In this dissertation I explored how two equity-minded African-American teachers cultivate a sense of belonging in their high-school classrooms through their pedagogical choices and how African-American students perceive these efforts as affecting their overall class engagement and academic motivation. Using a qualitative case study, I focused on equity minded African-American teachers, and African-American students in their classrooms, to capture the impact of the sociocultural-political-institutional context on African American students’ sense of belonging. I employed critical race theory (CRT) and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in tandem with qualitative racial identity development theory (RIT) measures (Boston & Warren, 2017) to reconstitute sense of belonging into a sense of critical belonging for African-American students. Critical belonging entails looking at systemic, institutional, and/or interpersonal factors that impact belonging based on what African-American students need in order to thrive and feel respected. Overall, this study found that employing criticality through racial realism, challenging dominant ideology (for example anti-Blackness and race neutrality within curriculum and teacher training), the cultivation of counter spaces, employing intersectionality, disrupting property of whiteness, and creating institutional forms of support that is intentional in centering and supporting critical and intersectional understandings of race, anti-Blackness, and African American identity were found to support belonging for African American students.

Algebra I is considered a “gatekeeper course” as it is required for students to gain access to higher-level coursework. 80% of K-12 students are eligible to take Algebra I in eighth grade, yet only 24% of eighth graders actually take the course. Black students are even less likely than their peers to be enrolled in Algebra I in the eighth grade, which ultimately impacts their math options in high school. The purpose of this critical race mixed-methods (CRMM) study is to demonstrate how tracking policies and inequitable access to high-quality and culturally relevant math teachers, and curriculum act as mechanisms that push Black students out of the STEM pipeline by influencing their options before they even make it to high school. In this convergent critical mixed methods study (QUAN + QUAL) the researcher collected and analyzed qualitative interviews with 21 Black high school students and three years of student transcript data for 1,561 Black seniors in one K-12 public school district in southern California. Ultimately, this project seeks to determine which variables contribute to the likelihood that a Black student is enrolled in a course “Beyond IM3” by their senior year of high school. My hope is that this study will help researchers understand the limited racial diversity in STEM fields, while also situating math as one of the major deterrents of Black students’ interest and persistence in STEM. This research could be impactful for developing systems of multilevel support for Black students in STEM classrooms and could serve as an impetus for changes in math curriculum, policy, and teaching practices.

Some researchers believe that students of color are not achieving at high levels in various school subjects compared to their White counterparts. Scholars suggest that this academic discrepancy results from systemic or structural inequities (Acosta, 2007; Capper, 2021; Covell, 2009; Howard, 2013; Jones, 2018; Nasir & Al-Amini, 2006). Brunvand and Byrd (2011) suggest that low engagement and motivation occur when students reach high school. Further, Toshalis and Nakkula (2012) assert that adolescent-aged students lack motivation due to a lack of intrinsic reward. Some scholars believe that the academic success of students of color hinges on the ability of the curriculum to allow them to experience adequate cultural and social identity development (Jones, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b; Milner, 2005). This study examines how English Language Arts (ELA) teachers practice culturally relevant pedagogy and how these practices affect students' cultural identity development and engagement. The literature review highlights CID's importance in schools, provides a deep dive into CRP (its history and implementation), and why it is the chosen framework for this study. It will examine how CID, CRP, its tenets (academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness), and student engagement interact to support students of color. The methods chapter overviews how the study was performed (observations, interviews, focus group meetings, and artifact collection). Once all data were collected, there was a lengthy analysis process where the researcher looked at the data to determine the most vivid findings. The two results chapters break down the most pressing findings from teacher and student interviews and focus groups. Finally, the discussion chapter ties all information together to discuss the most significant findings.