Research shows that students’ mathematics knowledge is tied to their cultural practices, and that students perform better on tasks that are linked to their everyday experiences (Thanheiser and Koestler, 2021). In American schools, mathematics tasks are often placed in a real-world context that White, middle-class students are familiar with, but racial and ethnic minority students may not be (Tilleczek and MacDonald, 2022). The lack of connection between school mathematics and student everyday lives diminishes student interest in mathematics as early as in upper elementary grades (Putwain et al., 2018). This has an even larger impact on students from sociocultural groups who on average lag behind their peers (Edwards and Parada, 2022).

Schools need teachers who are aware of students’ cultural norms and experiences in order to influence their learning. However, the notion of culturally responsive teaching does not always resonate with teachers, and when it does, they do not know how to teach their subjects from that pedagogical stance (Ladson-Billings, 2000). Culturally relevant pedagogy could address these areas of concern. However, few tools are available to explicitly support teachers’ development of culturally relevant pedagogy competencies within their daily planning and implementing of mathematics lessons (Mark and Id-Deen, 2022).

There is increasing recognition in relation to the K–12 new standards in New York (NYSED, 2020) that introducing robot coding to children as early as kindergarten is desirable in developing students’ computational thinking and digital fluency (Angeli and Valanides, 2019). Integrating robot coding into mathematics instruction in elementary school can help make this subject more engaging and relevant to students (Zhang et al., 2021). Supporting teachers in combining coding with culturally relevant pedagogy into standards-based mathematics classrooms has potential to improve students’ content knowledge and attitudes towards mathematics. Such integrations are challenging, and they require professional development that engages teachers as co-designers to develop their knowledge, skills, confidence and sense of ownership (Kelter et al., 2021; Potvin et al., 2023). However, there are very few studies, if any, that examine how involving teachers in the co-design of culturally relevant robot-coding mathematics activities might influence their cultural competency.

To address this challenge, we developed a professional development programme that engaged teachers in co-designing (with researchers) robot-coding mathematics activities, linked to everyday interests and culturally informed prior knowledge of Black and Latinx students in urban elementary classrooms. In this article, we report findings related to the influence of this professional development programme on teachers’ cultural competencies in mathematics pedagogy.

Traditional approaches to teaching mathematics have been solely objective and culturally neutral (Matthews and López, 2019). The majority of mathematics teachers today continue to provide instruction that discounts students’ cultural and linguistic strengths and to exclude diverse students in their learning process (Celedón-Pattichis et al., 2018). Mathematics teachers’ cultural awareness impacts their perspectives on students’ mathematical abilities, as well as their approach to instruction (Walker, 2012). There is a demand for culturally competent teachers who develop sociocultural contexts for teaching and learning mathematics that can maximise student learning potential (Abdulrahim and Orosco, 2020).

Teachers need professional development opportunities to develop their own cultural competence and to recognise that mathematics education does not occur in isolation of sociocultural context (Nasir et al., 2008). Culturally competent mathematics teachers can bridge the divide between home and school with culturally responsive mathematics teaching practices that provide an instructional context for students that is supportive, engaging and challenging (Abdulrahim and Orosco, 2020). They can capitalise on students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge and use these strengths as a platform to foster higher-level thinking skills (Gay, 2018). They can foster student engagement and agency by creating a learning context that responds to students’ social, emotional and cognitive needs (Hammond, 2015). Culturally competent mathematics teachers can also provide mathematics instruction that challenges students to think critically and prepare them to use mathematics as an analytical tool (Williams et al., 2016). Mathematics education researchers define culturally responsive mathematics pedagogy (CRMP) to include three components: (1) developing critical mathematics thinking; (2) building on students’ informal mathematics knowledge, and cultural and experiential knowledge; and (3) orienting to students’ culture and experience (Averill et al., 2009). Integrating these elements of CRMP into teaching requires appropriate disposition, knowledge and skills.

