Beyond Technical Fixes: Reconsidering Equity Sticks and Expanding Notions of Equitable Teaching

We explore how a professional development program enabled educators to stretch their ideas related to (a) equitable participation in elementary mathematics classrooms, and (b) their district's policy aimed at promoting equitable participation. Our analysis revealed that participants’ views shifted as they engaged with others’ sense-making, grounded in their observation of mathematics instruction as it unfolded in real time, about equity and the distribution of opportunities to learn. Our findings highlight how collective inquiry into tensions between policy, theory, and the mechanisms of teaching and learning can create fissures- opportunities to shift educators’ views on and understandings of equity.