Equity-Focused, Rubric-Based Coaching: An Incremental Improvement Approach to Supporting Teachers to Shift Toward More Equitable Mathematics Instruction

Historically, inequities in mathematics education have resulted in mathematics classrooms that do not support all students, and particularly students from marginalized backgrounds. Efforts to transform mathematics classrooms to be culturally responsive, sustaining, and justice-oriented have met limited success at scale. It may be that supporting teachers to develop more equitable teaching practices would benefit from a more incremental improvement approach. This article considers how school-based mathematics coaches can support teachers to make incremental shifts toward more equitable instruction. We describe a coaching model designed to include elements of incremental improvement, in which coaches and teachers analyze video against a set of rubrics that delineate equitable teaching practices. Using established routines and structures, coaches and teachers work together to identify and enact small, actionable changes that build toward more ambitious equity-oriented practices. Drawing on pilot data, we articulate how the coaching model both reflects and builds on an improvement approach to professional learning. We argue that while incremental shifts may be insufficient to fully address systemic inequities, they can serve as a meaningful bridge toward larger changes. We conclude with considerations for engaging in equity-oriented incremental improvement work.