Countering Ableism and Racism in Mathematics and Special Education Contexts: Exploring Possibilities through Maroon Knowledges

• In Event: Anti-Racist Critical Perspectives Diversifying Special Education Research: Challenging Traditional Narratives of Objectivity, Neutrality, and Science

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes

In this presentation, we propose a theoretical intervention to advance mathematics and special education research and practices in ways that cultivate Maroon knowledges for and with Black and Brown disabled students and their teachers. We define Maroon knowledges as unique ways of knowing and doing connected to living and resisting oppressive forces, namely anti-Blackness and ableism. Insofar as they are aimed at pursuing freedom and consolidating collective emancipation spaces, maroon knowledges can guide us towards more democratic, communal, anti-capitalistic ways of being that explicitly strategize to unlearn and confront racism and ableism in their intersectional contours within everyday classroom interactions.

Perspective(s)/Framework

Through the radical epistemology and interdependent affordances made possible by counterstories, we engage in an analytical interrogation process. Our process centers on the critical race theory (CRT) tradition of exploring and excavating the profound meanings of interactions, spatial counterhegemony and curricular disruptions as ways to contest objectivist conceptions of so-called evidence-based teaching practices. Counterstories grounded on racialized and anti-ableist experiences are crucial in these enactments of resistance because they are instrumental in disrupting binaries between empirical and theoretical work. As such, they ground educational theories of change through embodied experiences of struggle.

Methods

We draw on the counterstories/testimonios tradition which comes from various strands of CRT to frame Maroon knowledges. In so doing, we situate the current moment in mathematics education and analyze a set of vignettes from the first author’s engagement with a group of Black prospective mathematics and special education teachers to explicate liberatory possibilities of Maroon knowledges.

Data Sources

The first author’s collaborative work on a Maroon Knowledges Research Project (MKRP) with four Black prospective mathematics teachers to understand how they experienced and innovated within contexts where anti-oppressive practices are common in supporting Black and Latinx disabled students in schools. This collaborative first person counterstory describes how maroon knowledges operated, displaying a set of critical reflection and actions characterized by collective affirmations, healing, conscious-building, resistance, and pedagogical innovations among the co-researchers and disabled students of color they supported in the MKRP.

Results

There is a differential yet complementary nature of Maroon knowledges within the often racialized and deficit-centered purview of mathematics and special education spaces and procedures. In the case of Maroon knowledges in particular, this complementarity is key for teachers of color and their racialized students who receive special education services. Given the historical links between desegregation and special education in the US, it is imperative not to miss sight of the present-day weight of this core sense of contextualized historicity in shaping both macro-level policy and classroom level everyday practices. On the other hand, it is imperative to harness the combined power of Maroon knowledges a within mathematics education and mathematics specific equity dynamics.

Scholarly Significance

The proposed Maroon knowledges theoretical and conceptual intervention we have offered in this presentation seeks to radically challenge traditional research and particular versions of science that maintain injustices in mathematics and special education by escaping them toward mutually flourishing and liberatory spaces.

Authors

• Paulo Tan, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rachel Lambert, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Alexis Padilla, Independent Scholar