A Participatory Turn in Mathematics Education Research: Possibilities and Tensions

• In Event: Expanding/Rupturing Ideologies in Mathematics Teacher Noticing

Abstract

Purposes:
Mathematics education researchers increasingly call for approaches to research that take seriously the values, commitments and voices of the communities for which the research is most consequential (Bullock, 2012; Fine, 2018; Paris & Alim, 2017; Patel, 2016). This stance of working “with”, instead of “for”, the intended communities has emerged in response to decades of research that while aiming to improving learning outcomes and narrowing gaps, has been unable to deeply influence social hierarchies and differential opportunities (Kretchmar & Zeichner, 2016). Additionally, by excluding, de-centering or superficially accounting for the perspectives and experiences of minoritized communities in research and design processes, mathematics education has tended to perpetuate deficit and deficient perspectives of minoritized students and their families -- positioning them as the “outcome” of reform efforts. Bullock (2012) argues that the focus on mathematics teaching and learning apart from the social contexts of mathematics education stems from a desire to protect the status of mathematics education research as a discipline. We follow Bullock and argue that addressing systemic change that works towards the dismantling of the (in)visible racism in mathematics requires research approaches that focus first on building coalitions across stakeholders, and center the perspectives of communities that are most affected by inequities in mathematics education.

Theoretical Framework:
The participatory/cooperative perspective is new paradigm of social science research that contrasts with predominant paradigms (positivist, post-positivist, constructivism, and critical theory) in terms of its ontological and epistemological assumptions (Lincoln, Lynham & Guba, 2011). It is grounded in a commitment to a reality that is co-constructed and transacted in practical meaning-making activities by social actors, in which knowledge is lived and felt by these actors as they attempt to create more just conditions.

Method, technique, modes of inquiry
Participatory approaches cannot be defined through a specific set of practices or guidelines. However, we have identified a number of commitments, which will be explored in detail during the session:
inviting communities that have been historically marginalized by dominant institutional practices into conversation with researchers and others who hold sway over those practices;
-bringing two forms of knowing — subordinated and dominant logic structures and epistemologies — into continuous contact with each other, with an emphasis on the former;
-historicizing institutional practices and resulting relations of discourses and positionalities;
-embracing tensions as spaces for learning and social re-imagination; and
-re-negotiating practice and making in social change.

In the poster session, we will explore ways that the participatory approach informs research projects in mathematics education, including our own. We also examine tensions that might emerge in the context of mathematics education research, for example, around the positionality of researchers as maintainers of mathematics education as a project of whiteness (Martin, 2013), the (re)-traumatization of black and brown communities in their collaborations with (white) mathematics education researchers, and the tendency towards (re)-positioning mathematics as neutral, experience-free and abstract.

Significance:
Participatory approaches have the potential to re-humanize black and brown communities through the vaolorization of subordinated sensibilites, voices and realities into mathematics education research.

Authors

• Victoria M. Hand, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Molade Osibodu, York University

• Sunghwan Byun, North Carolina State University

• Carlos Alfonso LopezLeiva, University of New Mexico