Our study is framed by sociocultural theories of learning that define learning as experiential, situated and contextual. Mathematics knowledge in the situated perspective is understood as being co-constituted in a community within a context. It is the community and context in which the student learns mathematics that significantly impacts how the student uses and understands mathematics (Boaler, 2000). In this project, teachers co-designed a supplementary mathematics curriculum titled ‘Birds and Bots: B-squared’, situated in a culturally relevant problem-based learning environment. Our project therefore provided teachers with participatory learning experiences through the lens of two frameworks: culturally relevant pedagogy and design thinking (Rinke et al., 2016).

This case study explored the influence of the professional development programme on teachers’ cultural competencies, and it was guided by the following research questions:

How does co-designing culturally relevant robot-coding activities influence teachers’ perceptions of and competencies in CRMP?

Focus group interview revealed that Deja initially distinguished between bias at the individual level and institutional racism (RB) through her perceptions of her students’ needs: ‘Because [of] our kids’ demographic. They need so much assistance.’ She also linked learning gaps to students’ low reading comprehension that had a direct influence on mathematics achievement (RB): ‘Cuz we found a lot of gaps last year … what I would say overall the issue is, comprehension. If you can comprehend in reading, then you’re pretty OK for the most part with math.’ Deja then continued to acknowledge student difficulties in mathematics performance (SM): ‘If they’re lacking in comprehension, then when it comes time to solve word problems, they’re trying to figure out, “I need to add … I don’t know if I need to subtract. I don’t know if this is a one-step or a two-step problem.”’

Deja demonstrated knowledge of her students’ culture (SC) when describing how her students perceived mathematics as being ‘game-like’, and how this attraction could help students engage with mathematics: ‘They definitely have an affinity toward math, more toward math than towards reading, and math becomes like a game to them.’ Deja further described how students may experience different learning engagement with game-like mathematics, demonstrating her respect for student differences (SD). Deja’s understanding of her students’ interest in games is reflected in contexts of activities co-designed by her and Sharon, which included themes related to Lego, Pokémon and Minecraft.

While Deja worried about integration of the robot-coding activity with the standards-based curriculum, she indicated that successful integration of these activities in mathematics was possible and promising, which reflects Deja’s thoughtfulness about teaching and the long-term development of her students: ‘I would hope that it’d be different because it’ll be like, you know, this is a benefit long term. This is what we are looking [for], this is where we’re heading.’ However, Deja was concerned about how school expectations and norms (SS) may limit culturally responsive instruction with robot coding. Within such school restrictions, Deja describes what needs to be clear for her (and other teachers) to better develop their own cultural lens (OL). She mentions how teachers need to understand the materials presented to them, and what to expect to better prepare and implement these activities.

Five months later, during an individual interview, Deja mentioned how professional development influenced her perceptions and attitudes toward her own mathematics learning and instruction, indicating development of her own cultural lens (OL):

The workshops have been definitely helpful. I do feel that they are, I guess, stretching or expanding my thinking as far as like what math could look like in the classroom and just going from the traditional way of doing math to making it more hands-on, more engaging with the Finch, and just everything that we’re learning.

Similar to Deja, at the beginning of the project, Sharon demonstrated a variety of competencies in understanding student culture (SC), repeatedly stating that students ‘enjoy working with manipulatives and hands-on activities’. She also emphasised the importance of bringing real-world connections into the classroom (RW), commenting that ‘it [mathematics] needs to be brought to their attention more of how it’s used in the real world or how it applies to their life’. At the same time, she demonstrated some deficit perspectives about her students, blaming students for their low academic performance (RB): ‘Many students … don’t really have a focus on mathematics. … things that you would think that they would know, even at such a small age, they don’t have it, you know?’ Sharon’s comments during the group interview also demonstrated her perception of a lack of attention to mathematics in the families of her students (PMC): ‘you get an aunt, uncle, whoever comes over, they’re giving you money … math is everywhere, but they [students] don’t recognise it or their attention is not brought to it’. While Sharon pointed out connections between student experiences with money at home (SC) and mathematics they learn in class, she did not recognise an opportunity to help students make this connection.

