Racial-Mathematical Experience: Discourse, Ideology, and Practice

• In Event: 60.038 - Exploring Different Theoretical Frontiers in Mathematics Education Research: Toward an Empowering Mathematical Experience for All

Abstract

In this presentation, drawing on recent empirical and theoretical analyses, the panelists discuss racial-mathematical experiences as a fundamental component of mathematics learning for all students. They explicate these forms of experience by attending to the racial discourses, racial ideologies, and racialized practices that shape them, and discuss how these discourses, ideologies, and practices unfold across several contexts: individual, classroom, and societal.

In addition to offering a conceptualization of racial-mathematical experience, the panelists discuss knowledge production in relation to race and mathematics education. Doing so entails examining the racialized structure of the domain and the relationship of mathematics education as a social project to other kinds of social projects that shape the prevailing racial order—an order that maintains hierarchies of privilege and oppression. Mathematics education is a rich context to explore the convergence and consequences of racial ideologies, discourses, and practices. Recent critical analyses have shown that mathematics education research, for example, is an ideological and material space that facilitates the consumption and reproduction of racial meanings, disparities, and hierarchies (DiME, 2007; Martin, 2009, 2013; Parks & Schmeichel, 2012; Powell, 2002; Shah, 2013; Stinson, 2011). Not only do scholarly interpretations of children’s mathematical behaviors serve to inform societal ideologies, discourses, and beliefs about race, racial categories, abilities, and competence, but also it is the case that race-based societal ideologies, discourses, and beliefs about children from various social groups inform the ways that mathematics education research, policy, and practice are conceptualized and configured in relation to these children (Gutiérrez, 2013; Martin, 2009, 2012; Nasir & Shah, 2011).

Authors

• Danny B. Martin, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Niral Shah, Michigan State University