem” category. Engaging in this iterative process of creating event maps and coding the types of sequence units used provided us a map of the ways teachers organized their lessons.

Coding reliability

To ensure the reliability of the coding process, we conducted a similar reliability review for both research methodologies. In both cases, we assigned individuals to review the original video files (interview and classroom) and match them with the transcripts. In the case of the interview, we cleaned the interview transcript by listening to the video and then edited misspelled or misunderstood words. In the case of the event maps, the maps were created and then reviewed by watching the video along with the event maps to correct for errors. For the videos, we coded using HyperResearch^TM software using an inductive method. After an initial review, a second reviewer examined each code and marked errors. We then calculated use randomizer.org to produce a subset of 25% of the codes. We reviewed these codes for accuracy and calculated the coder interrater reliability of 93.0%. In a similar fashion, we coded the resulting video categories from the event map and met to discuss discrepancies. We reviewed the video coding by examining 100% of the coding and identified a coder reliability of 82%.

Findings

In our exploration of teachers’ understanding of how to use CRE, we learned that although all teachers were familiar with the construct, few understood its pedagogical implications. Although teachers understood CRE principally, few could describe how CRP provided a contrast to other instructional approaches. After engaging in a professional development about CRE, we used event mapping video analysis to understand how teachers applied what they learned. This video analysis revealed two primary applications of CRE for STEM teaching. First, when teachers designed their lessons, they used a cognitive apprenticeship approach to apply CRE by focusing on teaching new content in the context of racially specific phenomenon. Second, teachers readily used CRE in their formative and summative assessments by focusing on racially and culturally specific topics to create relevant contexts for students.

Analysis, Research Question 1: Unpacking Teacher’s CRE Knowledge via Interviews

Our initial analysis of the teacher’s use of CRE focused on gaining an understanding of the teachers’ thinking prior to the academic year. Through focus group interviews, we coded the teacher’s response into four macro domains (Table 3 summarizes the findings). One such code descriptor, “CRE Knowledge,” was found when participating teachers shared their knowledge of CRE teaching practices. Teachers also described how CRE impacted changes in their STEM lesson plans, which were coded with the descriptor “CRE Lesson Applications.” A number of teachers described their history applying CRE approaches in their teaching that we coded with the descriptor “CRE teaching experience.” Finally, the last macro domain of analysis captured instances of talk where teachers expressed confusion or concern about how CRE could be applied to STEM teaching. We described these instances with the code descriptor “CRP Misunderstandings.” Collectively, the variety of responses help shed light on what teachers knew about CRP teaching in STEM education.

Table 3.

Overview of Descriptions of CRE STEM Teaching.

Code	Code description	Example
CRE Knowledge	These are instances of talk in which the teacher explains what he or she knows about Culturally Relevant Education or gives his or her own definition of Culturally Relevant Education.	Chloe: Okay. What I think Culturally Relevant Education means is . . . instruction that the students can relate to. And I think it means a curriculum that focuses or centers learning around their experiences and their culture and what they understand.
CRE Lesson Applications	These are instances of talk in which a teacher explains how he or she changes his or her lesson plan to be culturally relevant or gives examples of a culturally relevant lesson plan.	Amy: I always try to use real life examples when I teach [science and mathematics]. I try to find example in real life that they can relate to.
CRE Teaching Experience	These are instances of talk where teachers explain their experience teaching CRP in urban schools.	Jordan: I have been teaching for 14 years. I have always tried to teach CRP in a self-contained classroom. And so [science and mathematics] wasn’t a core subject so I mixed it in with other things.
CRE Misunderstanding	These are instances of talk in which the teacher responds to a question by saying that he or she forgot the answer.	I forgot I do not remember how social justice teaching and CRP relate. I am not sure.

Note. CRE = culturally relevant education; STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; CRP = culturally relevant pedagogy.

