Empowering Students through Mathematics: A Post-Qualitative Study.

This post-qualitative case study investigates the social, historical, and political contexts in which learning math is situated through the stories of seven eighth grade students identified as low-income, Latino/a, and on-track for college level mathematics. Working from a post-qualitative paradigm using Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) concept of thinking with theory, the participants stories were deconstructed and data were read through the lenses of the Bourdieuian framework of cultural capital, Freire’s concept of conscientization, the situated perspective of math identity, the culturally relevant perspective, and the critical mathematics perspective. The transgressive voice of the students was sought to create new discourse on the complexities of the social and critical aspects of learning mathematics. Deconstructive implications from this inquiry open up the discussion surrounding local and national reform efforts, hegemonic ideologies embedded in United States educational experiences, issues of power and knowledge found in cultural capital, the implementation of critical pedagogy for conscientization, and the power held by stakeholders that influences math identity. This inquiry helps us better understand the need for educational stakeholders to recognize the non-static nature of the learning community and the always already becoming nature of the people that make up the learning community.