In this episode, DES co-host Paulo Tan shares a presentation he recently completed on abolitionist mathematics practices at Purdue University. Drawing on Black Feminist thought on prison abolition, Dr. Tan forwards three crucial tenets (i.e., imagining utopian futures, intersectional struggles, and immediate change making) to guide the fields of special and mathematics education. Dr. Tan argues that these tenets are necessary to eliminate harms disabled students encounter in special and mathematics education while collectively building more just futures. Situating this argument in elementary schooling contexts, Dr. Tan implicates mathematics education in its complicity and perpetuation of containment, a form of incarceration that denies opportunities to certain disabled students. As such, Dr. Tan calls on educational researchers and practitioners to take up leadership in this disability freedom struggle.

Link to view the slide deck

Books mentioned: Abolition. Feminism. Now.

Decarcerating Disability: Deinstutionalization and Prison Abolition

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We turn inwards for today’s episode in a conversation with Dr. Alexis Padilla, this show’s cohost, about his upcoming book titled Decolonial Disability and Social Epistemologies. The first chapter of his book dives into the problems with how we think of productive struggle. We also engage in a brief reflection on the first few months after launching the Disability, Education, and Society podcast. Transcripts for this episode can be found here.

Mentioned in this episode: Dr. Padilla's first book titled Disability, Intersectional Agency, and Latinx Identity Theorizing LatDisCrit Counterstories

Dr. Padilla's email: apadilladiv@gmail.com

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Dr. Alison Mirin, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Mathematics Education at the University of Arizona, joins the DES podcast to discuss ableism and inaccessibility in mathematics education. We discuss the disconnect between how math is typically taught in schools and how students make their own meaning of math. Dr. Mirin shares her mathematics experiences as a researcher, a disabled student, and a former secondary classroom teacher. Transcripts can be found here.

Mentioned in the show: Academic Spoonies Facebook group, Dr. Mirin’s ResearchGate page, and Mathematics Educator Appreciation Day (MEAD), American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) press release on disparities in special education referrals, and Building Thinking Classrooms.

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To support the DES community please subscribe to the DES podcast and become a DES patron