Robin Martin

This article explores how multicultural children’s literature for elementary classrooms can be leveraged to develop students’ mathematical understanding and foster positive math identities, particularly for multilingual learners. By integrating diverse stories into mathematics instruction, teachers can create culturally relevant contexts that invite meaningful problem-solving in tandem with rich mathematical discourse. This article features a classroom vignette in which a third-grade teacher uses Too Many Tamales to engage students in an equal share task, demonstrating how students' cultural experiences enhance their conceptual mathematical understanding. Several pedagogical strategies are highlighted as effective ways to support mathematical reasoning and understanding through authentic mathematical discourse. Drawing from classroom practice and supported by research, the authors advocate for the use of multicultural texts to provide meaningful opportunities for students to connect their lived experiences to mathematical ideas, empowering them to see themselves as capable mathematicians.

This conceptual paper presents a framework for supporting multilingual students’ mathematical discourse through teacher professional development grounded in design-based research (DBR). Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, the Integrated Language and Mathematics Project (ILMP) was co-developed with elementary educators to promote integrated instruction that simultaneously advances students’ mathematical understanding, language development, and cultural identity. The ILMP framework centers around three instructional pillars: attention to language, attention to mathematical thinking, and cultural responsiveness. Through collaborative inquiry cycles, educators engaged as learners, contributors, and designers of practice, iteratively enacting and reflecting on instructional strategies rooted in students’ linguistic and cultural assets. Teachers implemented discussion-rich mathematical tasks, supported by language scaffolds and culturally relevant contexts, to foster students’ mathematical reasoning and communication. This approach was particularly impactful for multilingual learners, whose language use and problem-solving strategies were both valued and elevated. This paper also discusses the opportunities and challenges of DBR and research–practice partnerships, including flexibility in implementation and navigating district-level priorities. Insights underscore the importance of practitioner agency, asset-based pedagogy, and the co-construction of professional learning. The ILMP framework offers a scalable, equity-oriented model for improving integrated language and mathematics instruction in diverse elementary classrooms and beyond.

This article explores the collective practice of teacher professional growth. A Delphi study method was used to identify a set of high-leverage practices for building teacher collective capacity for instructional improvement. The Delphi findings established a degree of empirical evidence for an initial set of collective practices, and offer observable indicators of and strategies for developing those practices. We offer these findings as suggestions for moving beyond the paradigm of expert-driven professional learning for developing individual practices to teacher-driven models that develop group practices for collective growth as a means of achieving greater diffusion of best practices.

Purpose: Organizational characteristics and systemic structures that prioritize and resource teacher professional growth and collaboration are central to the role of districts in developing the ongoing professional growth of teachers. Yet, a key challenge facing districts is a lack of existing systemic structures to support professional growth to foster large-scale instructional improvement. The purpose of this paper is to explore how an organizational resourcing model might be used to build districts’ collective capacity to implement the cornerstones of a professional growth system.Design/methodology/approach: An explanatory case study, in the context of a partnership between a university-based intermediary and three California school districts, is used to illustrate how districts applied a theory of resourcing as a sustainable capacity-building approach.Findings: The findings of this paper demonstrate that, to varying degrees, participating districts were able to enact elements of professional growth systems through a recursive interaction of schema shifts, resource use, and intentional actions, supporting a practice-based theory of organizational resourcing. While university intermediaries can both mediate and enable the success of locally designed professional growth systems through a supported resourcing model, the key to sustaining change efforts are cross-role organizational schema shifts and actions taken to operationalize underutilized existing, latent resources.Research limitations/implications: Case studies do have limitations including not being able to make generalizations from the findings and conclusions.Originality/value: The corpus of research on educational reform and organizational learning in educational research situates the school as the organizational unit of change. This study contributes to the research by elevating districts as the lever of organizational change for resourcing teacher professional growth systems.