This paper is based on a research study designed to analyze prospective and practicing teachers’ (PPTs’) perspectives on culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). The course-based research study was conducted while teaching a course on CRP in the mathematics classroom within a teacher education program at a Canadian university.  The primary research question was: How do student ideas, understandings, experiences, and knowledge of culturally responsive pedagogy in mathematics change/grow/evolve throughout the semester? 

While the research study was conducted at a Canadian university, the implications for the field of mathematics teacher education are internationally significant. The framework developed through this research provides mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) with a valuable tool for identifying and addressing areas of CRP that presently impede PPTs— in diverse contexts throughout Canada, Europe and internationally— from moving toward a strong and clear sociopolitical consciousness in mathematics education.

Here, we outline the progression of the course-based research study toward the construction of a framework for mapping PPTs’ perspectives on CRP in mathematics. The progression we trace begins with the initial conceptualization of our work through Ladson-Billings’ (1995, 2014) three elements of CRP: academic achievement (a.k.a. student learning), cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. When we used these elements as a lens to analyze the course data, we noticed something other than these three elements coming to the fore; we noticed that PPTs’ perspectives had specific characteristics associated with them. This led us to the identification of five such characteristics: challenge, opportunity, fear, resistance, and insight (Nolan & Xenofontos, 2023) and ultimately our COFRI framework (see “COFRI Framework: Characteristics and Descriptions” below). In other words, we built upon Ladson-Billings’ work to develop a new theoretical framework, which we refer to as COFRI, highlighting PPTs’ perspectives on CRP. In this paper, we introduce the COFRI framework and discuss how, through data analysis, the framework was developed, implemented and further refined.

 COFRI Framework: Characteristics and Descriptions(Nolan & Xenofontos, 2023, p. 562)

* Challenge: The idea of challenge involves awareness of one’s lack or partial development of competence to address an issue. Challenge is based on a person’s perception that new knowledge, dispositions, skills, or tools (KDST) are required, which they are inspired to move forward and acquire.

* Opportunity: Opportunity refers to the identification of space for something “good” to happen. A person sees the space as already existing; things are in place to move forward (i.e., the person has the KDST to move forward) to make good things happen.

* Fear: The feeling that attempting something might lead to failure. A person might be inclined to stop in their tracks (or even move backward), and to rationalise this (non)movement by saying they do not have (and cannot easily obtain) the KDST to achieve it.

* Resistance: The expression of dispositions against or disbelief in the importance, feasibility, or possibility of specific ideas. Resistance can manifest itself through “rationalising discourses” which have the property of projecting how others will act or respond to a situation—an “it’s not me, it’s them” approach to resisting an idea.

* Insight: An understanding or realization of what is currently happening and/or how things could be. In addition to seeing what is currently happening, a person will generate new ideas for extending, adapting, and/or improving. Generally, when a person has ‘insight’, this will affect the other four components. That is, an insight suggests a new direction which could create a new challenge, opportunity or even fear or resistance depending on the ‘tools’ one has. Consequently, an insight might lead to gaining new tools (challenge), moving forward with what one has (opportunity), halting/moving backwards (fear), or disbelief (resistance).

This study was conceptualized around a course entitled Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in the Mathematics Classroom, offered as part of a Teaching Elementary School Mathematics certificate program at a Canadian university. As the instructor, Author 1 designed the course to reflect the many intersecting fields of research that can be seen to shape CRP; for example, ethnomathematics, Indigenous education, critical mathematics education and equity-based research. The overarching goals of this course in CRP were to deepen understanding of mathematics concepts while developing a critical cultural consciousness. The research study conducted while teaching this course aimed to understand more about how students interpreted the social, cultural and political challenges of teaching through CRP. Data were gathered for the study at various points throughout this one-semester course, from pre-course surveys to a reflective journal assignment during the course (with 10-12 journal entries in total), and then post-course interviews, during three separate offerings of the course between 2019 and 2023. Over these three offerings, 38 individuals took the course, of which 31 consented to participate in the study (referred to in the study as P1- P31 in the study and in this paper). Most of these 31 participants were practicing teachers, with only two being undergraduate prospective teachers; to include both practicing and prospective teacher categories, the participants are referred to in this paper as PPTs. Drawing on our COFRI framework, we first used a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to analyze all 31 PPT pre-course surveys and reflective journals for evidence of these five characteristics. Following this, we focused our attention on five specific participants: Cindy, Olive, Felix, Raymond and Iris (pseudonyms used), as a case study to illustrate how the COFRI characteristics interacted with each other in ways that provided us with insight and understanding into PPTs’ developing sense of CRP in mathematics. The analyses of the five PPTs’ journals are presented in this paper as narrative case studies.

With regard to becoming a culturally responsive educator, Rychly and Graves (2012) support the need for “a structured process to both facilitate and assess reflection that guides practice” (p. 49). We suggest that the COFRI framework is a valuable tool for this structured process of reflection, such that the lens of the COFRI components can be used by PPTs themselves for viewing their own reflections on their developing perspectives on CRP. While we fully embrace the goal of PPTs developing Ladson-Billings’ three elements of CRP, we propose that asking PPTs to first identify challenges, opportunities, fears, resistance, and insights in their own perspectives presents a promising way forward for PPTs to center their growth and development of these CRP elements. A key learning for us so far in our COFRI-driven analysis was in noticing how PPTs’ expressions of these five components could exist side by side, even overlapping/intersecting with each other within one journal response. While the context for the study is PPTs’ perspectives, one finding of the study relates to the practices of MTEs. As Ladson-Billings (2014) proposes: “If [teacher educators] are to help novice teachers become good and experienced teachers become better, we need theoretical propositions about pedagogy that help them understand, reflect on, and improve their philosophy and teaching practice” (p. 83). We claim, along with others (Daniel 2016; Singh and Akar 2021), that if teacher educators can understand PPTs’ perspectives and learning experiences regarding CRP, then they can better design teacher education lessons, courses, and professional development experiences. From this research, we are hopeful that other MTEs besides ourselves will draw on the COFRI framework to design courses that acknowledge the presence of each component at various stages of PPTs’ learning, while also providing opportunities for growth and diversity of perspectives with regard to growing CRP.

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