Towards Spatial Justice: Navigating Belonging and Boundaries in a Community-Centered Professional Learning Alliance

• In Event: Navigating Community Relations in Mathematics Education Equity Research: Insights from Early Career Scholars

Abstract

Purpose. Too often, decisions about mathematics intervention are made about communities, not with them. The MATH-ROOTS Project centers the knowledge of families, educators, and disabled emergent bilingual students to co-develop community-driven approaches to professional learning and school change. This three-year study documents both the promise and challenges of building a community-centered professional learning alliance between educators and families. Specifically, the study examines the tensions, possibilities, and lessons that emerged from a Disability Justice standpoint (Sins Invalid, 2016) guided by the question: What relational, structural, and design conditions support or constrain the co-creation of a community-centered professional learning alliance among families and educators working toward disability justice?

Theoretical Framework and Research Design. The project seeks to dismantle longstanding silos: between special education and mathematics (Artiles, 2011), schools and families (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Civil, 2007), and research and practice (Fine, 2006). Grounded in Disability Justice (Sins Invalid, 2016) as both an educational and research framework, this study aims to develop tools, professional learning designs, and relational networks to reimagine how disability is understood, engaged, and mobilized within mathematics intervention systems. To identify community-driven priorities and practices, data sources include focus groups interviews and oral histories with 60 caregivers and 10 educators across general, special, and intervention education context. Student-produced digital storymaps, which integrate narrative, spatial data, and multimedia elements (e.g., images, audio, videos, and interactive maps) to document lived experiences in relation to place (Mitchell & Elwood, 2012), capture students’ spatial and social navigation of mathematics interventions spaces.

Analysis and Findings. Data analysis combines thematic coding (Saldaña, 2016) to identify patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and resistance across narrative and multimodal data, with social network analysis (Carolan, 2014) examined collaboration, power dynamics and relational flows within the emerging alliance. Analysis reveals a shared desire across educators, families, and youth to be seen, heard, and valued as educational partners. However, persistent barriers – including limited language access, disability stigma, and conflicting visions of justice for disabled students of color – undermined trust and collaboration. These tensions prompted a shift in the framing: from a broad call for social justice to a grounded focus on spatial justice (Soja, 2010), which emphasizes the dynamic relationship between people and the physical and institutional spaces they navigate. Spatial justice calls for: (1) the equitable distribution of resources and opportunities, and (2) participatory decision-making that centers those most impacted.

The emerging professional learning model (see Figure 1 at the end of document) reflects a cyclical, participatory process toward community-driven change, illustrating how (1) student-led spatial mapping integrated with school data reveals social and spatial dynamics shaping mathematics learning across intervention spaces. These insights (2) inform classroom and school-wide decisions, shifting focus from individual remediation to systemic change. Participatory knowledge production (3) promotes spatial justice by aligning decision-making with community priorities while the model itself is continuously refined through iterative cycles of inquiry and design to advance a vision of professional learning rooted in community expertise and shared power.

Author

• Cathery Yeh, University of Texas at Austin