Queering Mathematics: Disrupting Binary Oppositions in Mathematics Education

• In Event: 21.019 - Queer Disruptions With/in Mathematical Identity: Postintersectionality and Mathematics Education

Abstract

Objectives/purposes. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate taken for granted meanings of gender in mathematics education.
Perspectives / theoretical framework. Working from the premise of gender as socially and discursively produced, we illuminate the construction of gender and of mathematics in schools to illustrate how mathematics operates as a White, heteronormative discipline.
Methods, techniques, modes of inquiry. This paper draws on queer and poststructuralist theories as an analytical tool (Butler, 2011; Foucault, 1980).
Data, evidence, objects, materials. This theoretical paper incorporates n=11 articles to make an argument for disrupting binary oppositions in mathematics education.
Results, substantiated conclusions. We argue for the significance of queer mathematics practices and provide a framework to help prepare mathematics educators to aggressively name, interrogate, and challenge assumptions about mathematical ability based on dominant ideologies of masculinity, whiteness, and “smartness” that perpetuate mathematics education. The paper concludes with recommendations of instructional modules that disrupt binary approaches during mathematics teacher preparation.
Scientific or scholarly significance. While mathematics education over the last fifty years has attended to gender more than other issues of equity, this attention can be characterized as a discourse of binaries (Rubel 2016; Damarin & Erchick, 2010; Esmonde, 2011; Glasser &; Smith, 2008; Leyva, 2017). Mathematics and being good at mathematics requires gendered identity work that serves as sites of struggle for women and gender non-conforming populations. (Battey & Leyva, 2016; Kosciw, Greytak, Palmer, & Boesen, 2014; Leyva, 2017; Mendick, 2006, Rands, 2009).

Authors

• Cathery Yeh, Chapman University

• Laurie Rubel, Brooklyn College - CUNY