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1. Moving beyond land acknowledgments to decolonizing mathematics education research

   Goffney, Imani M; Van_Zoest, Laura R; Edgar, Shekira (July 2024, International Congress on Mathematical Education)

   Our aim is to shed light on the impact that Eurocentric ideas and practices of dominant social groups have on mathematics education research. We suggest that the unintentional advancement of scholarly work that centers colonization and whiteness requires intentional intervention to disrupt. We identify rationales that mathematics education scholars give for not attending to equity in their work and provide actionable steps that can be taken to promote the practice of explicitly attending to issues of equity and justice in mathematics education research. We conclude with a metaphor and an invitation for our international colleagues to join us in decolonizing mathematics education research. 

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2. Struggling with struggle: Implications for students with diverse cognitive resources [Brief research report]

   Crawford, A. (January 2021, The 43rd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Virtual/Philadelphia, USA.)

   Olanoff, D. (Ed.)

   The perspectives in mathematics education and special education are in tension when it comes to productive struggle. This study describes how struggle surfaced for the students and teacher/researcher in teaching experiments using learning trajectories with three students with diverse cognitive profiles. The students’ activity helps to illustrate the relationships between struggle and mathematics learning. I share how students’ struggle led to my own challenge in navigating tensions between mathematics education and special education. I consider how my focus on productive struggle without attending to cognitive difference reflected ableist thinking. Finally, I suggest implications of these observations for reframing productive struggle. 

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3. Engaging with anti-deficit teaching through a student interview: An adaptation of the funds of knowledge project

   Adiredja, Aditya; Civil, Marta (July 2024, ICME15 Proceedings)

   We discuss a professional development activity that engaged university mathematics instructors with anti-deficit teaching with minoritized students in the US. Our year-long program focuses on anti-deficit teaching and inquiry-based learning in mathematics at the university level. One important component of the program is an instructor-led interview with one of the instructor’s students. This activity is inspired by Funds of Knowledge work wherein primary and secondary mathematics teachers conduct home visits to learn about resources from the students’ lives and their families. Using data from two cohorts of participants we argue that the instructor-led interview within our project similarly humanized students, challenged deficit narratives about them, while also revealing their personal and community resources. Instructors learned about minoritized students’ experiences in higher education in the US. These individual stories also become great fodder for instructors’ group discussions and reflections about inequities and nuances in the experiences of minoritized students. We conclude with a methodological discussion about the interview as a professional development activity. 

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4. On Fostering Creative Collaborations and Future Directions

   https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681241228029  

   Celedón-Pattichis, Sylvia (December 2023, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education)

   This commentary focuses on reflections involving the special issue on Teaching and Learning Mathematics and Computing in Multilingual Contexts and the important role that Teachers College Record has played in fostering creative interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers, graduate students, teachers, K-12 students, and parents. A discussion is included on how participating as a Guest Lead Editor of this special issue afforded opportunities to learn more about projects that integrate mathematics and computing as well as transformations that have impacted the work we do in our respective fields. Multilingual contexts contribute much to our understanding of global perspectives on mathematics education. Taking up a memorable moment that involved such a context, I discuss future directions for the Teachers College Record as we consider reaching to multilingual audiences. 

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5. Learning from Our Study Organisms about Sexual Selection: Lessons from the Ocellated Wrasse

   https://doi.org/10.1086/723109  

   Alonzo, Suzanne H. (March 2023, The American Naturalist)

   Sexual selection is a powerful force shaping not only the details but also the breadth of what we see in nature. Yet so much unexplained variation remains. Organisms often solve the “problem” of how to pass on their genes in ways that do not fit our current expectations. I argue here that integrating empirical surprises will push our understanding of sexual selection forward. Such “nonmodel” organisms (i.e., species that do not do what we think they should do) challenge us to think deeply, integrate puzzling results, question our assumptions, and consider the new (and arguably better) questions these unexpected patterns pose. In this article, I share how puzzling observations from my long-term research on the ocellated wrasse (Symphodus ocellatus) have shaped my understanding of sexual selection and suggested new questions about the interplay among sexual selection, plasticity, and social interactions. My general premise, however, is not that others should study these questions. Instead, I argue for a change in the culture of our field—to consider unexpected results a welcome opportunity to generate new questions and learn new things about sexual selection. Those of us in positions of power (e.g., as editors, reviewers, and authors) need to lead the way. 

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