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Scholars have called for critical research that positions Black girls in a positive light while centering their constructed meanings and resistance against stereotypes and dominant discourses in mathematics spaces, particularly in reform-oriented instructional contexts. Black girls may have to resist deficit master narratives about the intellectual ability of Black women and girls (macro-level) in moment-to-moment classroom interactions (micro-level). In this article, we tell an anti-deficit counter-story (Adiredja, 2019) of how sense-making and silence became forms of resilience for a Black girl named Amari (pseudonym) during a standards-based whole-class mathematics discussion. Using theoretical perspectives rooted in critical race theory and positioning theory, we operationalized Black girls’ forms of resilience as repeated acts of resistance, evidenced by negotiated or rejected positions. Framing our positioning analysis using an anti-deficit counter-story method (Adiredja, 2019), Amari’s mathematical brilliance was centered while showcasing how forms of resilience emerged from repeated acts of resistance at a micro-interactional timescale. Implications of this work point to a need to specify micro-level responsibilities in classroom settings that challenge racism, sexism, and oppression in macro-level reform efforts. 

We investigate teacher beliefs about discourses for equation solving and the challenges these beliefs might pose for the implementation of instructional practices that promote deductive reasoning in algebra. To uncover these beliefs, we recorded three video explanations of solutions to the same linear equation with distinct discursive characteristics and analyzed seven secondary mathematics teachers’ small-group critical discussions of these explanations. Three prevalent themes surfaced in our thematic analysis. Teacher beliefs about discourse for equation solving specified different roles and potential benefits of deductive explanations, estimated students’ capacity to understand deductive explanations, and hypothesized differences between teachers' and students' potential to understand deductive reasoning. We discuss implications of these beliefs for opportunities to engage all learners in conceptual thinking about equations. 

We investigate the algebraic discourse of secondary mathematics teachers with respect to the topic of equation solving by analyzing five teachers’ responses to open-ended items on a questionnaire that asks respondents to analyze hypothetical student work related to equation solving and explain related concepts. We use tools from commognitive analysis to describe features of teachers’ explanations, and we use these survey responses as examples to illustrate a distinction in discourses about equation solving that has implications for students’ learning of common procedures for finding solution sets of equations and systems.