Mathematics Education Research Journal

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-020-00354-7
SI: INNOVATIONS IN 'GENDER ISSUES' RESEARCH IN MATHE-
MATICS EDUCATION

Queer identity and theory intersections

in mathematics education: a theoretical
literature review

Alexander S. Moore 1

Received: 30 March 2020 / Revised: 21 September 2020 / Accepted: 2 October 2020

# Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Inc. 2020

Abstract
Researchers have become aware of a need to focus on the continued development of gender
and sexuality research in mathematics education, as frameworks and conceptual perspectives
have been difficult to operationalize, particularly outside of the heteronormative categories of
cis-male and cis-female studies. Early pioneers of this work have proposed intersectionality
theory (e.g., Leyva, 2017) and queer theories (e.g., Dubbs 2016; Esmonde 2011; Sheldon and
Rands 2013) as promising lenses for conceptualizing such research, as they allow for critical
postmodern engagement by avoiding many of the structuralist gender commitments that have
previously prevented it. In this paper, I build on this work by employing the notion of
mathematical identity. I perform a systematic, theoretical review of the literature to articulate a
basis for the intersection of mathematical identity and queer identity. I articulate the theoretical
basis for this intersection of identities by building a framework that illustrates the intersec-
tional nature of mathematical and queer identities and gives scholars a tool for conceptual-
izing future work in this area. This paper issues a call to the field to embrace the uncertainty of
this new research borderland, because it is only through a radical vision of identity research in
mathematics education—such as is offered here—that researchers can begin to situate
students’ participation in mathematics within larger social and economic systems that have
yet to be analyzed in depth with respect to queer identity.

Keywords Mathematics education . Identity . Queer . Intersectionality . LGBTQ . Gender

and sexuality

* Alexander S. Moore
asm1@vt.edu

1
School of Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
 A. S. Moore

“Sexuality [is] the root of intellectual curiosity.”

–Britzman (2000), as cited in Shlasko (2005, p. 127)

The unique position of mathematics education, and indeed any content area subfield of
education, is that it is a hybridized existence of two disciplines, and therefore researchers are
often tasked with dwelling in the borderlands and existing in an uncomfortable space in
between two realities and in between two disciplines (Anzaldúa 1987; Dubbs 2016; R.
Gutiérrez 2012, 2017; Stinson and Bullock 2012). In this paper, I suggest a new borderland
to inhabit: the intersection of mathematical identity and identities of queerness—that is,
identities outside the matrix of gender and sexuality norms. To establish this argument, I
describe the recent “turns” in mathematics education as researchers have pointed the field
towards such a horizon. Second, I describe how situated learning, identity, and power relate
to experiences in mathematics education. Then, I perform a systematic, theoretical review of
the literature. Last, I present the findings in three ways: First, I synthesize the basis for a new
framework of identity that I intend to function as a point of departure for explicitly studying
queer identity in mathematics education, and that I integrate throughout the theoretical
perspective and discussion. Second, I present the new framework as the result of the
theoretical synthesis of the literature that allows for theories to be considered in relation to
each other. I call this framework the Queer Identity Intersection (QII) of Mathematics
Education and intend for it to be a generative assistant to scholars working in this area in
terms of future work conceptualizations. Third, I discuss the aforementioned results through
the lens of intersectionality theory (Crenshaw 1989, 1991), in order to conceptualize this
unique research space and operationalize it as a research borderland of possibilities between
the current state of the field and the future of new innovations in gender and sexuality
research in mathematics education.

Theoretical perspective

Mathematics education “turns” towards the borderlands

Of particular note in recent years has been the sociopolitical turn in mathematics
education, as researchers have documented how mathematics is conceptualized and
operates as a White and heteronormatively masculinized enterprise (e.g., Bowers 2019;
Esmonde 2011; R. Gutiérrez 2013; Leyva 2017; Mendick 2006; Rubel 2017). Unfor-
tunately, some of the researchers who publish such work have been attacked for their
contributions. For example, the attacks on Rubel, Gutiérrez, Boaler, and Herron (Math
Ed Collective n.d.) provide evidence that there is risk associated with researching these
types of social issues in mathematics education, harkening back to the borderlands
metaphor and alluding to the politicization of education and the masculine rationality of
mathematics. It is therefore the call of today’s mathematics education researchers to
turn towards the borderlands (Civil 2018; R. Gutiérrez 2013, 2016, 2017; Rubel 2017)
as a praxis of uncertainty (cf. Stinson and Bullock 2012) particularly when approaching
equity research. Indeed, considering a queered form of mathematics education creates
an uncomfortable borderland to inhabit, yet it is one that proceeds naturally from a
perspective of critique because it mirrors the de facto borderland position of queerness.
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

Identity, learning, and power in a borderland

As a research area, identity refers to the interstitial network of personal affective

dimensions such as attitudes and beliefs, and socioculturally enacted dimensions such
as behaviors, narratives, and norms (Fellus 2019; Heyd-Metzuyanim 2019). Many
scholars have offered definitions of identity, but Sfard and Prusak’s (2005) theorization
has proven to be one of the most durable. They conceptualize identity as existing in the
connection between individual cognitivist learning and the sociocultural theory of
learning, or in other words, what one thinks about oneself and how one situates their
identity as positioned among their peers. Sfard and Prusak describe two types of
identity, actual and designated identities. Actual identities reflect the self at its present
state, such as, “I am good at mathematics.” Designated identities are foregrounds for
learning and the future, such as, “I want to become good at mathematics.” The
designated identity, then, acts as a reflective position of the self, within the ecologies
of one’s classroom, school, culture, and so forth (cf. Bronfenbrenner 1979), relating the
present configuration and the foregrounded future configuration. Scholars critical of the
study of mathematical identity have suggested that it is a privileged research focus done
for the sake of gazing at personal relationships with mathematics in countries that are
wealthy enough to afford reasonably equitable educational opportunities for students
(Darragh 2016). However, Darragh takes the position that identity is performative, as in
Butler’s (1990) work that characterizes identity as an enacted state of performance—
and thus of production—of one’s gender and sexuality. Enacted identity, when con-
sidered in this way, can be seen as labor situated with the school’s economy of
production, and thus positions the individual within the larger social and political
systems that encompass them. Therefore, when taken as a socially situated perfor-
mance, identity bridges the interstice between the psychological and the social, and thus
moves from a social to a political lens that considers individual students as performers
of themselves—that is, as actors—within the production economies of the school, of
mathematics, the curriculum, their society and culture, and its politics.
As a result, the study of identity involves many aspects of a person’s self, such as
their identification with mathematics as performed: in the mathematics classroom,
among their mathematics peers, as mentor-reified by their teacher, and as self-
envisioned for their own future with mathematics (cf. Fellus 2019; Heyd-
Metzuyanim 2019; Heyd-Metzuyanim and Sfard 2012; Sfard and Prusak 2005).
Mathematical identity includes, for example, what students think of themselves with
respect to mathematics, how and if they see themselves as members of the mathemat-
ical community, and their foregrounds and intentionalities for learning in mathematics
(Skovsmose 2014). Taken together, this subpart of one’s identity was originally termed
mathematical identity by Martin (2000) and has since been developed into a research
area in its own right by mathematics education researchers. Developments in mathe-
matical identity research consist of a variety of conceptualizations of roughly three
types, each of which affords different insights into the notion of identity: (1) broader
socially networked theories of identity that relate the individual realm to the sociocul-
tural realm (e.g., Fellus 2019); (2) structural theories of identity enactment, such as how
students’ mathematical identity forms and emerges minute-to-minute and over the
course of mathematical activity both individually and as situated in the microculture
of the classroom (e.g., Cobb et al. 2009; Wood 2013); and (3) psychologically oriented
 A. S. Moore

