While the present study contributes to the literature on the potential mechanisms by which teaching quality can promote math identity through math expectancies and task values in both European American and African American students, there are likely several limitations to my work. First, this study only examines sixth grade students. Adolescence covers a large age range so my generalizability to other grades of students is limited. Future research should examine this psychological mechanism in a broad range of adolescents.
Additionally, for each measure, only student perspectives are considered. It may be concerning that teacher practices included in teacher quality are the measures of student perceptions of each teacher practice. There may be a mismatch between student perceptions of teacher practices and the actual presence of teacher practices in the classroom. Furthermore, there may be monomethod bias—the same individual is reporting for all variables and this may influence the estimated associations between constructs. Future research should utilize multiple reporters (e.g., teacher report) or methods (e.g., classroom observation) to measure teacher practices to eliminate potential sources for perception bias. Lastly, although we controlled for students’ prior math achievement, the main psychological constructs (e.g., motivation, math identity) utilized in this study are mainly cross-sectional. Future research should adopt
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longitudinal methodology; for example, analyzing the development of math identity over time may provide more insight into the mechanisms by which teaching quality impacts math identity.
Despite these limitations, this study expands our understanding of math identity development in middle school students. Teachers are crucial for promoting math identity development; specifically, teachers’ use of sensitivity, quality of feedback, and instructional learning formats can impact students’ math identity development through their expectancies and task values. This may be especially important for African American students who are typically stigmatized against in mathematics. This improved understanding of the relations between teaching quality, motivation, and math identity is essential. This can inform math teachers’ teaching practices to promote math motivation, identity, and achievement, not only for all students but also especially for those stigmatized. Schools seeking to improve math
performance, especially in their minority or stereotyped students, should consider professional development seminars to improve the teaching practices of sensitivity, quality of feedback, and instructional learning supports to improve math identity and achievement.
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