Widening the Lens: Exceptionality, Knowing and Learning, and Multiple Perspectives

• In Event: Integrating Disability Studies and Critical Mathematics Education; Emerging Perspectives

Abstract

I discuss my experiences as a researcher of children’s mathematical thinking specific to exceptionality. Particularly, I share my widening view of exceptionality through the use of multiple models of disability, utilizing highlights of my previous case study work. I will argue that, in order to gain an authentic picture of an exceptional child, the need to utilize multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives is critical. Utilizing a singular perspective to describe the child’s knowing and learning has the potential to become reductionist and provide only a limited view of the child’s mathematical reality.
Knowing, Learning and the Medical Model of Disability
Historical perspectives on learning differences in mathematics laid the foundations for a medical depiction of difference as innate, neurological impairment (Lewandowsky & Stadelmann, 1908). Over time, the evolution of medical depictions of learning difference became a deficit narrative (Sleeter, 1987). Researchers argued for utilizing intervention procedures to measure improvements in mathematics achievement in accordance with children’s responsiveness to instruction (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2007). By and large, the story of learning difference or impairment as an identifiable and somewhat treatable disability become solidified.
Knowing, Learning, and the Social Model of Disability
Systemic narratives of learning “differences” as “deficits” can lead researchers and educators to make assumptions about children’s abilities, the kinds of mathematics they “need”, and how they could or should experience/access mathematics classrooms (Lewis, 2014). The social model of learning difference positions ability or disability as subjective and contextualized (McDermott, 1993). Put differently, children cannot become disabled on their own. Depending on the context, a child might very well be considered disabled in one classroom and not another (McDermott, 1993). A child could be disabled in one kind of mathematical instruction (Lambert, 2014) but not in another. Contextual factors can work to enable or disable aspects of the child’s unique mathematical knowing and his or her subsequent learning.
Contexts are contributed to by both children and teachers and are mediated by factors such as interactions, school curriculum, culture, district policy, and so forth. For example, a teacher’s reaction to a child with an exceptionality who has supplied a solution that they did not expect may be, “That’s not right.” This response likely reinforces the child possessing the "problem." Yet, another response (e.g., “Say more”) changes the context, opening up space for the child to access the mathematics from his or her own conceptions (NCTM Principles to Action).
I aim to show examples of how content can interplay with the location of the “problem” and the notion of “disability”. I will show instances where utilizing a singular perspective to describe the child’s knowing and learning showed only a partial view of the child’s mathematical reality. I argue for an expansion of research methods and theoretical perspective to depict a holistic account of exceptional children’s mathematics as a conglomeration of internal cognition, interactions with teachers and other children, and lived experiences in the world.

Author

• Jessica Heather Barr-Hunt, North Carolina State University