Resisting Right & Wrong — Humanizing Disabled Students through Student Work Analysis in Mathematics Teacher Learning

• In Event: Inclusion or Illusion? Student-Informed Reflexive Practices in K-12 Settings

Abstract

Structures of schooling, from kindergarten through higher education, facilitate, narrate, and solidify ableist, racialized, and deficit views of disabled students and forward conceptualizations of mathematics as a rigid discipline where answers are either right or wrong. This paper represents one project seeking to confront and disrupt such oppressive, exclusionary views of mathematics and disabled students within teacher education through the context of a re-designed Mathematical Methods course, aimed at explicitly centering the mathematical brilliance of disabled students. In this paper, we closely analyze the intertwined ways that elementary and special education teacher candidates detailed the specific mathematical brilliance of disabled students while humanizing students as they take curious stances and recognizing embodiment as a way of mathematical sense-making.

Authors

• Mikaela Zetley, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jennifer Schexnayder, University of California - Los Angeles

• Megan L. Franke, University of California - Los Angeles