Recognizing the Puzzle: Knowledge Creation in a Social Justice Math Class

• In Event: 68.061 - Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 68.061-18 - Queer Theory in the Classroom

Abstract

The author shares findings from a post-critical ethnography of a middle school social justice math course, focusing on one theme: recognizing the puzzle. This theme showed students were expanding their perceptions of the world, math, and social justice and asking questions of their knowledge. Queer pedagogy was used in the course design, allowing researchers to remain flexible and the curriculum to be student-centered. Results show students learned social justice is complicated, math can examine social problems, and they gained capacity for critical thinking. Findings can inform future studies using queer pedagogy in classrooms and also show that queer pedagogy in practice goes beyond the tenets in the literature of questioning norms and binaries to questioning knowledge and knowledge production.

Author

• Summer Pennell, Truman State University