Poster #13 - The Lives of Elementary Math Specialists: Interrogating Sacred Stories, Developing Identities

• In Event: 25.087 - MTCC Poster Session Four
  In Poster Session: 25.087-2 - Teachers' Lives and Lived Experiences Poster Session

Abstract

This study investigates the lives of individual elementary math specialists (EMS) as they negotiate their work and lives in schools, often spanning the boundaries among the discursive communities and social, cultural, historical, and political contexts in which they are/have been situated. Findings indicate the identities of math specialists are influenced by their autobiographies and relationships and are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed as they interact within their contexts and in the borderlands of sometimes competing Discourses. The ways an EMS positions herself and is positioned by others contributes to how power is produced and enacted, how cultural/discursive tools are used, and how participants (math specialists, teachers, and administrators) within a particular Discourse community take up/modify available identities and practices.

Authors

• Johnna Bolyard, West Virginia University

• Sharon B. Hayes, West Virginia University