Identifying Goals for the Future

Our Recommendations

The research implications of the Trajectories project span teacher education and policy. We offer the following implications for educators, school leaders and researchers as we seek to make mathematics classrooms spaces where Black mathematics teachers thrive.

Implications for Teacher Education

• Rethink how mathematics methods and content courses, in both climate and subject, become gatekeepers to Black mathematics teachers’ participation, and strategize ways to mitigate these barriers.

• Look to teacher preparation programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities as models of supporting Black mathematics teacher candidates.

• Center and Integrate Black students’ lived experiences and alternative perspectives into mathematics teacher education.

• Honor and learn from Black teachers’  and teacher candidates’ knowledge of community assets

• Respect Black teachers as pedagogues, and look for opportunities to situate PD in schools that have significant populations of teachers of color.

Implications for Policy

We recommend that school district leaders and school-level administrators identify and remedy latent racial discriminatory policy practices in tangible ways:

• Working with leaders on reducing anti-Black bias in hiring and evaluating teachers

• Rethinking discipline practices that burden Black teachers with disciplining Black students

• Revising course schedules to increase the numbers of Black teachers who teach advanced mathematics

• Advancing Black teachers into mathematics instructional leadership

• Recruiting prospective Black mathematics teachers from their communities