The majority of the focus group’s discussion of CRE centered on conceptions of what constituted cultural relevancy in STEM education. Chloe, a kindergarten teacher explained, “I think [CRE] means the curriculum focuses or centers learning around their experiences, culture, and what they understand.” Clark shared a similar perspective but placed greater emphasis on ethnic identity as he described CRE teaching by saying, “I think it means instruction relevant to their background and their culture. Their ethnicity and teaching and showing them how it is put in real life.” Jordon, though, adopted an approach focusing more on pre-assessment emphasizing how the teachers needed to understand how to make the curriculum relevant. He explained,

So, I would just say at first I think it comes from understanding your students. Knowing your students, and who they are. It’s about understanding their cultural background and what interests them and draws them in. Asking and finding out what engages them in terms of just being culturally relevant.

Indeed, this idea of assessing and understanding students’ interest was shared broadly. Many of the participating teachers described how CRE required teachers to assess student culture and design instruction to impact the lives of students. Despite the seeming uniformity of definition, others offered warnings about being too prescriptive of what constituted the notion of “culture.” Sallie, a veteran teacher, challenged her focus group as she explained,

And at the same time, just knowing that there’s just not one monolithic culture. Even though you’re dealing with a demographic of people, that culture can still be wide ranging. So, for me to make it relevant means making it something that students are familiar with and important to them. It has to be something they value. It has to be something they see themselves in the pedagogy.

Her explanation framed the challenge of CRP teaching in STEM as making sure the students are able to see the connection between science and mathematics and their own lives and community.

Analysis, Research Question 2: Application of CRE to STEM Teaching

To dig deeper into the teachers’ understanding of how to apply CRE teaching in STEM, we conducted a secondary analysis of our primary code “CRP Knowledge.” We coded these responses into four sub codes: “Student Experiences,” “Student Culture,” “Students Prior Knowledge,” and “Student Ethnicity.” The four sub-codes provided insight into how participating teachers adopted the CRE approach in STEM.

Several of our teachers described how their approach to using CRE involved teaching content that was rooted in the experiences of their children. Sallie explained, “The science and mathematics has to be something students are familiar with.” Chloe agreed and elaborated, “The science and mathematics has to center around their experiences.” Later, Chloe explained that when she taught STEM using a CRE approach, “the science and mathematics lesson has got to center around their culture.” Jordan also added, “I always try to use real life examples when I teach science and mathematics. I try to find examples in real life that they can relate to.” Although vague, his explanation matched many of his other colleagues who discussed how they attempted to connect STEM with students’ culture. Still others chose to take a more knowledge-focused approach. One teacher described that, “[science and mathematics] has got to be based on things they already understand.” Finally, some teachers placed greater emphasis on understanding students’ ethnic identity. Serrita made this point as she explained, CRE focus on science and mathematics by sharing: “Instruction has to be relevant to their ethnicity and it has to be in real life form.” Whether the teacher explained CRE as being associated with students’ experience, culture, ethnic identity, or prior knowledge, none of the teachers explained how CRE was associated with a particular instructional practice, which led to a more fine-grained analysis.

The struggle with CRE applications

As described above, teachers expressed awareness of the concept of CRE in STEM but offered little explanation about teaching techniques. Later on in the interview protocol when attempting to elicit these applications, Chloe explained, “I always try to use examples. Real life examples.” Others focused more on the location of the lessons. For example, Serrita offered, “I make sure my lessons involve more than just being in the classroom” while George, a veteran teacher, discussed the necessity of making topics “concrete.” Still others focused on text. Barry elaborated that, “it is all about being purposeful about, you know the text you are reading. It is about being purposeful about knowing what their interests are. You have to find out what fires your students up.” Finally, Ray called for a shift away from standards-based teaching to make the content culturally relevant. He capitalized on this notion by stating,

I think it has to be more on culture and less on the standards-based academic side. It has to be more on the social side. I feel like it has a lot more to do with how you carry yourself and how you interact with each other. I am not totally sure.

Ray and others like him reflected upon the fact that although the teachers were teaching in a school based on CRE teaching, their application of the framework was overtly theoretical and lacked detailed descriptions of alterations to instructional practice. The results of this first analysis highlighted the complexities of preparing teachers to adopt CRE teaching in STEM.

