Layered Positions: Coordinating Institutional and Interactional Analyses of Student Failure in Mathematics

• In Event: 18.061 - Discourse, Identity, and Mathematics Learning

Abstract

Achieving equal educational opportunities is a global imperative that teachers are expected to deliver on, regardless of circumstances. I explore this in the context of a low-track Algebra class, where the teacher uses research-based pedagogy shown to achieve equity. This analysis focuses on Katia, the only student to fail. Using positioning theory, I innovatively draw on interviews, network surveys, and fieldnotes to reconstruct her “failure” as a layering of institutional and interactional positions. By disambiguating nested positions - Katia within a class, within a racially tracked program, within a racially stratified district - we see how students can still be positioned beyond the reach of pedagogical innovations in mathematics.

Author

• Tesha Sengupta-Irving, Vanderbilt University