theories that focus on the complexity of human thought and identity development in the
processes of self-reflection and self-concept (e.g., Hall et al. 2018). Identity and
learning are thus intricately and inextricably connected.
The participation metaphor of learning—also known as situated learning theory—
describes one’s practice of knowing and one’s identity as two parts of the same lived
experience that constitute each other (Esmonde 2017; Lave and Wenger 1991; Sfard
1998, 2015; Sfard and Prusak 2005; Wenger 1998). Within a community of practice,
identity development is a central part of understanding what it means to learn, because
one’s identity develops in the process of becoming a certain type of person in the
community. For example, in the community of a mathematics classroom, a person’s
identity forms as a capable learner and doer of mathematics—How do my peers see me
in math class? Do they think I am good at math and that I have the correct answers? Do
they think I belong here in this class? Even in writing this article, the “learning” that I
have experienced in the professional practice of writing journal articles is codetermined
with how that process positions me among my peers in the community of mathematics
education researchers—How will this paper be received? What will my peers think of
its contents and message? Who will decide if my message counts as knowledge?—This
emergent notion of identity is situated among one’s peers, reflexively in one’s self, and
hierarchically in the power structure of the classroom and school. Thus, identity is a
crucial dimension of learning that codetermines content understanding, such as arith-
metic, as well as affective parameters, such as attitudes.
In different communities of practice, identities carried over from other communities
may or may not be viable or relevant. For example, a student who feels very capable in
mathematics may have an entirely different identity in gym class; that student’s identity
in mathematics may not have direct relevance or bearing on their identity in gym class
or other spaces in school. Within communities of practice—a math classroom, a sports
team, an after-school club, and so on—the power structure of the community is a key
component of understanding one’s trajectory of identity development. For example,
students who fall outside of the racialized, gendered, and sexualitied1 models of
normativity may clash with power structures in such a way that fundamentally shifts
their experience of identity development. For this reason, access to identity develop-
ment as capable learners and doers—in mathematics and elsewhere—is not equitable
(Reinholz and Shah 2018). Such identity development is a product of social Dis-
courses2 (Gee 1999) that shape the experience of individuals and communities. These
Discourses allow for identity to be examined as a poststructural analytic unit by
interrogating how power structures and language reproduce hierarchies through the
formation of identities and through one’s processes of meaning-making (Esmonde
2009b, 2011; Esmonde and Langer-Osuna 2013; Fellus 2019; Gee 2000; Reinholz
and Shah 2018; Shah and Leonardo 2017). As Shah and Leonardo profoundly ask
about identity and learning in the classroom, “What, exactly, is being learned?” (2017,
p. 50, emphasis in original) This question provokes a reflexive look at students who are

1
I use the term sexualitied in keeping with Bowers’s (2019) use in the adjective form, parallel to the term
“gendered,” and in place of the term “sexual.” In this usage, sexualitied (adj.) means relating or specific to
people of one particular sexuality.
2
I use the term Discourses (capital D) in the way described by Gee (1999) to describe not only the words and
actions one uses to talk about something, but also the social and cultural norms, language, and power
structures which collide to formulate the ways in which one conceptualizes that thing.
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

learning in an identity-borderland position. For example, what, exactly, are queer

students learning in a mathematics classroom where the power structure and Discourse
of the community of practice is placing them in a borderland position (cf. Skovsmose
et al. 2018)? What possibilities, imaginations about mathematical ideas and content,
conceptions and beliefs of self, positionality among peers, foregrounds for the future,
intentionalities in learning, and so forth—exactly—are being enabled or being restricted
(Skovsmose 2014)?
Furthermore, it is necessary to approach this exploration with a spirit of displace-
ment, reminiscent of the borderland metaphor itself, by foregrounding the issues of
identity and conflict that students experience in the classroom (Dubbs 2016; R.
Gutiérrez 2017; Skovsmose 2014; Skovsmose et al. 2018). For students, the mathe-
matics classroom is a borderland of their past, present, and future mathematical identity,
a continual series of liminal moments where formative experiences, emotional baggage,
sociocultural positioning among peers, and foregrounds of future possibilities all
collide under the guise of “mathematics.” For queer students, this collision also
involves queer identity; it is from this place that I extract the intersection metaphor
for the collision of mathematical identity and queer identity.

Intersectionality

In this conceptualization of intersecting identities, consider Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991)

example documenting the experience of a Black woman who had been discriminatorily
fired from her job. In court, the plaintiff asserted that the employer had discriminated against
her because she was a Black woman. The court investigated the company’s employment
practices and found that the company was employing a proportional number of women to
men, and Black to White employees. Therefore, the court was unable to determine that the
company had discriminatory employment practices. Crenshaw, the attorney representing the
plaintiff, determined that if the same proportionality test had been checked against Black
women as a unit of analysis, there was in fact evidence of employment discrimination. This
led Crenshaw to develop intersectionality theory to address the deficits in the legal system to
see intersectional group membership—and thus the intersectional identities of a person—in
considering that person’s experience in the world. Crenshaw argued that only when the
correct intersection is considered can a person’s real experience of identity be understood
and studied. In the two landmark papers where she lays out the theory, Crenshaw gives the
example of two roads crossing at an intersection. In the case of the Black woman who had
been fired, the first road would be sexism and the second road would be racism; that is, the
two “roads” on which her identity was being positioned against social structures of power
were race and gender. In her experience of employment discrimination, she was not situated
in one road exclusive of the other; both roads were intersecting to form her experience and it
was only when the court situated itself in the same intersection that the evidence of
discrimination was able to be seen. For example, to understand the experience of a Latine3
trans woman, one must situate the analytic lens in the intersection of racism and

3
I use the term Latine as the gender-neutral version of Latino or Latina. There are other scholars such as
Gutiérrez (2013) who have used the term Latinx, although there is some controversy over the term in the
Spanish-speaking community as it is an Anglicized solution, not a Spanish-language solution, and it does not
reflect the natural language of Spanish-speakers. Here, I use Latine to mean the same as Latinx.
 A. S. Moore

heterosexism. Otherwise, the realistic experience of that Latine trans woman is lost.
Although originally theorized for application to specific race and gender categories, Cren-
shaw herself has explained how the nature of intersectionality is not based in specific social
labels but rather in the process of revealing power structures and how they collide and
control elements of the human experience (Columbia Law School 2017).