When discussing the challenges of integrating robot-coding activities into the standards-based curriculum, Sharon also referred to strict school policy on scheduling and time spent on specific subjects (SS): ‘this programme sounds wonderful, but when you start to implement it in the requirements of the programme versus the requirements of the building, there can be a, you know, conflict’. She also had difficulty imagining how robot-coding activities could support student learning of the required curriculum (SS), as evident from her comments:

I guess I’m still trying to see how it fits into the curriculum. Cuz I mean we looked at places, OK, maybe we can do it here, but how, what does that look like? … How do we use this to actually teach math to strengthen their skills in math?

To facilitate the co-design process, the researchers designed an activity-planning template. In addition to common elements of mathematical tasks, such as objective, materials and procedure, the template also included several components unique to the B-squared activities: developing a scenario, incorporating a mathematical prompt and providing reflection questions for students. Scenarios, mathematical situations to be explored using the Finch robot, were to be engaging and of interest to students. For each scenario and accompanying mathematical prompt and reflection questions, teachers were to consider demand, relevance and agency, which are characteristic of rich, culturally relevant mathematical tasks (Figure 1). These three concepts, incorporated into the activity-planning template, and the corresponding rubric (Table 3) supported the teachers in the co-design process.

Deja and Sharon completed four activities in February, five in April, eight in May and eight in June. These activities were assessed using the CRMP rubric. Figure 3 shows the average monthly scores for demand, relevance and agency for these activities.

As seen in Figure 3, all activities included scenarios that were relevant to the students, representing teachers’ competency in student culture. The demand scores that indicate teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics fluctuated, as teachers often used closed-ended problems that did not include meaningful explorations for students. These also reflect that teachers’ ability to create high-demand scenarios depended on their facility and familiarity with the topic. The agency component was the most difficult aspect of culturally relevant pedagogy for the teachers.

To examine changes in teachers’ competencies in designing culturally relevant tasks for Finch explorations, we analysed two activities, Our Lego Balcony and Family Portrait, developed in February and June 2023, respectively. Our Lego Balcony is part of a themed unit, Our Lego Apartment, which uses Lego bricks to build distinct features of New York City apartments. The choice of using Lego bricks reflected Deja’s interest in connecting mathematics to toys, games and surrounding environments familiar to students. This activity was designed to help students explore arithmetic properties using area models. Deja and Sharon crafted the following scenario: ‘Yeamin measures the dimensions of his balcony (12 metres by 5 metres) and uses this to find the area of his balcony. His friend Malachi’s balcony has the same area but different measurements. What could his measurements be?’

Apartments with balconies are familiar features to students living in New York City. The balcony sizes in the scenario – 12 metres (approximately 39 feet) – may seem somewhat contrived, but it represents real New York City apartment balconies that run the width of the building with partitions that fit different apartment details. The open-ended nature of the question (possible measurements of Malachi’s balcony) and the desire to have multiple solutions to the question (that is, different dimensions that would yield the same area of 60 square metres) allow for rich discussions. Using the CRMP rubric, this task scored medium on demand, noting that the task was grade appropriate, and that the scenario and mathematical question would be understandable to students. The activity had an open-ended nature, but the posed reflection question at the end was simply ‘What is the area?’, which was a missed opportunity and kept the mathematical demand level from being scored as high. The scenario reflected students’ knowledge and experiences (that is, familiarity with New York City high-rise apartment balconies). It scored high for relevance. The attention to agency was missing from this scenario, resulting in a low score (demand: 2; relevance: 3; agency: 1).

The second activity, Family Portrait, was developed in June within a Cultural Arts Project theme. It addressed the mathematical topic of problem-solving with perimeters: ‘Jason and Celeste are creating a [rectangular] frame for their family portrait. Celeste lets her big brother, Jason, paint the set of 8-inch parallel lines purple, while Celeste paints the 4-inch parallel lines yellow. What is the perimeter of the frame they have created?’

