Date of Award

Spring 5-15-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Victoria Gill

Second Advisor

Susan Rauchwerk

Third Advisor

Susan Jo Russell

Fourth Advisor

Deborah Schifter

Abstract

This qualitative interpretive embedded case study examines how seven preservice elementary mathematics residents in a Northeastern teacher residency program identify and enact culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Paris and Alim, 2017) in their math instruction, and how their intersectional identities shape these enactments. Drawing on CSP, intersectionality, and discretionary spaces (Ball, 2018), the study explores how residents interpret, reason through, and make moment-to-moment decisions that affirm students’ learning in mathematics.

Data were collected across two semi-structured interviews, three classroom observations, post-observation debriefs, lesson plans, coursework artifacts, and a researcher's reflexive journal. Analysis followed a hybrid inductive–deductive approach, using thematic and axial coding and Bilge’s (2009) intersectionality template to trace patterns across cases.

Findings show that residents primarily identified CSP through visible, preplanned moves such as Number Talk discussion routines, and using equity sticks. However, deeper culturally sustaining practice occurred in discretionary spaces where residents honored students’ multimodal reasoning, protected dignity, interpreted gesture and linguistic variation as mathematical work, and shared mathematical authority. These moments, often unrecognized by residents as CSP, reflected identity-effected enactment—how residents’ racial, linguistic, cultural, and mathematical identities shaped their decision-making.

Five CSP Ways of Being became evident across cases, (1) honoring student thinking as mathematical work, (2) sharing mathematical authority, (3) honoring multimodal, linguistic, and cultural reasoning, (4) attending to student dignity with relational support, and (5) reimagining teacher identity in the moment. However, residents also exhibited moments of retreat, choosing procedural or authoritarian norms, which offer insight into how tensions may arise between commitment to CSP ways while negotiating teaching pressures.

Findings from this study speak to the literature by describing CSP mathematics teaching not as a list of practices to implement but rather a dynamic, identity-effected way of being. This study also has implications for teacher education coursework, coaching, and education program design, as they might support preservice teachers in recognizing their identity-effected discretionary decisions as authentic culturally sustaining mathematics practice.

Download

Share

COinS