Identity and queerness

In order to understand queer identity, I draw on the narrative approach to gender and
sexuality identity development as one narrative of many that students navigate in the
development of the self (see Hammack and Cohler 2011; Hammack et al. 2009). In
these two studies, Hammack and colleagues approach the concept of gender and sexual
identity from the context of meaning-making through lived experiences as the con-
structions of stories about one’s self, which echoes Foucault’s notion of the practice of
self as identity formation in the classroom (Infinito 2003). These stories reflect what
students conceive as possibilities for themselves and their future in mathematics and in
school. Queerness is one aspect of many that students must navigate in this regard.
The term queer exists as a negation of heterosexism, not heterosexuality. Hetero-
sexism, the heteronormative assumption, and compulsory heterosexuality refer to the
sociocultural assumptions that one is heterosexual and cisgendered until declared
otherwise (Ahmed 2013; Evans 1999; Loutzenheiser and MacIntosh 2004; McRuer
2013). These assumptions pathologize gender and sexuality, thereby creating minority
stress on those individuals who do not identify as such because the assumption creates a
responsibility to “come out” as non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgendered (Ahmed
2013; Butler 2013; McRuer 2013; Rasmussen 2004). Similarly, McWilliams and
Penuel (2017) outline the well-known heterosexual matrix that illustrates the categories
of gender and sexuality produced by the heteronormative binary, including the cate-
gories of homosexuality and bisexuality, noting that they are simply logical negations
of heterosexuality and not truly queered notions of sexuality. Bronski (1998), in a
metaphor reminiscent of the attacks on mathematics education scholars mentioned
earlier (Math Ed Collective n.d.), describes these types of fundamental and conceptual
disillusionments as “cultural wars” between social models of normativity and their
adherents, and queerness. In her landmark book, Sedgwick discusses this landscape of
negotiation as part of the epistemology and economies of “the closet” (1990/2008).
This epistemology includes, among other things, being in the closet, coming out, and
having the burden of determining one’s self-identification (as queer) in the coming out
process. As a result, categorical structuralism in gender and sexuality becomes a
restrictive, differential system which—by design—reproduces hegemony, patriarchy,
heteronormativity, and othering. Despite these tensions, the term “queer” has been
reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community as one of transgressive emancipation (e.g.,
Britzman 1995; Fifield and Letts 2014; Hammack 2018; Shlasko 2005; Zacko-Smith
and Smith 2010) in an effort to show “defiant Otherness” (Germon 2008, p. 251).
Queerness is, as is race, integral to a person’s identity and experience of the world
(Dubbs 2016). As Shah and Leonardo (2017) have succinctly observed, in every
scenario and situation in life including the mathematics classroom, “race is there, never
irrelevant” (p. 58). The same could be said for class, language, wealth, ability, and any
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

other number of identities that are fundamental to one’s experience and existence in the
world and that are used to marginalize people by the power structures of normativity.

Methods

It is my intention here to review a somewhat disjointed and sparse corpus of literature

in two phases, pulling on recent cornerstone efforts while recognizing that there are
challenges to this research area as it emerges and is increasingly embraced by
researchers. This consideration makes for a difficult process in performing a systematic
literature review. Search term combinations led to finding certain sources but not others
due to the lack of convention around them. In some cases, reading one paper revealed
important search terms not previously identified. Therefore, the systematic nature of
this review may seem accordingly disjointed since many of the relevant pieces of
literature could not be aggregated using a linear search and identification process. For
these reasons, I believe a systematic review is precisely of high importance on this topic
at this time.
The first gate is a systematic literature review (see Table 1). The second gate is a
discovery-emergent search that combines ancestral and progeny searching, along with
personal communications with professional colleagues working in related areas
of research (see Table 2). I did not systematically restrict the literature selected
for the present analysis on the bases of types of papers, setting, types of
schools, or locations.
The systematic search was completed on October 2, 2019 on the EBSCOhost
electronic library system of a major research university (see Fig. 1). I began by
experimenting with search terms. Two initial attempts at characterizing the search
process eventually yielded a coherent and relatively compact version of the search
results that provided consistent results when the search was repeated on a second day.
The third attempt was deemed to be the most successful and thus is reported here. It
quickly became obvious that terminology and use of keywords was not commonly
agreed to, producing a collection of search terms that seemed varied but gave the most
relevant results while being designed with a tendency to give false positives. I will
address the false positives in following steps of this phase. Beginning search terms:

ALL TEXT: queer or lgbtq or gay or lgbt or lesbian or homosexual or transgender.

AND
SUBJECT TERMS: mathematics education or math education or mathematics or
math.
AND
ALL TEXT: gender*.
AND
ALL TEXT: divers*.
AND
ALL TEXT: sexual*.

This step yielded 873 results. Upon scanning the results, many papers were
appearing that were about feminism/women/girls in mathematics, and also racial/
 A. S. Moore

ethnicity studies such as African-American experiences in mathematics, or Culturally

Responsive Pedagogy pieces, in which authors traditionally talk about racial issues
such as Black or Latine experiences. Additionally, non-education-related articles about
gay men were appearing, mainly related to HIV, so this term was excluded because
these types of article are public health or social work literature, not education. So, the
following restrictors were added:

NOT: ethnic* (SUBJECT TERMS).

NOT: hiv or aids or acquired human immunodeficiency syndrome or human
immunodeficiency virus (ALL TEXT).
NOT: women or female or woman or females (SUBJECT TERMS).
NOT: girls* (SUBJECT TERMS).
NOT: african americans or black americans or blacks (SUBJECT TERMS).

This step yielded 308 results. Next, I restricted the results to only include academic
journals and conference proceedings. Conference proceedings were included because
an initial scan of the high-ranking search results revealed that much of the active and
pertinent research and discourse in this area is happening at the well-known Psychol-
ogy of Mathematics Education (PME) and the North American Group for the Psychol-
ogy of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) conferences, so conference proceedings
were included in the results to capture those papers. This step yielded 210 results.
Results were then restricted to the following databases only, as they are major databases
with widespread indexing and availability in the education field: Education Research
Complete, Academic Search Complete, SocINDEX with full text, Psychological and
Behavioral Sciences Collection, and Gale Academic OneFile. Exact duplicates were
automatically removed by the EBSCOhost system. This step yielded 39 results. These

