Professional Development

Elementary Teacher Practices for Culturally Responsive Mathematical Modeling

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Author/Presenter

Erin Turner

Mary Alice Carlson

Jonathon Brown

Mary Greene

Julia Aguirre

Jennifer Suh

Year
2026
Short Description

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Elementary Teacher Practices for Culturally Responsive Mathematical Modeling

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Author/Presenter

Erin Turner

Mary Alice Carlson

Jonathon Brown

Mary Greene

Julia Aguirre

Jennifer Suh

Year
2026
Short Description

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Elementary Teacher Practices for Culturally Responsive Mathematical Modeling

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Author/Presenter

Erin Turner

Mary Alice Carlson

Jonathon Brown

Mary Greene

Julia Aguirre

Jennifer Suh

Year
2026
Short Description

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Elementary Teacher Practices for Culturally Responsive Mathematical Modeling

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Author/Presenter

Erin Turner

Mary Alice Carlson

Jonathon Brown

Mary Greene

Julia Aguirre

Jennifer Suh

Year
2026
Short Description

Culturally responsive mathematical modeling empowers teachers to build on the out-of-class resources that students bring to the classroom and empowers students to draw on their identities and experiences to inform mathematical work and take action. While professional development can support teachers’ learning of culturally responsive mathematics modeling, research on classroom enactments is limited. The aim of this study is to understand teachers’ practices for enacting culturally responsive mathematical modeling, including the opportunities and challenges they face.

Becoming a Responsive Mathematics Teacher: Centering Student Thinking in K–8 Classrooms

This resource presents and describes a model for teaching and learning mathematics responsively in the elementary and middle grades. Developed through the Responsive Math Teaching (RMT) project—a seven-year collaboration between teachers, teacher leaders, school and district administrators, and researchers from a network of K-8 urban schools—this book equips any mathematics educator with the tools to enhance instruction and increase equitable outcomes for students and communities historically underrepresented in mathematics.

Author/Presenter

Caroline B. Ebby

Brittany Hess

Lindsay Goldsmith-Markey

Lizzy Pecora

Jennifer Valerio

Joy Anderson Davis

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2025
Short Description

This resource presents and describes a model for teaching and learning mathematics responsively in the elementary and middle grades. Developed through the Responsive Math Teaching (RMT) project—a seven-year collaboration between teachers, teacher leaders, school and district administrators, and researchers from a network of K-8 urban schools—this book equips any mathematics educator with the tools to enhance instruction and increase equitable outcomes for students and communities historically underrepresented in mathematics.

How Does Modifying a Scratch Game Support Teacher Learning?

There is a compelling need to strengthen professional learning (PL) regarding systems thinking, since it crosses all disciplinary boundaries and is a crosscutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards. Yet research has shown that effectively deploying systems thinking in the classroom is challenging both for students and for teachers.

Author/Presenter

Gillian Puttick

Debra Bernstein

Michael Cassidy

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2025
Short Description

There is a compelling need to strengthen professional learning (PL) regarding systems thinking, since it crosses all disciplinary boundaries and is a crosscutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards. Yet research has shown that effectively deploying systems thinking in the classroom is challenging both for students and for teachers. This paper presents a case study of how two middle school science teachers, engaged in systems thinking and a game design task, worked together to modify a Scratch game during a PL workshop.

What Does Knowledge of Dialogue and Argument Mean for Elementary Teachers’ Instructional Practices? A Case Study

This study aimed to explore the development of teachers’ knowledge of dialogue and argument through three specific knowledge bases: declarative, procedural, and epistemic. Additionally, the study sought to understand the implications of this knowledge for implementing a knowledge generation approach in classroom settings. To achieve these objectives, a multiple-case study was conducted with 12 elementary teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) program centered on the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), an approach designed to promote knowledge generation.

Author/Presenter

Jale Ercan Dursun

Jee Kyung Suh

Brian Hand

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2025
Short Description

This study aimed to explore the development of teachers’ knowledge of dialogue and argument through three specific knowledge bases: declarative, procedural, and epistemic. Additionally, the study sought to understand the implications of this knowledge for implementing a knowledge generation approach in classroom settings. To achieve these objectives, a multiple-case study was conducted with 12 elementary teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) program centered on the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), an approach designed to promote knowledge generation.

Large-Scale Online Science and Engineering Professional Learning for Rural Elementary Teachers

Online professional learning (PL) is widely used to help rural teachers overcome geographical isolation and access quality teacher professional learning. Although there are a handful of studies examining the effectiveness of online PL, much of the existing research includes rural teachers without specifically focusing on what effective online PL means for them. In particular, the research offers limited guidelines on designing effective large-scale online PL programs for rural teachers.

Author/Presenter

Tugba Boz

Min Jung Lee

Meghan Macias

Ryan Summers

Maria Zaman

Martha Inouye

Julie Robinson

Rebekah Hammack

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2025
Short Description

This study captures the experiences of rural teachers with a large-scale online professional learning (PL) program for teaching science and engineering in their contexts and suggests guidelines for designing effective online PL in STEM for rural teachers.

Identity and Power in Physics Teachers’ Discourse About Equity

Gutiérrez’s equity framework, derived from mathematics education research, defines equity in terms of four dimensions: access, achievement, identity, and power. Access and achievement yield outcomes that reify the status quo while identity and power transform schooling to redistribute power. We use Gutiérrez’s equity framework to study discourse about equity from 36 high school physics teachers who participated in an equity-focused professional development workshop.

Author/Presenter

Trà Huỳnh

Amy D. Robertson

Lauren C. Bauman

Rachel E. Scherr

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2025
Short Description

Gutiérrez’s equity framework, derived from mathematics education research, defines equity in terms of four dimensions: access, achievement, identity, and power. Access and achievement yield outcomes that reify the status quo while identity and power transform schooling to redistribute power. We use Gutiérrez’s equity framework to study discourse about equity from 36 high school physics teachers who participated in an equity-focused professional development workshop.

History, Hope, and Humility in Praxis: Co-determining Priorities for Professional Learning with Content Area Teachers

This study examines an expansive shift in the priorities of professional learning within a collective of high school science teachers, scientists, community organizers, youth, and educational researchers who were working together on classroom science projects grounded in community concerns of environmental racism. Through a participatory design-based approach, we challenge the assumed relationship between educational research and priorities for teacher professional learning.

Author/Presenter

Daniel Morales-Doyle

Alejandra Frausto Aceves

Mindy J. Chappell

Tiffany Childress Price

Year
2025
Short Description

This study examines an expansive shift in the priorities of professional learning within a collective of high school science teachers, scientists, community organizers, youth, and educational researchers who were working together on classroom science projects grounded in community concerns of environmental racism.