Considering the Equity-Oriented Mathematics Teacher via the Super Massive Black Hole

• In Event: The Paradox of Inequality as Equality in Teaching/Teacher Education: “The Super-Massive Black Hole”

Abstract

Equity has been a significant thrust in global mathematics education since the 1990s. Over time, different proposals have gone forward in the name of equitable mathematics education for all, although it has never been clear what the nature of an equitable mathematics education is or who is included in that “all” (Author, 2019; Berry et al., 2014). While most of the suggestions have been for pedagogical intervention, the recent turn has been to interrogate teacher dispositions. The goal, as it appears, is to construct “the equitable mathematics teacher” as one who exhibits the habits of mind that supersede ways of thinking or being that would not align with “mathematics for all” (Yolcu, 2019). However, the interest is in creating a performance of equity-oriented dispositions with the assumption that the performance reflects a genuine commitment. That students who have been marginalized continue to experience violence in mathematics classrooms despite decades of intense focus on equity in the mathematics education community proves that something about this approach is amiss (Author, 2019). This paper leans on the idea of the hidden infrastructure of the super massive black hole to discuss an explanation for the discrepancy between the intent of equity-oriented mathematics teacher education and its reality. Focusing on race, the paper argues that the formation of the equity-oriented mathematics teacher requires a simultaneous profession of faith in the equality of all people and investment in the inherent deviance of blackness.
The author (in press) has argued that equity research in mathematics education is a genre that operates according to implicit ideological and rhetorical rules and assumptions that form how one can think about equity and inequity. One such rule is the axiom of racialized deviance, a logical tool developed by whiteness to establish its dominance and to justify physical, psychic, and epistemic violence against blackness. Du Bois (2015) argues that this deviance is an ontological position of blackness as “problem” (p. 67). Popular solutions to ‘solve’ this problem include altering students’ mathematical mindsets (Boaler 2016) and correcting teachers’ beliefs (Yow 2012) and their capacities to ‘notice’ (van Es et al., 2022). Equity, the author argues, operates from a sense of benevolence (Bebout, 2011; Jefferess, 2011) that requires its proponents (i.e., future and current teachers, in this case) to assume an egalitarian moral position while taking up a logic that maintains status quo with respect to power and subjection.
In this paper, the author extends the earlier argument to consider mathematics teacher education as a mechanism to form the equitable mathematics teacher, a character that carries within it the paradox of exclusion and abjection wrapped in inclusive intention and rhetoric. Through a genealogical analysis of literature in mathematics teacher education, equity position statements from mathematics education organizations (e.g., the Association for Mathematics Teacher Educators) and education stakeholder groups (e.g., OECD), and other documents, the author argues that, due to this paradox, holding equity-orientation as the arbiter of a ‘good’ or ‘well-qualified’ mathematics teacher forecloses the possibility of achieving any goals of racial inclusion.

Author

• Erika C. Bullock, University of Wisconsin - Madison