Building Robust Mathematics Identities: The (Re)Living and (Re)Telling Stories of Black Male Middle School & High School Mathematics Teachers

Many deficit narratives and discourses surround Black male students and educators regarding mathematics. Moreover, only a few success stories exist highlighting the mathematical accomplishments of Black males as pupils and Black men pedagogically. Employing narrative inquiry (e.g., Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, 2006) as a methodology, within a critical race theoretical framework (e.g., Tate, 1997), this study explores the mathematics identities of four African American male middle and high school mathematics teachers and identifies how inschool and out-of-school learning experiences (as students) influenced the development of their mathematics identities and how they impact their classroom norms and instructional practices (as teachers). I administered a demographic survey, requested artifacts, and facilitated two conversations with each participant. In doing so, I documented the (re)lived and (re)told stories of these participants and identified themes of commonality that have implications for policy makers, education stakeholders, and researchers. An analysis of the data revealed four common themes amongst the participants: (a) an affinity for mathematics at an early age, that helped the participants build robust mathematics identities; (b) as students, racism did not have a negative impact on their confidence or ability to make mathematics meaningful in bettering the conditions of their lives (c) each of the educators embodied at least one of the three performance teaching styles, enforcer, negotiator, and playful (Brown, 2009) and employed them in their classroom norms and instructional practices; and (d) each teacher believed that building effective relationships with students is influential to the implementation of their successful classroom norms and instructional practices. Their mathematical resiliency and brilliance (Leonard & Martin, 2013) was evident in the narratives of their times as students and further progressed into their teaching careers. These findings imply that education stakeholders must be aware of the otherness (Berry et al., 2011) that African American males bring to the mathematics learning environment through excellence, as their racialized and gendered existence warrants a critical awareness. Also, mathematics educators must be cognizant of how the smallest of positive or negative racialized micro mathematical moments, can have major influence on the macro mathematical identities (Wood, 2013) of African American male students.