MOSAICS Lab 

Our work is grounded in the unwavering, unshakable truth that Black, Indigenous, and Latinx/é students have multiple kinds of brilliances and skills that are undervalued and underutilized in mathematics learning spaces. 

We also know that teaching is a powerful force - and can be a tool for liberation or a tool of injustice. We believe that the work of teaching for liberation involves:

• • • • • • learning the nuances of the individual mathematical brilliances, students bring to their unique local mathematical communities, 

          • designing learning environments that support students to consistently see their own assets and brilliance, along with those of their peers, and

          • using tasks, routines & practices, and assessments that affirm and expand students’ brilliances for more ambitious and humanizing mathematical communities.

Through our initial work within the EF+Math Program, we have seen promising evidence that expanding teachers' understandings of executive function (EF) skills in math learning can serve as a pathway to achieving these liberatory teaching practices.  The MOSAICS Lab continues this effort by creating materials and tools to support educators in developing their understanding of EF skills as strengths students bring to math learning. 

Executive function (EF) skills are cognitive processes that all students have, which they use to manage and direct their learning, attention, and behavior. Research shows that EF skills are context-dependent, which means that how they are used and developed depend on the contexts students are in, the goals they set, and the other cognitive tasks they are managing. 

However, EFs have historically been a topic of interest in psychology-related fields and primarily addressed in education as part of learning support services students may receive in schools, which has led to the perpetuation of deficit-oriented patterns of labeling student abilities and treating EFs as fixed individual traits, not develop-able skills. We intentionally and explicitly frame EF skills as strengths to disrupt these deficit narratives around EFs in learning. 

Considering EF skills as strengths allows us to notice the individual and varied ways EF skills are developed and used across contexts - including in different cultures, environments, and academic topics. MOSAIC Lab focuses on expanding teachers’ proficiencies with seeing the cultural and linguistic executive functioning strengths Black and Latinx/é students bring to mathematics classrooms and developing skills for being able to use these assets in ways that support students with engaging in ambitious mathematics tasks.