Reimagining Elementary Mathematics Education: Unscripting the Curriculum  

• In Event: Resisting the Drive Toward Pedagogical Mastery: Challenging Relations of Domination in the Curriculum of Teacher Education

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the ways that the masterful discipline of mathematics serves as gatekeeper (Martin et al., 2010; Stinson, 2004) and key to higher education and how ideas of mastery are pervasive in the pedagogy of K-12 mathematics. As accelerated mathematics tracks become more prevalent, we follow Llewellyn (2015) in problematizing the pursuit of progress in mathematics education. Mathematics, in particular, aligns with the tenants of White Supremacy (Oken, 2021) so, we ask, how might we decolonize a colonizing subject? How might we reframe mathematics teacher education in ways the deemphasize mastery and open mathematics classrooms up to joy and creativity? We align ourselves with other mathematics educators exploring these alternative ways of being in mathematics education (Gutiérrez, 2017; Joseph, 2021). 

Mathematics, a high stakes discipline in schools, coupled with the deprofessionalization of teaching (Biesta, 2016; Zeichner, 2014) has led to an influx of mandated and prescribed curricula in elementary mathematics including gradual release—I do, we do, you do— instructional strategies and an increase in individualized computer-based learning. The latter has been held up as a savior (Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, 2021) to the learning loss that we are being told threatens our children’s futures. The urgency around correcting the perceived learning loss due to COVID-19 school disruptions accentuates the idea that mathematics content should be encapsulated and taken regularly to prevent failure for schools, students, and teachers. We push back against these linear learning trajectories.  

We situate our study within an elementary mathematics teacher education endorsement program, which as a certificate program contributes to ideas of mastery. Working against this, we engage teachers in rethinking their ideas about what being “good” at mathematics looks and sounds like. We will present data from teachers’ reflections on their experiences with mathematics growing up, their perceptions of their curriculum at their schools, and the creative insubordination they do to resist mastery discourses. We align our data to the tenants of White Supremacy (Oken, 2021). We reimagine with practicing teachers what elementary mathematics classrooms could be if fact and procedure focused instruction was replaced with curiosity and creativity.  

We are inspired by Singh (2018) and ask, how might we “stall the disavowal of our masterful complicities and stay with dehumanization as it presents to us other forms of human being” so that “we might offer ourselves new ways of becoming human” (Singh, 2018, p. 119)? We attend to and trace the processes of mastery and dehumanization in elementary mathematics curricula, interventions, and classroom, and imagine together other ways of becoming mathematicians for elementary students (and ourselves).  
 

Authors

• Susan Ophelia Cannon, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author

• Brittney Castanheira, Mercer University
  Presenting Author

• Erica Warren
  Presenting Author

• Hannah M. Edber, Mercer University
  Presenting Author

• Merlong Hightower Taylor, Mercer University
  Presenting Author