Practical Access Podcast

S12 E9: Empowering Inclusive Math Education: Strategies for Equity and Engagement

• Season 12 • Episode 9

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In this episode of Practical Access, hosts Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines welcome Dr. Sarah Bush, Lockheed Martin Eminent Scholar at the University of Central Florida and co-author of The Math Pact series. The conversation dives into strategies for making math education accessible, equitable, and engaging for all students, including those with disabilities. 

Dr. Bush discusses the synergy between high-leverage practices (HLPs), mathematics, and effective teaching practices (ETPs), emphasizing the importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in both general and special education. She advocates for asset-based approaches to teaching, highlighting the need to leverage students’ strengths and avoid harmful deficit labels. 

Key insights include: 

  • Avoiding Deficit Labels: Shift focuses to students’ strengths and build on them to support areas of growth. 
  • Equity in Math Education: Replace rigid teaching rules with flexible, meaningful practices, like emphasizing the true meaning of the equal sign and avoiding ineffective keyword strategies in problem-solving. 
  • Creating Positive Math Experiences: Teachers should cultivate an open, contextual approach to math, encouraging engagement and reducing negative associations. Dr. Bush stresses the importance of never framing oneself as “not a math person” in front of students. 

Dr. Bush also reflects on what makes an inclusive math classroom truly exceptional—empowered, confident teachers who foster a caring and nurturing environment, set high expectations, and provide tools for students to succeed. 

This episode is packed with practical strategies for educators looking to create inclusive, effective math classrooms that inspire confidence and success in all learners. 

We love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Twitter (@Accesspractical) or Instagram (@Practical_Access). 

Resources:  

Sarah Bush's Bio: https://ccie.ucf.edu/person/sarah-bush/ 

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics: https://www.nctm.org/  

Math Pact Series: https://www.corwin.com/landing-pages/the-math-pact?srsltid=AfmBOorx3GL6RwftuSyi3uY6dwF96tn9h_QvrDpPNwoNrO9Da0RpG366 

NCTM and CEC Position Statement on Teaching Mathematics to Students with Disabilities: https://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Standards_and_Positions/Position_Statements/NCTM-CEC-Disabilities-Position-Statement-December2024.pdf  

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Music.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to Practical Access. I'm Lisa Dieker

Rebecca Hines:

AND I'm Rebecca Hines and Lisa. I'm excited about today's guest in part because of their commitment to STEM skill acquisition for all students, but also, you know, just a career committed to preparing teachers with skills that can support all students. Who do we have?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, so we're really excited to have a really good friend of both of ours and a colleague, Sarah Bush, who is a professor and the Lockheed Martin Eminent Scholar at the University of Central Florida, and the author with Karen Karp, we had earlier on a book called The Math Pact. That's a series, and we'll be highlighting some of that. But welcome Sarah. We're so excited to have you with us.

Sarah Bush:

Thank you both so much for having me, and I'm just so excited to spend just a little bit of time with two of my favorite people.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, with that, I'm going to kick it up with the first question. And I think one of the things, Sarah, that you've always done so well, and I I really appreciate, is you're an advocate for just kids. It doesn't matter if it's special ed or general ed. Can you talk to us just a little bit about this high leverage practice movement, and kind of the differentiation for kids with disabilities, and kind of your world of how you see NCTM, HLT, HLPs, and special ed and that world kind of merging in the work that you do?

Sarah Bush:

Sure. Thanks so much, Lisa. Um, you know, when I think about the high leverage practices, you know, and I know we've even had some past doctoral students focus on those that we've worked on together, you know, I really don't see them. I see them fitting seamlessly with much of the work put out by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, in particular, when I think about the high leverage practices, and then I think about NCTMs eight mathematics teaching practices which are also high leverage practices, you know, I think the thing they have in common is that, you know, they're both essential. You know, every practice in there is essential. And, you know, I was even kind of reviewing the high leverage practices document, and they said something in there that I really loved, which was that they are so important that skillfully executing them is fundamental to effective teaching. And I feel that way about both sets. And to me, your good teaching practice is good teaching practice. And so much of what's effective in the special ed literature, you know, around UDL and other things, absolutely we should be leaning to in our general education content areas, you know, those of us who focus on that as well. So I just see them as synergistic. And, you know, really fitting together very

Rebecca Hines:

You know, Sarah, I love what you're saying here, nicely. because across my career, what I see and when I'm preparing teachers, doing professional development, you know, with teachers in schools, etc, is that I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there's sometimes just one point difference between whether a student is labeled as a student with disabilities. And yet, I think that's what resonates, you know, to some people, especially I found in the area of, you know, math, to be honest, you know, we have this idea of what's appropriate for a certain types of kids. So in your professional work, what? What are some of the basic premises that you try to explain to teachers about this idea of supporting every learner you know with their own individual abilities?