Analysis, Research Question 3: Video Analysis of CRP Lessons

In our video analysis, we moved away from the teachers’ descriptions of practice toward documenting the teachers’ actual implementation of practice. Using event maps as our primary source of data, we coded the teacher’s instructional segments by type. The data suggest that the teachers applied some of these CRE practices to STEM lessons, but not uniformly. One of the practices that the teachers adopted from the CRE professional development involved the use of the four-phase approach to teaching based on a cognitive apprenticeship model (Establish a Problem, Model, Coaching, and Scaffolding). Several teachers were able to adopt a CRE application of the teaching approach in the STEM lessons, while others struggled with this application. For example, Sallie taught a math lesson on subtracting using two decimals in the context of gift cards and “Gucci ‘Swag’ Shoes.” While this example could be seen as superficially integrating culture vis-à-vis “shoes” as a real-world connection, its connection to the specific interests of the students provides an example of the “weak cultural ties” needed for further connection from an outsider of the cultural group of the students (Baron, 2000). To provide a context for the lesson, she introduced the concept in the following way:

Teacher:

Torian read the title for me

Torian:

Mr. S.G.’s Birthday Surprise

Teacher:

Right, Mr. S.G.s Birthday Surprise. Let me tell you guys about Mr. S.G.s birthday surprise. Isaiah, can you read the problem for me?

Isaiah:

Reading inaudibly . . .

Teacher:

I need you to put your head up and then we can all hear you. Thank you, scholar.

Isaiah:

Ms. Sallie needs your help. Today is Mr. S.G.’s birthday. Ms. Sallie wants to buy him a new pair of shoes. The shoes cost $157 dollars and 90 cents ($157.90). But Ms. Sallie only has $78.50 on her gift card. Ms. Sallie needs your help to find out how much more money she needs to pay. (Establish a problem sequence 3:47-5:39)

Sallie followed this introduction by a series of activities that integrated CRE with the Cognitive Apprenticeship (CA) approach to teaching (Establish a Problem, Model, Coaching, Scaffolding). In Sallie’s particular case, she followed the problem with a brief animated video explaining how to subtract two-digit decimals. The students watched the brief video and wrote down the “rules” for adding and subtracting two-digit decimals. This was taught in the context of making decisions about buying shoes that were appropriate for their families. When shifting to a more student-centered approach (modeling), students were asked to create and exchange problems. They worked on generating and solving problems in a small group setting. Finally, to give students an opportunity to explain the concept (scaffolding), Sallie asked students to record a video of them presenting an explanation of how to use math (subtracting two-digit decimals) to determine whether it is wise to buy expensive shoes. See Table 4 for a summary of the findings.

Table 4.

Types of Learning Activities for CRE.

Code name	Code description	Example
Cognitive Apprenticeship	These are phases of interaction in which teacher uses one or more of the cognitive apprenticeship strategies “model, coach, fade.”	0:00-6:04 Teacher describing going to a zoo in the fall. Discussion was about Q: What type of shoes to wear to the zoo in fall? Flip-flops? (Grade 1: lesson regarding Seasons).
Formative Assessment	These are phases of interaction in which teacher uses formative assessment strategies to judge or measure student understanding of scientific concepts or vocabulary.	11:03-15:00 Teacher asks students one by one to say why they think we all have diff skin color. (Grade K: lesson on melanin and pigments).
Language Learning & Strategies	These are phases of interaction in which teachers use pedagogical strategies that specifically target student learning of scientific language.	27:07-32:27 Teacher asked students to “share out” one science and mathematics sentence with a partner that used new words and then asked them to share with the class.
Relevant Content	These are phases of interaction in which teachers relate content to topics that are relevant to students’ lives in some way.	6:58-10:06 The students worked on comprehension questions that were connected to the local drought. They wrote about whether the “Drought was good or bad?
Scientific Practices	These are phases of interaction in which teachers and/or students engage in scientific practices or elements of the scientific method.	23:09-28:53 Students were asked to discuss their favorite seasons by creating a graph.
Non-Categorical Pedagogical Strategies	These are phases of interaction in which teachers uses other pedagogical strategies that are not explicitly formative assessment, language learning, cognitive apprenticeship, relevant content, or scientific practices.	19:48-23:08 The students were required to create a story. This story was them explaining how seasons worked in their lives.

Note. CRE = culturally relevant education.