In this activity, students coded the Finch robot to draw geometric shapes and examine its properties. The details reflect Sharon’s desire to link mathematics to students’ families, draw on familial connections, and collaborate and share through creating a family portrait frame. Teachers thought carefully about the properties of geometric shapes and their dimensions, and how students might recognise mathematical shortcuts to adding up the four sides of the rectangular frame. This was evidenced in the reflection question for this task: ‘If the shape was a square instead of a rectangle and one side measured 4 inches, how could you find the perimeter?’ Therefore, the demand and relevance of this task were evaluated as high. Agency was also attended to in a meaningful way, as Celeste demonstrates empathetic behaviour, engaging her sibling in creating the frame. This task received a perfect score of 9.

These two activities showed Sharon and Deja developing capabilities of connecting rich mathematics and culturally relevant pedagogy in such a way that mathematics content was included and not obscured by the task itself. This is reflected in increased mathematical demand opportunities described in the two tasks. Furthermore, it should be emphasised that teachers are not unidimensional in their beliefs about their students and their potential. While teachers’ views can sometimes be limited when it comes to perspectives about students’ lives, support from their families, and communities for mathematical thinking, we also saw teachers’ understanding of students’ strengths, and how this could be leveraged for student engagement.

As the year progressed, we observed deeper understanding and ability to reference students’ lives in the design of mathematical tasks, in ways that were affirmative and culturally centred, and not essentialist or stereotypical. Despite teachers’ continuing concern about the influence of school structures (controlled by administrators) on this work, their efforts to infuse technology and culturally relevant pedagogy into the school mathematics curriculum, their high engagement and continuous growth in competencies, both in understanding their students and in developing rich mathematical tasks, were evident.

The objective of this study was to develop teachers’ cultural competencies and deepen their understanding of CRMP as they co-designed culturally relevant robot-coding mathematics activities with researchers in a year-long professional development programme. In the earlier stages of professional development, teachers showed understanding of students’ cultural background and experiences, but were uncertain how to integrate culturally relevant pedagogy into their mathematics curriculum. Early co-designed activities lacked connections between culturally relevant pedagogy and mathematics content, and teachers’ dependence on researchers to make this connection was frequent. Existing literature similarly suggests teacher struggles in making connections between culturally relevant pedagogy and mathematics (Leonard, 2018). In addition, teachers initially saw the robot as a separate tool, and had difficulty connecting robot coding to the targeted mathematical concepts (Silk et al., 2010). Literature suggests that subject content knowledge in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, in combination with higher teacher self-efficacy and confidence levels is crucial for successful implementations of educational robotics activities in classrooms (Dorotea et al., 2021). Similarly, our finding about difficulty in connecting robot coding to mathematical concepts suggests teachers’ needs for more time and support from professional development programmes in building content knowledge, skills and confidence to use robot coding in K–12 mathematics classrooms.

Over time, the influence of the co-designing process became evident. Teachers showed a deeper understanding of their students’ cultures and how to integrate culturally relevant pedagogy into mathematics activities. Teachers grew familiar with the key attributes of the robot, perceiving the Finch robot as a mathematical tool, and utilising its physical and coding features to design student tasks that focused on the meanings of the mathematical concepts. They also started to pay more attention to developing their own cultural lens, and focused less on constraints from school structures.

This study explored a new approach to professional development by co-designing and implementing culturally relevant robot-coding activities into standards-based mathematics. Doing so has led to the development of elementary school teachers’ cultural competencies, deeper understanding of CRMP and their students’ cultures, stronger agency and ability to integrate culturally responsive pedagogy into their mathematics curriculum. Implications include knowledge of how teachers’ cultural competencies are affected by professional development experiences; the importance of co-design work to help teachers make connections across innovative pedagogies (that is, robot coding and culturally relevant teaching in elementary mathematics classrooms); and providing a framework for facilitating authentic connections between culturally relevant pedagogy and mathematics, a discipline where concrete examples for teaching are largely missing from the discourse and professional literature. Next steps will be to see how teachers’ cultural competencies and culturally relevant pedagogy in mathematics may continue to evolve over the years, and across different early elementary school grade levels, and how that can influence students’ mathematics performance and interests.