Taking the Sociopolitical Turn in Postsecondary Mathematics Education Research

Abstract

In this paper, we argue for a need to attend to issues of equity in postsecondary mathematics education. In the United States, the broader mathematics education field has begun a shift toward attending to sociopolitical aspects of research, which focus on the interrelatedness of knowledge, identity, power, and social discourses. We argue that explicit uptake of sociopolitical perspectives has the potential to offer new insights to current research and to advance efforts to address inequities in meaningful and theoretically well-informed ways. Situating our argument within the social and political context of the United States, we draw on existing studies that examine inequities in undergraduate mathematics classrooms. We highlight studies that focus on the impact of social discourses and institutional contexts on the negotiations of power and identity in postsecondary mathematics. We end by proposing future research directions and discuss challenges for equity work in postsecondary mathematics education.