Sarah Bush:

You know, you brought up something I think is so important. And I think it goes back to the idea that you know, historically, we have assigned labels to students and many of the and I'm not talking about a student formally labeled as having IEP, but just in general, we use these deficit labels often to describe groups of students. These are, you know, and they're, they are labels that carry such long term negative effects that, you know, we actually talk about this in NCTMs Catalyzing Change series, which I was the lead writer of the middle school volume, and we talk about no longer using deficit labels to describe students. And you know, what you mentioned isn't exactly the same thing, but one thing that I think we you know, that's so important for us all to shift to, is really focusing on students strengths, and how we can take the strengths that individual students bring, which are very individualized, their strengths and their life experiences and all all the pieces of their backgrounds, and really leverage those as entry points to build up their areas of growth. All of our learners have areas of growth. And, you know, another thing I think about all the time that should just apply to all learners is when we think about the idea of scaffolding, you know, we, you know, the whole purpose of scaffolding. You two are the experts of this. But it's, you know, when I think about it a very general sense, but it's removing barriers to learning, but not removing the learning opportunity, and not diminishing the cognitive demand of the learning opportunity, but rather making that opportunity fully accessible for each learner. And to me, that applies to all learners, whether they are labeled as a student receiving special education services or not?

Lisa Dieker:

Oh, I love that. I love the asset based and I love

Sarah Bush:

I love that.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, it's such a simple change, but I think it's Sarah that I have a school that that's actually they're not a big change. I think that's what what your work is. And so allowed to use kids names anymore labels. They have to use I'm going to ask you about two different pieces of work, kids names, and they have to start with the strength before because, you know, I've always adored everything you've written they talk about a deficit. So if they're. and followed your work, and you're thinking, because I just really think it's from a math mindset of access and equity. And the other teachers you know, should really think about that if they if they read your work. And so one of the things that I know you have a math pact that I would love to hear about that, because I know it so asset based. But I'm also going to go retro a little bit on the 13 rules that never expire, or that, oh, that do expire, that that I find it's one of my favorites. It's a 2014, publication. I know it's free, downloadable. I name that. You know, it's got lots of things, but I'm always curious, like when you're out in schools and imagine I'm a new special ed teacher and you come and watch me. I'm sure you don't take your checklist of 13 things to check them off, but I'm wondering, what are like the most common mistakes as a field we tend to make that maybe we should be thinking about and how maybe the Math Pact could help us move to that next level?

Sarah Bush:

Yeah, you know, when I think, you know, 10,000 foot view on this, you know, I we have just, you know, we have, from our own past mistakes as Karen and Barb and I and as well as working with, you know, hundreds of teachers across so many different states and districts and schools and at the state level. You know, we know I mean a near infinite number of rules that expire, that people have now shared with us, but there are a few that are very universal and really span the grade bands that I would maybe use as a good launching point. And the two that come to mind is the idea of the equal sign is one big one, because so often students think that when you have something as simple as two plus three equals, they tend to think that that equal sign represents the like, here comes the answer, instead of the idea of equality. And we really need to, you know, that's why it's so important to to have different structures of our equations, even in like, the first grade, when students are first introduced, to the equal sign and the notion of that because we want to build flexibility in that thinking, and because the problem is, as soon as we get to two plus three equals some mystery number, a variable plus, you know, one, they don't know what to do with that, and all of their thinking falls apart. So one of the rules that expire is really the idea that people might say two plus two makes four, don't do that. That's a no, no. You just need to use equal and from the start, focus on what the meaning of the equal sign is. Think about the equal sign as a balance, you know, build that up conceptually. So that's one, and then another one I would really love to bring up is not using the ineffective keyword strategy. And we actually have another article that was published specifically on that. I think it was in the either the May 2019 or 2020, issue of teaching children math, but we talk about what to do instead. So what I mean by that is we don't want to teach students things like altogether means add. If you see a word problem, or, um, some always means add, or left always means subtract, because left could mean the left, you know, someone left their backpack behind or something else. And so instead, we, in our article, we provide lots of suggestions, but we don't want to teach this rigid notion of like circling keywords for operations and not real. Instead of building meaning of the context. We instead want students to build meaning the context. And really, the way this relates to the Math Pact is not teaching rules that expire. Is one component of a Math Pact. So the Math Pact is really our extension of the past decade or so of work we've done with this where we've really said, okay, so people, you know, we're on the same page. You know, communities are not teaching roles that expire, but now they need to know what to do instead. And our Math Pact talks about effective alternatives, which are based on deep understanding, such as using multiple representations which aligns so well to UDL. And, you know, having students develop generalizations and patterns for their thinking and math and so really, our Path Pact series really is that how to guide and framework of how to build up coherent instruction within and across grades within a school and a district.