Fig. 1 Systematic literature search process in Phase 1

Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

39 results were then screened on the basis of title, abstract, and keywords for obvious
false positives, such as articles belonging to a field other than education (e.g., public
health or psychology) or if the article was about heteronormative gender or racial
marginalization instead of sexual and gender non-normative marginalization. One of
the most common causes for a false positive was a disambiguation of the word
mathematics in the keywords, such as “variable (mathematics),” or “identity (mathe-
matics),” referring to mathematical objects rather than personal identity or the field of
mathematics education; 20 papers were excluded on this basis as obvious false
positives.
It is important for me, here, to reiterate the relationship of this research field to
gender inequality in mathematics education. There is a well-established literature base
that observes the disconnect between cis-male and cis-female students’ experience in
mathematics, and indeed much of the theoretical framework employed in the present
analysis comes from queer theory which developed out of feminist theory. Similarly,
the type of marginalization faced by African-American or racial minority students is
similar in some ways to that of queer students, and indeed there is much in the literature
about Critical Race Theory and its application to mathematics education, but the
literature on this topic does not bear directly on the matter at hand. In both of these
instances, relevant literature can be considered peripherally important to the present
matter. This restriction yielded 19 results.
These 19 papers were then accessed for full text to manually scan each deeper to
determine relevance, which led to studies being excluded for reasons ranging from a
disambiguation of one of the search parameters (e.g., the name Gay appeared in the
paper instead of the word gay as in homosexual) to a close association of the context of
the paper but it did not match with the purpose at hand (e.g., the paper was about
gender inequality in mathematics education, but only considered the heteronormative
dimension of cis-male and cis-female). A total of eight studies were excluded in this
process. One paper (Leonardi and Staley 2015) was excluded because it appeared in a
practitioner magazine. The remaining 10 papers were then considered to constitute the
yield of the systematic search (see Fig. 1). In Phase 2, I proceeded with manual progeny
and ancestral searching, broad reading, and conversations with other scholars working
in this research area. All potential matches were manually accessed and scanned for
theoretical relevance. This iterative process eventually yielded 18 results. Thus, the
total yield of the literature search was 28 papers (see Tables 1 and 2 in the Appendix).
Next, I discuss the analysis of these 28 papers and the resulting theoretical framework
that was produced as a result.

Results

Analytic strategy and interpretive commentary

As this is a theoretical literature review aimed at helping other researchers better

conceptualize queer identity in mathematics education, my intention in analyzing the
literature was to extract theoretical approaches and frameworks and synthesize them.
That is, instead of synthesizing the findings of the literature in Tables 1 and 2 (see
Appendix), I synthesize their theoretical perspectives. In doing this, several theoretical
 A. S. Moore

themes emerged. These major themes were then organized by an iterative process
towards an end of arranging them in a diagram showing their relation to each other in
the situated context of this analysis and the other theories identified, which I present in
the Queer Identity Intersection of Mathematics Education (QII) found in Fig. 2. The
structure of the QII is presented through the frame of intersectionality theory, and
metaphorically I have chosen to represent this as an intersection of roads for two
reasons. First, note that the focal point of Fig. 2 is the intersection at the center of the
crossing roads. On each of those roads, there are theories listed in relation to each other
as if on a spectrum, having other theories both to their fore and aft. Then, situating
oneself at any position on the road and directing one’s gaze towards the intersection
prompts two questions: (1), “What is behind me, i.e., what theories are supporting me
to be at this current point?” and (2), “What is ahead of me, i.e., what perspectives,
considerations, or possibilities are between me and the intersection?”
It is in this latter question that the generative function of the QII is found, namely
that it is designed to generate new theoretical approaches, in keeping with the notion of
queering the research process (McWilliams and Penuel 2017), which could exist ahead
of you on the road on your journey towards the intersection. I imagine this as an
infinitesimal “zooming-in” similar to the notion in calculus. In this metaphor, you can
always get closer and closer, finding a finer analytic grain, a process that strengthens
the research scope being considered. That is, the QII is designed to be added to,
augmented, branched off from, edited, rethought, and in every other way queered
and questioned by future research in the field. However, this is not to say that I am
suggesting an entirely deconstructionist approach to all of mathematics education
research, quite the contrary. I am suggesting that, in revealing new research intersec-
tions such as queer identity and mathematical identity, I as a researcher must queer my
own thinking by asking myself, in a poststructuralist way, what is possible, what makes
it possible, and what are its consequences (McWilliams and Penuel 2017; Shah and
Leonardo 2017)? By queering my own thinking about research, I reject what Bowers
(2019) calls rhetoricocentrism and methodocentrism in mathematics education
research—centrist orientations towards rhetoric and methodology that reproduce dom-
inant and normative interests while invalidating marginal voices. Then, what are the
consequences of doing this? Rejecting such centrisms allows one to queer one’s
thinking about mathematical identity, gender identity, sexual identity, and categorical
limitations on understanding the incredible nuance and unlimited variety of students’
and teachers’ experiences in mathematics.

Theoretical structure

Perhaps one of the opaquest attributes of the QII is the nature of its structure and why I
have placed the themes in the chosen arrangement. After the theoretical frames of each
paper were organized in Tables 1 and 2, and reduced to common themes, these
common themes were taken as a data set of sorts and are what appear now as elements
on the QII. The arrangement of the themes comes from an analytic consideration of
each theme’s underlying theories (e.g., poststructuralism, situated learning, critical
theory) and how it had been used in the identified literature to support an investigation
or conceptualization of queer identity in mathematics education. These theoretical
employments required of me a postmodern commitment in the analysis, as an empirical
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

Fig. 2 The Queer Identity Intersection (QII) of Mathematics Education

or natural organization would not have been appropriate. In this process, I considered
my own familiarity with each of the theories present in the reduced themes. For any of
them with which I was not familiar, I spent time learning about them and their
relationships to the other reduced themes. It is obvious from looking at the QII that
many of the elements are philosophically related, some of which have been spawned
out of others, and still others that are scholastic evolutions of predecessors. In consid-
ering all of these together, I remained bound by the 28 papers identified in the literature
search and bound to the context of mathematics education research. This process kept
my synthesis within the scope of the literature, so that the QII represents an accurate
theoretical snapshot of this field at this time. The purpose of this internal consistency is
to capture the theoretical status quo of queer identity research in mathematics educa-
tion, as elsewhere it has been noted that operationalizing it has proven challenging
(Dubbs 2016). Furthermore, the justification for the relative arrangement of the reduced
themes on the QII resides purely in the literature, how those researchers employed the
theories, and my interpretation of them after-the-fact. Thus, interpreting the relative
structure of the QII also requires a postmodern commitment on the part of the reader, an
issue I discuss further in the “Critique of the QII, and the vital necessity of reconstruc-
tion” section. So then, what is to be done with the QII? I encourage researchers wishing
to engage in this sort of research to consider the following short vignette.
In envisioning one’s “movement” along the roads of the QII, the goal is to approach
the intersection. For example, in positioning oneself in the queer identity road near the
Critical Theories location, a journey to the intersection involves first passing through
Critical Pedagogy, followed by Stereotype Threat and Minority Threat, the latter two of
 A. S. Moore

