Not More Reform, We Need an Epistemic Revolution: Theorizing Epistemic Oppression in U.S. Mathematics Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Towards an Anti-racist Pedagogy

Abstract

This article applies a social epistemology framework to examine the exclusion of historically marginalized communities from the production of mathematical knowledge in the United States. Building on the philosophical foundations of epistemic oppression, I argue that sociopolitical forms of oppression—such as racism, anti-Blackness, and other modes of racialization—function as mechanisms of epistemic oppression that marginalize subaltern communities within mathematics education. Moreover, I contend that current curricular reform efforts, rooted in an epistemology of coloniality, largely fail because they uphold the epistemic power of the privileged by reinforcing what Pohlhaus Jr. (2020) calls ‘vertical attention.’ Instead, I call for a radical paradigm shift that focuses epistemic efforts toward ‘horizontal attention,’ and cultivating solidarity among subaltern groups.

Author

• Kiruba Murugaiah, Boston College