No Black Girls Allowed: Analyzing the Role of Controlling Images in Black Girls' Mathematics Learning

• In Event: Equity-Oriented Perspectives on Undergraduate Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Despite calls for more equity and justice-oriented mathematics teaching and learning practices, certain groups have received more attention than others. Though, there have been strides made in areas regarding how race and gender separately mediate mathematics learning, there have been few investigating the intersection of race and gender for mathematics learners (Author, 2017; Gholson & Wilkes, 2017). This paper advances such inquiry by utilizing Black girls’ stories to investigate the nature of their mathematics learning experiences at the university level.

Controlling images are representations that circulate in society (i.e. the angry Black
woman). Within Black Feminist Thought, these images are described as an attempt to control the narrative about who Black women are and can be. Controlling images serve to control access to rights and resources of Black girls and women, thus impacting almost every aspect of their lives (Collins, 2000). This paper examines the role of these controlling images for mathematics learning. Using a Poststructural Race analysis (Shah & Leonardo, 2017) informed by Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2000), I explored the following questions: 1) What controlling images are implicated in the personal stories that Black girls tell about their undergraduate mathematics learning experiences?; and 2) How do these personal stories help us understand the interactions between controlling images and narratives of mathematics learning for Black girls?

Data collection spanned the course of one semester of mathematics learning with seven Black girls in their first year attending a large, public university. Both individual interviews (n = 14) and focus group interviews (n = 3) were conducted. WhatsApp voice notes were also collected as a means of accessing the girls’ mathematics learning stories while also further contextualizing what was shared in the interviews. Data was analyzed by first coding for context (either within or outside of mathematics learning spaces). The second pass of coding identified the role of race, gender, or race and gender at the intersection in the stories. Finally, I interrogated the data for language that invoked controlling images as well as narratives of mathematics learning, particularly attending to the interaction between the two through which new controlling images emerged in a few cases.

My analysis revealed linkages between the narratives of mathematics learning and controlling images that influence the daily lives of Black girls and women. Findings indicate that a mismatch between the controlling images that are prevalent in the girls’ daily lives and those prevalent in their mathematics learning spaces. While the girls often drew inspiration from counter-narratives, such as notions of the strong Black woman and Black Girl Magic, those images were not present in their stories of mathematics learning. Furthermore, narratives of mathematics learning, such as being right or wrong, grappling with the notion of the struggling mathematics learner, and engaging in group work and other mathematics learning practices, interacted prominently with controlling images, thus creating spaces of mathematics learning that further marginalized Black girls as undergraduate mathematics learners.

Author

• Missy D. Cosby, Michigan State University