In Search of a Mathematics Education Deviant from Cisgender and Heterosexual Norms: what do research involving LGBTI+ people say?

Abstract

How have LGBTI+ people been considered in mathematics education research? To address this question, we conducted a bibliographic inquiry usually referred as State of the Art. Our corpus of analysis includes theses, dissertations, papers in journals and proceedings of national and international events. We identified 55 productions, published from 1995 – the year of the first publication found – onwards, which we analyzed through a Content-Analysis-based framework. Four categories emerged from the analysis: Mathematics Teacher Training; Relationships established by LGBTI+ People with Mathematics; Basic Education and Large-Scale Assessments; and Theoretical Discussions and Bibliographic Research. We noticed that there is a concentration of research focused on the investigation of the relationships LGBTI+ people establish with mathematics during Basic Education, which we interpret as an attempt to break with the production and reproduction of cisgender and heterosexual norms through mathematics within the scope of research and school context. As takeaways, we suggest further research that proposes strategies for a mathematics teaching process that makes LGBTI+ people visible, respected, and valued; articulations between mathematics education and queer studies; understandings about the practices of self-identified LGBTI+ mathematics teachers and their trajectories; and research that not only includes LGBTI+ people, but that also questions the nature of knowledge and mathematical learning processes of these people, considering that educational environments are often oppressive for them. We need to tense mathematics (education), making it a means by which many people, who have historically been oppressed by it, feel represented and able to enter those spaces.

Keywords:
LGBTI+ People; Researches in Mathematics Education; Bibliographic Study