Disrupting Gendered Epistemic Injustice in K–12 Mathematics: A Research Synthesis

• In Event: Creating and Interrogating Inclusive Mathematics Environments: Considerations, Barriers, and Recommendations for Practice and Policy

Abstract

Purpose/ Theoretical Framework. We synthesize prior studies to seek more robust directions for gender equity research in mathematics education. We advance a view of gender equity as a form of epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007) that considers safeguarding epistemic agency of gender-minoritized children as one of its central goals. Drawing on the conception of gender as intersectional, fluid, and socially-constructed, we ask: How do individuals and institutions negotiate, resist, or disrupt epistemic injustice in mathematics education, as established by heteropatriarchy and Whiteness? We use Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecological model to understand the interrelations of micro (persons), meso (institutions), and macro-level (society) processes of subverting gender-based epistemic harm.

Methods/ Data Sources. The review draws on the past thirty years of gender equity research in K-12 mathematics. Initial literature search yielded over 400 potential studies. We excluded articles concerned only with gender differences and achievement gaps. Instead, focusing on those that investigated ways to disrupt gender inequities using strength-based research approaches (n=160). The articles were coded for the individual, design-based, or institutional responses and inter-relational processes that mobilize students’ epistemic agency at micro, meso, macro-levels.

Results. Research finds that gender-minoritized students, when faced with epistemic biases, assume a variety of responses including avoidance, assimilation, and resistance to persevere in mathematics. However, individual responses put the burden of change on those most vulnerable. They also disproportionately disadvantage girls from working-class racially minoritized backgrounds in the absence of structured institutional response towards legitimizing girlhood in mathematics that may look different than what dominant ideologies of White/middle-class/heteropatriarchy demands (Gholson, 2016). Institutional responses, on the other hand, have the potential to directly confront gender biased discourses and practices, concurrently at micro-meso-macro levels to transform pernicious ideologies of gender that perpetuate epistemic harms. The institutional responses at micro-meso level include (1) designed professional interventions and activities that allow educators and parents to question and disrupt their own biases, and (2) design-based heterogeneous learning spaces and curriculum that allow children and youth to make sense of gender and power in everyday practices and in mathematics (Rands, 2016). Responses at meso-macro levels include (3) organized collective actions by educators, parents, and students to demand more gender-equitable schooling practices, and 4) reformed state and national policies that legitimize and provide resources to the grassroots efforts advancing gender equity in K-12 mathematics (Marshall, 2000; Miller, Mayo, & Lugg, 2018).

Significance/Implications. An ecological approach of gender equity as a form of epistemic justice aims to reorient the mathematics education field, long preoccupied with achievement and opportunity, toward understanding and redressing the distinctive form of damage that negates the epistemic and ontic status of gender-minoritized students. The discursive studies of individual experiences recognize micro-level acts of resistance as a first step toward theories of transformation, but gender equity projects will require institutional transformations at a fundamental level to shift the gaze from what individuals do in the face of power dynamics, to the structures of power themselves.

Authors

• Priyanka Agarwal, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Tesha Sengupta-Irving, University of California - Berkeley