Data also support other teachers adopted each of the cognitive apprenticeship phases in their STEM lesson while taking a culturally relevant focus, as well. Table 5 provides an overview of how teachers, like Sallie, applied both CRE and CA, with each section described in more depth thereafter with exemplars provided for the reader.

Table 5.

How Teachers Integrated CRE With CA Lessons.

Code name	Code description	Example
Contextual Problems	These are activities where students were presented with problems that embed cultural relevancy. The problem requires learning the content to answer the questions associated with the problem	6:03-7:26 The teacher uses a problem of a Zombie attack to teach the concept of erosion. He uses the TV show Walking Dead to craft a scenario where the erosion of a mountainside housing a safe prison is quickly eroding.
Modeling Activities	These are phases of interaction in which the teacher models for the class or for individual students how to do an activity or problem.	8:49-13:33 Teacher uses a video to teach the parts of the plant. Students watch video on plant parts, how they help plant to get what it needs, T stops video periodically to re-voice what video is saying.
Coaching Activities	These are phases of interaction in which teacher coaches or helps students to do an activity or problem.	12:43-32:02 After students were taught math in the context of purchasing using cash, the teacher had students work on practice problems to solve money problems. The teacher was an “assistant.” [grade 5]
Scaffolding Activities	These are phases of interaction in which the teacher fades into the background, allowing students to complete a problem or activity on their own or in groups	1:01-17:20 The teacher had students play a game in groups of four. Students acted out one of the parts of a plant and the audience tries to guess what part they are acting out.

Note. CRE = culturally relevant education; CA = cognitive apprenticeship.

Establishing a Problem

One of the practices taught in the professional development involved building a synergy between science and mathematics concepts and the students’ culture. Many teachers designed their lessons based on what they deemed a CRE problem. The teachers started their lessons by creating problems that provided students with the need to learn the content within a context that was pertinent to the students’ lives. All of our participating teachers applied this principle in their planning. One example was when, Serrita, in an attempt to teach about sunlight and energy, taught a lesson about a fictional character named “Melanin Man.” The problem that served as the foundation for her kindergarten lesson was that a scholar was crying after being teased for being too dark. She introduced the lesson this way:

I have a problem and I want you to help me solve my problem. This is a serious problem. It makes me really sad. It makes me really, really, really sad. The problem is this. One day, I was walking down the hall. I saw two scholars. One scholar was crying [begins to act like she’s crying]. It made me sad, because I don’t want anyone to cry at our school. So, I went to him and asked him why are you crying? And you know what he told me. He was crying because someone said he had ugly skin. They said he was too black. I didn’t understand that because I knew a story about a beautiful black bird. I thought black was beautiful. So, why would he be crying about that?

The lesson continued by asking the students to explain what they knew about why people’s skins were dark. Ultimately, the big idea of this lesson was to have students’ knowledge about melanin become a resource for learning to value the darkness of their skin. The actual STEM content being taught that day was a simple lesson about the traveling rays of sunlight, in this particular context, through the value of having higher levels of melanin in ones’ skin. Other teachers also adopted this practice in both math and science and mathematics teaching. One teacher taught a lesson on science and mathematics habitats by discussing affordable pets and creating inexpensive habitats that would allow animals to thrive. Jordan used the California drought to talk about the Water cycle; Chloe used a lesson on buying “Icee’s” to explore properties of matter. Still others adopted a more integrated lens that allowed the “problem” to open the doors for social justice conversations.

Modeling Using CRP Teaching

A second aspect of the teachers’ CRP/Cognitive Apprenticeship lesson planning involved the use of modeling activities. These modeling activities were essentially teacher-centered activities where students were engaged in common learning tasks (e.g., reading, video analysis, lecture) that were related to the problem presented in the section above. For example, Serrita began her introduction of the concept of sunlight by reading the children’s book Beautiful Black Bird. She skillfully used the narrative of the black bird flying close to the sun to introduce her elementary students to light waves. Others, like Jordan, used a reading activity to introduce the fundamentals of the concept. As seen in Table 6, six of the teachers used videos to introduce the basics of the concepts. In each case, these teachers used videos to teach the basics of the concepts and followed those videos with discussions that referred to the initial problem.

Table 6.

Cognitive Apprenticeship Modeling via CRE.

