"Messiness is part of this work": Examining the Entanglements of Justice and Mathematics for Maestras Mexicanas (Poster 17)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Although there has been sociopolitical turn in mathematics education, very little is known about how prospective teachers of color come to develop racial and critical literacy of and with mathematics (Gutierrez, 2013; Martin, 2013). It has been documented that teachers of color (TOCs) experience isolation, and marginalization for taking a justice-oriented teaching approach (Kholi, 2018). Thus, creating spaces of empowerment and belonging are central to supporting TOCs and prospective teachers of color stay in the teaching profession. My study aims at understanding how prospective self-identified Mexicana maestras (teacher) make sense of issues of race and social justice with and of mathematics in a counterspace. More specifically, I seek to understand the entanglements that the women foresee and grapple with as they continue to develop a vision for justice-oriented math teaching. I argue that these entanglements stem from the complexity of being women of color and becoming part of a system that was unfair to them. In this poster, I showcase how the women grappled with fighting to be authentic and ethical in two ways: through staying authentic to who they are and their ideals and being authentic and ethical to the communities they work and learn with.

Author

• Sandra Zuniga, San José State University