Learning to Fight, Fighting to Learn: Secondary Student Actors Reclaiming Mathematics Through Histories of Resistance

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores how historicizing critical mathematics education offers transformative possibilities for futuring education research and practice. In response to AERA’s 2026 theme, the panel examines how critical mathematics engages students in reclaiming mathematics as a tool for justice by honoring their lived experiences and historicizing their communities’ knowledge traditions. Drawing from empirical studies in both school and out-of-school contexts, the symposium foregrounds how students learn to fight and fight to learn through mathematics. Panelists engage three central cross-cutting themes: (1) historic inspirations for justice-centered math learning, (2) visibility of students’ identities and contexts, and (3) student use of mathematics to imagine liberatory futures. Collectively, these papers illuminate critical mathematics as a socially rooted, future-oriented, and agentic practice.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research in Mathematics Education

Chair

• Charles Mack Phillips, University of Michigan

Papers

• Exploring Quantification for Advocacy: Student Perspectives on Public Policy in a Summer Mathematical Modeling Seminar - Nathan Alexander, Howard University

• Math as Resistance: Students’ Epistemic Authority and Engagement in a Critical Mathematics Classroom - Patricia Buenrostro, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Intellectual Safety in Mathematics: Secondary Student Perspectives from an Anti-Racist Summer Institute - Jennifer Aracely Rodriguez, University of Michigan Ann Arbor; Jennifer Randall, University of Michigan

• Reimagining Mathematics through the Voices of Queer High School Students - Weverton Ataide Pinheiro, Texas Tech University

Session Organizer

• Patricia Buenrostro, University of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant

• Kari Kokka, University of Nevada - Las Vegas