Grade	Teacher	Subject	CA-modeling
K	Serrita	Sunlight	1. Read the Black Bird Book 7:55-14:282. Tell the story of Melanin Man 15:26-18:04
1	Lisa	Science and mathematics—Habitat	1. KWL activity [not recorded]2. Read Aloud “The Snowy Day”3. Students do TPS about matter types in the story.
4	Jordan	Science and mathematics—Water Cycle	1. Reading Activity about the water cycle 12:30-18:202. Video Explanation 32:38-33:42
4	George	Science and mathematics Food Chains	1. Lecture 5:14-7:262. Video analysis [Brian Pop] 7:27-11:4
4	Barry	Math—Multiplying Double Digits	1. Lecture 1:55-2:452. Video Analysis 0:40-1:26
4	Sallie	Math—Adding and Subtracting Decimals	1. Video analysis 21:00-22:35
5	Barry	Dividing by 2 digit divisors	1. Group Pair Share 13:23-15:162. Video Analysis 6:56-13:22
5	Ray	Science and mathematics—Physical Features of Earth.	1. Reading Weathering and Erosion article 15:55-21:352. Video analysis 21:36-33:37

Note. CRE = culturally relevant education; CA = cognitive apprenticeship; KWL = Know, Want to Know, Learned; TPS = Think, Pair, Share.

Opportunities to Explain: Coaching and Fading

The final stages of the lessons documented in our study involved teachers creating student-centered activities to promote learning. The activities were of two sorts: First, teachers used a series of modeling activities; second, teachers used fading activities where students were provided limited support in an effort to provide them with practice explaining the concepts. These activities served both formative and summative assessment roles as they were designed to allow students practice clarifying the newly learned context while discussing the CRE problem that was used to frame the lesson. Table 7 summarizes these findings.

Table 7.

CRP Coaching and Fading activities.

Grade/teacher	Subject	CA—Coaching	CA—Fading
KSerrita	Science and mathematics—Sunlight & Melanin	(1) Learning and practicing the “Melanin” rap 18:34-24:20 (2) Word review “Melanocyte”30:39-33:32	(1) Students work individually to make their own Melanin comic book.5:40-14:50
1Lisa	Science and mathematics—Habitat	(1) Video explaining phase change (Brain Pop).(2) Class discussion.[Not recorded]	(1) Classroom writing “story time” about neighborhood animals and the drought.[Not recorded]
4Jordan	Science and mathematics—Water Cycle	Group of four students act out one of the parts of the plant. The other students have to guess what part of the plan it is.1:01-17:20	Food Web Model building (cut outs).Day 2 13:34-21:27
4George	Science and mathematics—Food Chains	(1) Drawing a Food Pyramid. 11:41-23:46(2) Role-Play: Students asked to act out animals and group categorizes it as carnivore, omnivore & decomposer.23:47-33:39	(1) Creating Food Chains with local foods (Takis, fruits, vegetables, carne asada).Day 2 9:33-11:40(2) Group presentation of food webs and food chains.Day 2 11:41-15:29
4Barry	Math—Multiplying Double Digits	(1) Creating poster boards to teach others to do math.15:17-23:05(2) Students working on practice problems in small group.0:00-4:18	[Not applicable]
4Sallie	Math—Adding and Subtracting Decimals	(1) Student work in groups to solve an example problem.29:17-32:13	(1) Write script for recording a video for other 4th graders about dividing with two-digit divisors.32:14-33:33
5Barry	Dividing by 2 digit divisors	(1) Reading Comprehension writing task.2:45-3:29	(1) Explanatory Lottery Task.Day 2 0:00-4:33
5Ray	Science and mathematics—Physical Features of Earth.	(1) Student Teach: Students asked to teach each other in a pair share about erosion and sediment.Day 2 0:00-9:19	(1) Students make posters explaining Erosion, Sediment, Weathering, & Deposition using Walking Dead scenario.Day 2 9:20-11:59

Note. CA = cognitive apprenticeship.

