Learning Beyond Measure: Critical Numeracy and Resistance to Racial Capitalism

Author

Atasi Das, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

9-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Urban Education

Advisor

Anna Stetsenko

Committee Members

Jennifer D. Adams

Hanna Haydar

Subject Categories

Curriculum and Instruction | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Elementary Education and Teaching | Science and Mathematics Education

Keywords

sociopolitical numeracy, decolonial mathematics education, transdisciplinary, STEM, abolition science

Abstract

In this three-article dissertation, I connect with and expand from learning theories and mathematics and numeracy practices to reimagine numeracy as a potential tool towards liberation and human emancipation. Developing a framework and activity of critical numeracy, I explore the ways numbers and static categories have been used to “objectively” create, reproduce, and reify hierarchies within historical contexts and power relations. The core of this work examines, what do numbers and numeracy mean for us? Who are “the us” we can organize for? And for what purpose can and should we utilize, teach, and learn with numbers in and beyond a discipline of mathematics? Each article iteratively engages sociopolitical learning theories, social relations, political economy, mathematics education theories and trajectories that quantify, categorize, and make data of everything. I offer this collection as a woven and, at times, repeated engagement with learning, justice, processes of becoming and numbers. This dissertation offers emergent possibilities in a process of seeking, questioning, learning, and creatively playing with altered notions of and activities with number and justice-centered teaching curricula and activities.

Recommended Citation

Das, Atasi, "Learning Beyond Measure: Critical Numeracy and Resistance to Racial Capitalism" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4952