which exist inside a person’s figured world (Holland et al. 1998). Passing through
Critical Pedagogy necessitates key questions such as, “How is the mathematics curric-
ulum and instruction reproducing heteronormativity, assumptions of heterosexism, and
the repression of non-normative students?” Then, when passing into a student’s figured
world and encountering dimensions such as stereotype threat and minority threat
(Gottfried et al. 2015), key questions asked may include, “What stereotypes and
experiences of threat are students or teachers experiencing in mathematics?” The
process of moving along the queer identity road in this example path illustrates two
things: (1) that the road, as it approaches the intersection, moves from generality of
theory (external immediacy)4 to specificity of experience (internal immediacy), and (2)
that in order to situate oneself nearer to the intersection, say, inside the figured world of
a student, then considerations of critical theory and critical pedagogy must precede the
interpretation of that figured world and any research that will occur in it. Thus, it would
be a methodocentristic mistake to attempt to understand, say, a queer student’s figured
world in mathematics without first understanding how critical theory and critical
pedagogy can inform that understanding. In other words, the researcher must be
well-read and situated in critical theory and critical pedagogy in order to have the
necessary lens for revealing all of the relevant aspects of the queer student’s figured
world and all of its contents, such as stereotype threat, foregrounds, and experiences of
genderism.
My intention with the QII is to illustrate the interconnectedness of the various
theories it contains, without construing any exclusionary aspect or connection. That is,
the QII illustrates how theories and perspectives are in positive relationship with each
other, but a lack of connecting line between two items does not indicate that they are
not related to each other. Therefore, the QII aims to be theoretically descriptive, not
prescriptive. For example, Bright (2017) and Gutiérrez (2013) both situate their work
along the entire queer identity axis, as they employ critical theories and
poststructuralism as intersecting frames. This folding of the QII along itself shows
how their work is oriented along one ideological axis but contains possibilities for
future evolution by moving closer towards the QII intersection to investigate at a
smaller grain size; the goal location for such research along the queer axis would be
revealed when these scholars’ work intersected the mathematical identity axis, i.e.,
when mathematical identity development—for example, the “I” poems of Hall and
colleagues (2018), or the actual and designated identities of Sfard and Prusak (2005)—
is concurrently operationalized alongside the queer axis theories they have already
employed.

Critique of the QII, and the vital necessity of reconstruction

I begin immediately after introducing the QII by critiquing it, in an effort to queer the
very categorial nature it presents. Furthermore, in the spirit of queer theory, I immedi-
ately even suggest that the structural nature of the QII is one of its largest shortcomings
by creating an ontological collapse (Heyd-Metzuyanim 2019) of all identities

4
I use the term external immediacy to refer to the immediate ontological precipice of general theory in the
materialist sense, being external to the individual. The reverse applies to internal immediacy, meaning internal
to the individual.
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

addressed in the QII, understandings of those identities, and structuralist language

failures that fundamentally contradict the process of queering. The structure is intended
to be a conceptual organizer and visual cue, prompting the researcher to ask the
fundamental question suggested above, “What else can I fit in between [here]?” This
infinitely expanding framework, then, becomes anything but static and structural. It is
structural only to the extent of pragmatically suggesting points of departure for new
research, new theoretical innovations, and new intersections and methodologies.
In addition to this structural critique, the QII is also incomplete in its description of
the intersection it aims to illustrate. There were multiple versions of this framework that
I envisioned and compared, asking which of them was most adherent to the theory and
synthesis I set forth here. The dynamic nature of the QII is that it intends not to be a
structural barrier to further exploration, but rather to suggest the action-motion of one’s
work along each of the roads, finding new innovations that fit in between prior ones.
The visual metaphor of moving along the roads and towards the intersection invites
questions such as, “What is before me? What is behind me?” In asking such questions,
researchers can use the QII to equip themselves in situating their own work. With an
eye towards the intersectional horizon, the QII quickly gets left behind as a static,
expired construct that has served its purpose. It has provided a generative point of
departure at new positions, guiding the researcher towards the intersection, much like
contours of magnetic attraction pulling the researcher towards the intersection of queer
identity and mathematical identity. These limitations are, in fact, part of the very
queered nature of the QII. Queering our work in mathematics education requires a
dualistic view of our own contributions, simultaneously affording and constraining
ideas to the field.
Indeed, the QII should be interpreted as containing major waypoints identified in the
theoretical contributions of the literature in Tables 1 and 2, while collapsing others into
major thematic groups. The QII thus should be recognized as an attempt to deconstruct
the literature into major groups, and then reconstruct the intersection into something
more useful, something which can orient researchers in future studies and explorations.
In this reconstructionist vein, consider how the QII may fold back in on itself in N-
space—that is, in multiple dimensions—in effect creating new intersections between
different locations on the roads. Doing such an exercise allows one to see how
intersections can form when crossing two existing theories over one another to reveal
an additional layer of perspective and practice, such as with critical curriculum,
pedagogy, and methodology studies noted in the box on the right. As a basic example,
consider folding the two roads onto each other to connect “critical theories” to
“poststructuralist approach,” in effect revealing the poststructural tenets of critical
theories, and the necessary reliance of critical theory on poststructural thought to fully
realize its critique. Another example can be envisioned by folding the roads to connect
“critical pedagogy” and “genderism,” in effect revealing the conscientization (Freire
1970) of one’s experience of genderism in the classroom. These re-intersecting folds
address the key structuralist flaw of the QII, what A. N. Whitehead (Santos and Sia
2007; Whitehead 1997) calls the “fallacy of simple location,” meaning that locating
one’s perspective at a location on the QII does not mean that their view does not
simultaneously exist, through an N-space fold, in other locations on the QII. Having a
flexible view of the QII releases one from this fallacy and from its limiting influence on
imagining what aspects of the QII and its related literature is useful and relevant.
 A. S. Moore

Indeed, failure to imagine the complex ways in which the QII can morph and fold is to
commit an ontological collapse (Heyd-Metzuyanim 2019), not of the identities of the
people described by the QII, but of the QII itself. Emergent reconstructive centers
create new possibilities, foregrounding new analyses and frames, extending the QII
beyond its current state and giving it new vitality. Anything might converge anywhere.

Outside the intersection: Situated contributions of other literature

As illustrated by the QII, theoretical approaches exist on a continuum, meaning that

there are always more perspectives related to one’s current lens that are peripheral. In
that vein, there were several papers that I identified as peripherally important, but that
did not exist in the intersection of the present analysis. In fact, many of the papers
included in the present review were not directly situated in the intersection of queer
identity and mathematical identity, but in my perspective, they contributed to the
framing and understanding of my purpose in this writing. Thus, they were included,
while others were excluded. Such peripheral papers reinforce the habit of “broad
reading” in academia; their exclusion here does not mean they are not important, but
rather that I deemed them to be inconsistent with the purpose of this article. However,
in reading such peripheral literature, I found myself more clearly situated in the
intersection desired. This realization should encourage similar behavior by other
researchers when continuing the work of expanding the QII to include more theories
and perspectives. Indeed, and as with the limitations of the QII described, such a
multiplicatous approach foregrounds the very nature of the task of queering mathemat-
ics education.

