Cultivating and leveraging the community cultural wealth of black students in high cognitive demand elementary mathematics classrooms

Abstract

Community cultural wealth (CCW) is shown to play a role in the STEM persistence of Black students. White teachers often view their Black students through a deficit-based lens and may struggle to recognize and access the CCW of their nonwhite students. Using observational analysis of two White teachers in the US south who consistently maintained high engagement among Black students in conceptually-rich mathematics classrooms, we present a framework that identifies pedagogical practices that leverage and cultivate the cultural wealth of Black students. This framework can serve as a foundation for all teachers to utilize assets-based instruction in their mathematics classrooms.