Rebecca Hines:

Sarah, as you were responding, I was really thinking about those, you know, all of the layers to how we develop ideas about math. And I feel like you know that that stage where a child reaches barriers and now it starts to influence how he feels or she feels about math. So do you have ideas or for our audience about you know, how do we avoid building in those negative associations with math for these learners?

Sarah Bush:

I love that question. You know, I and I think the literature tells us a lot on this too. But if I just had to get really practical, I think some of the things I would say would be, first of all, you know, every teacher should make a commitment to themselves so that they will never say in front of students. I wasn't a math person, or I'm not a math person, because we know all children look up to their teachers. And so day one, that has to be the commitment. Everyone is a math person, and everyone can do math. And so I think that's one big one. Another one is we need to be, you know, we need to provide, math needs to be open ended. And I think when we make it very close ended and rigid and inflexible, that's when students start not seeing themselves in it. And so we need to kind of notice and seek out and showcase students different ways of approaching problems. And of course, obviously, when we're doing that, doing that, we're also formatively assessing, which can give us as educators more knowledge about their understanding so we can target better. And then the other, you know, thing that I'm thinking of is we need to make a contextual and that really relates to a lot of my transdisciplinary STEM work, which is really focused on, you know, we want students to see math and everything they do. And so instead of giving them plain problems, we want to give them very contextual scenarios and task and meaning. So they build all this meaning, and they they are excited to do math and interested and engaged.

Lisa Dieker:

So, you know, my final question for you is, you know, I know you've, you've trained some of the best and prepared some of the best teacher leaders in in Central Florida, and really have the chance to take them to that next level, getting their doctorates and working in partnership with the district. I'm curious, when you walk into some of those classrooms, because I know some of those teachers, what would be the two things that you're like, yup, that's the best inclusive math class I've seen? What would be the two things that kind of stand out in your mind over and over again that you've seen in those really good classrooms?

Sarah Bush:

Wow, that is a great. That is an amazing question. I don't know. I mean, sometimes you know when you see it, but part of me thinks that, I think the teacher feeling empowered and confident is a big part of it, right? And our teacher leaders are unbelievable, and I absolutely feel that when I go in there, when I see their teaching, but when they're empowered and confident as educators, that comes through. But then I think that has to be paired with this nurturing and caring atmosphere, right? Because students not just need to feel safe, but in their environment, but they also, you know, need to feel cared about, and that what they say and do matters, and that their teacher is going to do everything to help them succeed, not do it for them, but but give them the tools and opportunities to succeed, and those high expectations are part of that. So those are just a few things. I could probably think of others if I thought about it more. But I love that question.

Lisa Dieker:

No, I think it's a it's it's exactly, and I think you just circled back to where we started that it's all about putting those high leverage practices together and bring teachers in a caring environment. And I thought that was a beautiful answer. Thank you.

Rebecca Hines:

And Sarah, I I particularly like the, you know, the the broad lens with which you can can look at this, so that it in particular, that idea of a benchmark approach, really so that students can build upon their skills without feeling like they are somewhat lesser than if there's their starting places different from their peers. I really love that.

Lisa Dieker:

We thank you for joining us. As always, you had some wonderful insights and some really beautiful nuggets for the field. So thank you again, Sarah, and if you have questions for us, please send us a Tweet@Access Practical or post a question on our Facebook@Practical Access. Thanks.