Discussion

On queer identity in mathematics education

Queer and mathematical identities are enacted, as are all identities. Similarly, the
participation metaphor for learning conceptualizes of the learning process as the
journey of becoming certain types of people within a community of practice,
such as—in the context of a classroom—becoming seen as a knowledgeable and
capable practitioner of that academic tradition (Darragh 2014, 2016; Holland
et al. 1998; Owens 2007; Rands 2009b; Sfard 1998, 2015; Sheldon and Rands
2013; Wenger 1998). This process also includes how one is seen by and
positioned among their peers. Thus, “knowing” is a practice of the community
that engages it; one’s identities, such as identities of participation or non-partic-
ipation, are part of the learning experience (Heyd-Metzuyanim and Sfard 2012;
Lave and Wenger 1991; Sfard and Kieran 2001; Sfard and Prusak 2005; Wenger
1998). Therefore, the negotiation of our multiple identities—as students, artists,
rebels, conformers, athletes, activists, members of a culture, students, teachers
(Kokka 2018)—is an integral part of the learning experiences one has (R.
Gutiérrez 2013). As one learns, their identities are negotiated and renegotiated
as they move through the landscapes of the communities in which they partic-
ipate. For example, the mathematics classroom serves as a place where more
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

capable and less capable students are socially positioned against each other
(Damarin 2000; Gottfried et al. 2015), and those identities are both internally
developed by the individual and externally developed through social interpreta-
tions by their peers. Thus, identity and learning are concurrent, engaged, enacted,
and negotiated processes that constitute each other in the (mathematics) class-
room (Esmonde 2009b; Skovsmose 2014; Wenger 1998). Identity bears on
learning and learning bears on identity, in that “inequities can emerge in stu-
dents’ access to identities as capable learners of mathematics” (Reinholz and
Shah 2018, p. 142).
In addition, identity refers to the beliefs one has about oneself, to the feelings
of belonging in different communities of practice, and to the way that one enacts
those beliefs in sociocultural situations (Gee 2000). Identity is enacted as a
continuously negotiated aggregation of various sociocultural group memberships
in response to the situations of lived experiences. As a result, identities evolve as
different situated encounters come and go, meaning that identity is dynamic and
ever-changing as someone goes through life (Darragh 2014; Esmonde 2009c;
Heyd-Metzuyanim and Sfard 2012; Sfard and Kieran 2001; Sfard and Prusak
2005). This dynamism also occurs in the mathematics classroom in students’
experience of learning and knowing in mathematics, because participation or non-
participation in the mathematics classroom is continuously negotiated along with
one’s sexual and gender identity at school (Solomon et al. 2016). For example,
students in secondary school who may be realizing an identity of sexual or
gender non-normativity experience school differently than their heteronormative
peers (Esmonde 2009b, 2011; Esmonde and Langer-Osuna 2013; Rands 2009b,
2013); their experience of this identity will be different between their elementary,
middle, and high school years, and also different between their childhood and
adult life (Hammack 2008, 2018; Hammack et al. 2009; Hammack and Cohler
2011). The school, as a site of bullying and ostracization, is a site of physical,
ontological, and—in the case of mathematics education in particular—
epistemological violence towards queer students (Damarin 2000; Kazemi and
Drake 2018; Kumashiro 2001; Leyva 2017; McGee and Hostetler 2014; Meyer
et al. 2015; Rands 2009b, 2013; Snapp et al. 2015). Identity therefore constitutes
a fundamental part of the learning process over one’s life (Darragh 2016).
Critically though, the classroom positions personal attributes of queer identity
against structures of power and privilege in school and the societal interests that
schools reproduce and protect (Esmonde 2017). This power structure centers
Discourses (Gee 1999) of normativity while marginalizing others (cf. Deleuze
1968/1994). Furthermore, many teachers are supportive of self-reflection to
address such marginalizing power structures in their own capacities, and of queer
curriculum decisions that center gender and sexual diversity (Bright 2017; R.
Gutiérrez 2007; Kokka 2018; Meyer et al. 2015; Sumara and Davis 1999). Such
evolutions in traditional notions of education embody the queer spirit because
such evolution is the result of queering the school and its curriculum. These shifts
in educational thinking would support all queer students, those who struggle
(Solomon et al. 2016), those who are discriminated against (Esmonde and
Langer-Osuna 2013), and those who persist in the face of adversity and succeed
in taking advanced mathematics courses nonetheless (Gottfried et al. 2015).
 A. S. Moore

To unify these perspectives, consider Wenger’s (1998) question, “Who am I be-

coming?” When taken as a fundamental question of existence and participation in the
educational arena, the concept of identity emerges as a critical factor in the phenomena
of teaching, learning, and knowing. When looking at the experience of students and
teachers in the mathematics classroom, the learning experience is a social one, and
hence no longer solely internal because a person’s identity influences and impacts the
way they experience the teaching and learning phenomena (Gee 2000). A person’s
amalgam of identities becomes embodied through lived experience and hence can no
longer be considered separately (Crenshaw 1989, 1991), as they become the perfor-
mative and hybridized conceptualization of the person’s unique sense-of-self (Ahmed
2013; Butler 2013; Darragh 2014; Hammack 2018; Holland et al. 1998; Lave and
Wenger 1991; McRuer 2013; Sfard and Prusak 2005; Wenger 1998). In considering the
continual process this entails, the Wengerian question of “Who am I becoming?”
centers our attention on the dynamic nature of identity throughout life and experience.
This process, whether for students, teachers, or anyone else, is under continuous
fluctuation and thus requires lifelong relational cultivation (Hammack 2008).
Parts of one’s identity—despite being concomitant—are distinct, internal
layers of membership in communities but can be elevated in the form of locally
performed microidentities (cf. Cobb et al. 2009; Hogg et al. 1995; Wood 2013)
in response to the needs of a particular situation. For example, codeswitching is
widely practiced in the Black community in regard to language and parlance.
Similarly, a gay male may find himself in a situation where it may not be
acceptable to be gay, in which case he may perform an elevated
heteronormative identity in that moment. These performative microidentities
are enabled by artifacts that come from past experiences and media consump-
tion, many of which originated in childhood where heteronormativity is as-
sumed and group membership is forced, often by parents and teachers. Such
instances can come and go based on the situations of lived experiences,
reiterating that performative microidentities can change over time with reifica-
tion intuited from past experiences of similar situations and interpretations of
social cues. In this way, identity can be conceptualized as an iterative process
of negotiation and self-cultivation through experiences of meaning, many of which—for
children—happen at school. Queer students and teachers develop these internal identi-
ties of participation and non-participation in educational communities of practice, such
as classrooms and schools (Meyer et al. 2015; Snapp et al. 2015; Sumara and Davis
1999). As one develops this identity of being a participant in mathematics, the other
parts of their identity are an influence. For example, one might ask, “Do I see anyone
else like me here?”, “Are other people acting like I belong here?”, “Am I able to do
this?”, “Should I be doing something else?”, and “How am I being positioned by/among
my peers?”

