Analyzing assumptions across contexts: Pre-service teachers' use of embodied and linguistic resources toward teaching math for social justice

Megumi Asada

Mathematics education, like all forms of education, can replicate or resist social inequities. This replication is present in the very content students learn. In particular, students learn mathematics in ways that promote the disciplinary values of decontextualization and objectivity, which can permit mathematicians to draw harmful conclusions while receiving little scrutiny. For example, the belief that mathematics is objective lends an automatic legitimacy to the subjective choices made by statisticians. These disciplinary values are especially relevant within proof and abstract mathematics, which play critical roles across K-16 mathematics, and in which context is deliberately discarded. This study builds on my prior scholarship, which challenged these disciplinary values by supporting students in reasoning about assumptions and definitions across undergraduate proof and the social justice topic of prison abolition. One central finding was that undergraduate mathematics majors engaged in parallel forms of reasoning about assumptions across the two contexts. Where my prior work examined proof in undergraduate mathematics, this study analyzes pre-service teachers' work with assumptions that they can bring to their K-12 classrooms. Using design-based research, I explore how pre-service teachers engage in a community of practice oriented around analyzing assumptions across probability and the context of prisons and prison abolition. This study has two main contributions: (1) it examines parallels that pre-service teachers can draw between proof and social justice and (2) it explores forms of mathematical activity that are frequently overlooked (e.g. embodied activity) but that nevertheless may support justice-oriented reasoning.

About Megumi Asada

Megumi Asada is a PhD candidate at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. Broadly speaking, their work examines how seemingly mathematics-specific practices (e.g. proof) actually mirror ways of thinking from other disciplines and peoples' everyday lives. They are invested in understanding how mathematical practices can be meaningful to students, particularly by tying logic and proof to the development of students' political consciousness. The inspiration for their research stems from firsthand experiences, both from teaching in high school classrooms and when conducting mathematics research, in which mathematics was construed as disconnected from people and the sociopolitical issues that affect them. They aim to challenge this view and explore how logic and proof can support students to understand and challenge the real injustices people experience. Megumi enjoys collaborating with scholar-educators across disciplines, having previously co-developed a cross-disciplinary abolitionist curriculum through the Institute for Anti-Racist Education. Before starting their doctoral studies, they worked as a full-time tutor and as an Americorps teaching assistant in the Bronx. They received a B.A. in Mathematics from Williams College and an MPhil in Criminology from the University of Cambridge. In their free time, they enjoy journaling, bouldering, and weightlifting.