Identity as a Critical Lens on Teaching and Learning Mathematics

This chapter reviews the literature on identity in mathematics education by examining how the focus on identity has been used by researchers to question and critique certain practices and assumptions in the field. We concentrated on the most influential writings in the field of mathematics education (operationalized through a metric of above 100 citations in Google Scholar) and analyzed them according to the following questions: What was the controversial issue the authors were trying to make progress on or resolve? What dominant perspectives in mathematics education research are being critiqued through the lens of identity? We found four main themes of critique of the existing work through this analysis: one is critique against “traditional” forms of instruction, where authors turned attention to the harms of such types of instruction to the formation of students’ mathematical identity; the second critique was against forms of oppression, especially on the basis of race, gender, economic status, and linked anti-deficit research that ascribes deficit to learners (and teachers); the third critique (often overlapping with others) was against cognitivist frameworks or strands of research that only focus on the cognitive elements of learning and teaching mathematics; and the fourth is critique turned inward (critique on the field of mathematics identity research itself). We discuss the complementarity of these themes as well as the tensions between them. We conclude by considering the implications of our review for future prospective mathematics identity research.