My charge to the field

Towards a shared understanding of queering in mathematics education

In addressing queer identity in mathematics education, researchers in the field

must work towards a comprehensive understanding of queerness. Similar to
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

Damarin and Erchick’s (2010) call for researchers to establish a shared and
comprehensive understanding of “gender” in mathematics education, I extend
this effort and follow Dubbs (2016) in calling for movement towards a shared
understanding of “queer.” However, queerness is inherent to mathematics itself
because queer theory, like mathematics, centers the notions of skepticism of
rationality and pre-structured and presupposed ontologies. By doing so, math-
ematicians engaged in research are, as a matter of discipline, always engaged in
a queering process of the existing mathematical knowledge. New discoveries
are made when playfully asking “What if?” of the existing paradigms and
postulates. In the example of the hyper-reals {*R}, mathematician Abraham
Robinson, in a process of interrogating notions of infinitesimals as measurable
mathematical objects, developed the hyper-reals to address conceptual and
structural inconsistencies in one of the fundamental ideas of calculus (Dauben
2003). In the process of playfully manipulating axioms, creatively abstracting
new mathematics never before conceived, and positing a completely new way
of thinking of the real numbers and infinitesimals, Robinson in fact queered the
existing mathematics in order to make a new discovery. While Robinson no
doubt did not conceptualize his mathematical behavior as a queering process, it
in fact follows the structure called forth by queer theory in the process of
queering (McWilliams and Penuel 2017; Shlasko 2005).

Critiquing historical models: it is about more than just tokenized word problems

The notion of queer identity in mathematics education is not new, nor am I

suggesting that I am the first to research it, quite to the contrary. The topic has
experienced enough historicity at the time of this writing to have seen phases in
approaches to work that has been published. Some of these approaches I
deemed to be outdated or deficit. Papers that adopt the position that diversity
can be addressed by incorporating lesbian or gay characters into word problems
(Kellermeier 1992, 1995) pathologizes queerness rather than liberating it. Thus,
it is crucial that the field avoid advancing historical models of embracing
queerness in mathematics. This warning was originally articulated by Rands
(2009a), who called such simplistic and pathologizing approaches the “add
queers and stir” method. Another example can be found in Nelson (2002) that
again pathologized queerness in the form of assimilationism. An assimilatory
standpoint on queerness positions the sociocultural goal as imitating and merg-
ing with the dominant structure of norms and behaviors, thus further margin-
alizing and placing normative burden on “those who still count as queer” (Dean
2018, p. xi; Mieli 2018). A critical reading of Nelson’s and Kellermeier’s work
reveals a position that reproduces heteronormativity and difference, rather than
deconstructing the notions of normalcy and structuralism that enable the hetero-
norm to exist. A truly queer approach to this intersectional research area centers
a poststructural underpinning, fundamentally reformulating the classroom with-
out the latent residuals of the heteronormative power structure. Without cross-
ing this critical threshold, any future research will continue to be restricted to
the confines of those normative matrix limitations.
 A. S. Moore

This is a new borderland to inhabit

As I have echoed throughout this writing, I am situating this work in a

borderland. It is intentionally uncomfortable. Deconstructing cornerstone models
of normativity in our society, such as those of gender and sexuality, mathe-
matics, and education, requires willingness of the researcher to embrace entirely
new ways of thinking; the ability to critique one’s own preconceived beliefs
and understandings of words, notions, and concepts; and the admission of how
each of us acts as oppressor (Bowers 2019; Stinson and Bullock 2012). As
Tilley-Lubbs (2016) profoundly notes, “good intentions pave the road to hier-
archy” (p. 51). That is, researchers must not engage in queer research in
mathematics education without a self-examination of how one’s own research
voice reproduces the exact systems they intend to interrogate.

On Intersectionality as the interpretive and politicizing lens

The very multifaceted nature of the ideas conveyed by the QII beg the
question, “How do I interpret this in an operationalizable way?” Indeed, the
nature of the ideas contained in the QII reveals their intersectional relationships
and manifestations in the lives of students and teachers. To briefly recapitulate,
I propose intersectionality theory (Crenshaw 1989, 1991) to be the interpretive
lens of the QII. Crenshaw cited a need for a theoretical approach that recog-
nized components of identity as intersecting with each other to create special
experiences of meaning for individuals, intersections that could not be under-
stood by merely taking the parts of one’s identity that constituted them. That is
to say, intersections of identities are more than the sum of their parts. In the
same way, the intersectionality metaphor asks the question, if you are on two
different roads of marginalized identity at the same time, that is, in the
intersection of those two roads, which of the individual roads are you on?
The answer is neither, because in the intersection, and indeed in trying to
understand the experience itself, you are simultaneously in both roads, and
thus you are in neither of them isolated from the other. The intersection creates
an element of identity that must become the unit of analysis. Thus, to fully
understand notion of queer identity in mathematics education, I suggest an
intersection of queer identity and mathematical identity. In order to approach
this intersection, recall that queer identity is any sort of non-normative gender
or sexuality identity that is outside of the heteronormative assumption, and that
mathematical identity considers one’s self-concept, positionality, foregrounds,
intentions, and affective traits of their place in mathematics. While mathemat-
ical identity is not necessarily marginalized, it can function as a marginalizing
force by limiting who has access to identities of being capable learners and
doers of mathematics (Reinholz and Shah 2018).
Because the intersection creates a new analytic positionality, orienting one-
self in the intersection necessitates the use of theoretical intersections from the
QII. For example, intersectionality could be applied to the QII in order to
consider how queer students participate in and address stereotype threat during
their mathematics classes. That is, since participation in the classroom is
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

