Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

College of Education and Human Services

Department

Curriculum & Instruction/Literacy Studies

Committee Chair

Matthew Campbell

Committee Co-Chair

Johnna Bolyard

Committee Member

Johnna Bolyard

Committee Member

Sharon Hayes

Committee Member

Tiffany Mitchell Patterson

Abstract

This dissertation aims to illuminate and uncover the experiences of Black students’ learning mathematics in rural Appalachia and specifically West Virginia. The focal theory for this study is Critical Race Theory (CRT) which centers the experience of Black students and their voices. The intersection of race, mathematics education, and the context of rural Appalachia contribute to the analysis of these experiences in specific ways. Participants for this study included six Black high school students from various communities throughout West Virginia. Through interviews and mathematical autobiographies, these students shared their experiences learning mathematics across their schooling experiences and also considering their desires for an ideal mathematics education.

The dissertation is presented in the form of three manuscripts. The first manuscript explores these students’ mathematics identities and socialization in this context. I attend to the micro-, meso-, and macro-level influences in their mathematics learning with close attention paid to school and community factors as well as broader sociopolitical and cultural factors in rural Appalachia and the United States at-large. Students’ mathematics identities and socialization experiences are explored through counterstories which elevate their voices. The second manuscript draws on students’ freedom dreams about their ideal mathematics education as Black students in this context. Students consider what they would like mathematics education to be while also considering what they want their teachers to know about teaching Black students in this region. The final manuscript is an autoethnography detailing my own journey as a White male Appalachian and educator toward racial consciousness and to a study framed by CRT.

Findings highlight the endemic implicit and explicit racism that exists in Appalachian communities and schools and how this impacts students’ learning of mathematics. It also illuminates how Whiteness functions and morphs in different ways. This research raises issues about how mathematics education functions systemically and instructionally and how deeply ingrained certain de-humanizing features are in the field. It also explores how we can rethink mathematics education to be a more human and just experience for Black students in every context through freedom dreams. In all, this work explores the confluence of race and culture in rural Appalachia through the lens of CRT to center the racialized experiences of Black students in the region.

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