Jordan, for example, offered an example of this when he placed students in groups of four and asked them to act out the parts of a plant. In a charades type of game, students were asked to act and explain how the water crisis might impact the different plant parts. Another example of this approach was found in Ray’s lesson. Ray asked students to teach each other about the two primary concepts: sediment and erosion. Ray created a scenario where his students were asked to work in pairs to explain the concepts, and the model of the earth, to the fictional character Loki. To ensure the concepts were tied back to CRE curriculum, he asked the students to explain how erosion could impact where people could live in the city of Oakland. Given these collective findings, we are able to make a claim that our training was somewhat successful in its intention to incorporate CRE into STEM elementary teachers’ lessons, but more research is warranted.

Discussion

This study was designed to unpack elementary STEM teachers’ knowledge and practices associated with CRE. In concluding this work, it is important to return to the research questions that guided our inquiry. First, we sought to understand what elementary teachers knew about culturally relevant STEM teaching. We discovered that ideologically, teachers had a tenuous awareness of CRE as a construct. However, when pushed to explain how this construct exists pedagogically, our participating teachers knew little about how to translate CRE from theory to practice. After the training, we were able to see these CRE practices come to light in the form of a reframing of cognitive apprenticeship teaching with a CRE focus. Second, we wanted to understand how these elementary science and mathematics teachers applied CRE teaching in their STEM teaching. As indicated before, much of their pedagogical focus was on using examples to create a sense of relevance for the students; however, after the training we noted a more dynamic application of CRE teaching. The third and final question revealed how teachers successfully integrated cognitive apprenticeship teaching with CRE STEM instruction. As they created problems, these problems focused on cultural problems that reflected students’ backgrounds. As they switched back from teacher-centered “modeling” activities, to student-centered “coaching” activities, the teachers continued the narratives of their cultural examples throughout. Whether they were discussing the value of melanin in a lesson about sunrays, or the cultural values of fashion despite a limited budget in a math lesson, the teachers demonstrated a consistency of application when using the CRE approach. Ultimately, the results of this study highlight the potential application of effective CRE theory to practice relationships in STEM.

Limitations

Conclusions and Implications

Despite a limited research base on the impact of CRE-based practices in STEM, teaching STEM from a CRE perspective is ripe with possibilities. As teachers plan lessons about science and mathematics ideas, they must develop a rich understanding of how the concepts they teach apply to the lives of their students. In our case, teachers used topics like skin color bias, materials, and students’ love of the TV show The Walking Dead to generate contexts to teach STEM. As educators continue to focus on improving STEM education for urban students of color, developing a nuanced understanding of how to build CRE lessons become vital. With that in mind, extensive professional development projects of this nature are not always possible, which calls for educators to rethink our approach to research and training provision.

In reflecting upon what was learned from this project, we identified how teachers’ desire to improve in their science and mathematics teaching practices could lead to changes in pedagogical practices. What was disconcerting about this project was that nearly all of the participating teachers, regardless of their time teaching, never received training about how to apply CRE principles. For them, CRE instruction was an ideology that lived in the realm of English education and did not have pragmatic STEM applications. This isolationist framework on CRE highlights the necessity to change how we promote and offer professional development about CRE STEM in urban contexts.

In this current information age, the fact that no free online CRE training sites are available reflects just how behind the time we are as a field. One of the most difficult aspects of teaching STEM in a CRE fashion is rethinking it in culturally specific ways. We can only imagine just how powerful having an online database of topics, cultural applications, and sample lesson plans might be for reshaping STEM education in culturally relevant ways for students. Similarly, free online video training websites could change the potential impact of professional development from cohorts of 10 to 20 teachers at a time to hundreds of thousands worldwide. Ultimately, we learned that when given product-oriented training and support, with the preparation of CRE STEM lessons, our teachers were quick to adopt CRE as both theory and method. The challenge in moving forward is identifying ways to use contemporary resources and technology to provide teachers with the support that makes STEM instruction accessible for all.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iDs

Phillip Boda

Xavier Monroe

Author Biographies

Bryan A. Brown is an associate professor of science education at Stanford University who studies how language and culture impact science learning for students of color.

Phillip Boda is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University studying how culture impacts educational opportunities for marginalized students.

Catherine Lemmi is a graduate student exploring how language and language ideology impact science learners.

Xavier Monroe is a graduate student conducting research on STEM policy.

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