gendered (Johnson et al. 2020)—and, by extension, sexualitied—it may be

desirable for a queer student to excel in mathematics in order to build owner-
ship of an identity that is socially coded as masculine. In this example, such a
desire may be illustrated in the case of gay male students, whose masculine
credibility is often challenged at school (Hammack 2018; Hammack et al. 2009;
Hammack and Cohler 2011).
At any location on the QII, a researcher should interrogate the intersection of
queer identity and mathematical identity when conceptualizing research direc-
tions. Because of the interconnected nature of the theories presented in the QII,
this intersectional interrogation can be performed in the discrete category
bubbles or in between them. As queer theory rejects binaries, so too does the
QII reject discrete theoretical contributions and binarism. In this way, the QII
advances a fluid notion of theoretical approaches by rejecting methodocentrism
and rhetoricocentrism (Bowers 2019) in favor of a queered approach to theory.
A queered approach, and indeed an intersectional approach, to theory heralds
new and innovative ways of hybridizing perspectives together to address new
issues in research that previous frameworks were not able to see. As in
Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) discovery that existing legal lenses were blind to
Black women’s intersectional experiences of discrimination, so too does the
QII illustrate how further research efforts on queer identity in mathematics
education will only be possible with new, intersectional, and innovative lenses
for seeing the queerness in students’ and teachers’ mathematics experiences
(Dubbs 2016), and further, in the mathematics itself. Thus, it is the purpose of
the QII to illustrate how existing theoretical approaches to this research relate
to each other, in an effort to queer the methodologies and rhetoric being used
by the field when researching queerness and queer identity in mathematics
education. At any of the locations on the QII, the queer identity and mathe-
matical identity intersection situates the researcher in a queered position. Only
when such a position has been adopted will further investigations be possible.
For example, if a researcher wishes to investigate how mathematics repro-
duces Discourses of colonization (e.g., R. Gutiérrez 2012, 2017), then situating
the work in Kumashiro’s (2001) extension of the poststructural perspective will
enable the appropriate language and theory to inform the research design;
however, only when the additional layer of queer identity and mathematical
identity intersectionality is overlaid on top of that postcolonial theoretical
perspective will researchers be able to see how those Discourses of colonization
affect queer students and teachers as they come to develop an identity of
belonging in mathematics, restrict conceptualizations of mathematics to the
heteronormative binary of rationality, and prevent the interrogation of colonial-
ism’s repression of queerness as a historically situated phenomenon. By failing
to fully situate oneself in this intersection—of queer identity, mathematical
identity, and postcolonialism—it becomes impossible, for example, to imagine
new solutions to mathematical problems that have not been solved before, to
imagine of a broadened mathematical field where diverse and nontraditional
perspectives and thinking are championed, and to dismantle repressive Dis-
courses that maintain the rationality, i.e., the masculinity, of mathematics and
its applications. This operationalization of the QII again re-centers
 A. S. Moore

intersectionality, as discussed when I critiqued the QII, and allows for emergent
centers of new intersections to be envisioned through a process of
reconstruction.

Conclusion

Any literature review contains significant limitations, whether an intentional or

unintentional exclusion of literature. Literature can be excluded either through
discretionary searching or the authors’ decision to maintain a narrow scope, or
the naturally exclusionary disposition of systematic reviews. As the present
review contains both systematic and traditional phases of literature searching,
this paper exhibits both of these types of limitations. In addition, a theoretical
literature review faces the unique problem of being the self-fulfilling prophecy
behind its purpose. That is, a theoretical literature review such as the present
paper exists for and posits its own existential justification, not to the detriment
of the literature it surveys, but rather because of the author’s perspective on the
matter in interpreting the theories. Additionally, there is a problem with the
approach of mapping components of identity—namely, essentialization. It has
been argued that it is impossible to study components of identity without
essentializing them (Gholson, personal communication), but the purpose of the
QII is to do exactly that: It is to establish a structure of how these theories are
orbiting around the same key concept of queer identity in mathematics educa-
tion. Through such essentialization, researchers can begin to lay the ground-
work for future reconstructions of mathematics education with new, innovative,
queered research. With this in mind, my hope is that this writing becomes a
resource in the literature, a philosophical proclamation, a critical call to other
researchers, and a tool for queering one’s own thinking about mathematics
education research and its possibilities.

Acknowledgments The author thanks Christopher Dubbs for his assistance in the literature search and Julia
Truman for her helpful conversations and insights.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Appendix

This appendix includes two tables, Table 1 and Table 2. All citations for
references mentioned in this appendix are included in the References list of
the main manuscript.
Table 1 Results from Phase 1: Systematic search

Author and year Research Question/Purpose Theory or Respondents Method Results or findings
framework

(Rands 2009a) Queer liberalism approach
to education.
(Gottfried et al. Do queer students have
2015) different educational
outcomes in HS STEM
courses?
(Dubbs 2016) What is the queer turn in
mathematics education?
Queer Theory
Marginalization of Queer
Students in High School
Intersectionality of Identity
Queer Theory
Elementary Students Qualitative Adding a queer perspective to existing
Discursive paradigms liberates the queer
narrative by allowing it into
excluded cultural spaces.
High School Students Quantitative - Queer students are just as likely to
Empirical pursue STEM
courses in high school as their
heteronormative peers.
- However, more proximal factors
may exist that were
not detected, such as self-concept
and beliefs.
n/a Theoretical - Operationalize performative and
intersectional notions
of identity for use in mathematics
education research.
- Push the boundaries of mathematics
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

(Piatek-Jimenez Defining the scope of the
et al. 2018) Gender and Sexuality
Working Group of
PME-NA
(McGee and - What can mathematics for
Hostetler 2014) social justice learn from
social justice in social
studies and vice versa?
- How would historicizing
mathematics and
mathematizing social studies
curricula and lessons
n/a
Social Reconstructionism
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(Freire 1970)
Critical Pedagogy
education and
what is thought to be its purview.
- Mathematics education community
needs to engage with queer theory.
Current Research Survey, Discursive Future year’s conferences will follow
Key Persons Involved, up and the group will continue to
Summary grow by sharing resources
and ideas while recognizing that this
field is hanging quickly.
n/a Theoretical - All students should learn through
social reconstructionist experiences
of education.
- Mathematics is historically situated
and thus embodies structures of
power and oppression.
Table 1 (continued)

Author and year Research Question/Purpose Theory or Respondents Method Results or findings
framework

enhance the overall learning

experience and forge
stronger links to the broader
social justice fight for
sociopolitical
consciousness, while at the same
time enhancing content
knowledge?
(Kokka 2018) What sparked the teachers’ interest in Pedagogy of the Oppressed
organizing and activism work?
How do they conceptualize
STEM teacher activism (STA)?
(Damarin 2000) The “mathematically able” as a
marked category of students has
placed women in a minority
position and unable to gain
membership in the
group of mathematicians.
(Kazemi and How does understanding students’
Drake 2018) experiences in mathematics
inform the work of teachers?
(Rubel 2018) Where are we standing in
mathematics education?
(Freire 1970)
Critical Pedagogy
Critical Race Feminism and
Intersectionality
Tribal Critical Race Theory
Marked Categories
Constructions of Deviance
Critical Theory
Feminist Theory
Critical Race Theory
n/a
Four Activist-Oriented Discursive Personal experiences and
Teachers in STEM Qualitative understanding oppression
Ethnographic lead teachers to embrace issues
of marginality and social justice.
n/a Theoretical Researchers need to change the
narrative from a “positive” view
of mathematics to one of
engendered power structures which
limit access on the grounds of race,
gender, sexuality, etc.
Fourth Grade Students in Discursive Listening to student experiences should
Two Classrooms Qualitative inform the directions of Math Ed
35 High School Students Critical Discourse research.
in Analysis
Four Classrooms
n/a Synthesis - Funds of knowledge did a lot for
Theoretical mathematics education.
- Participation theory of learning did a
lot for mathematics education.
- Sociocultural and sociopolitical turn
did a lot for mathematics education.
- Next steps include figuring out what is
the centrality of equity in mathematics
education?
A. S. Moore
Table 1 (continued)

Author and year Research Question/Purpose Theory or Respondents Method Results or findings
framework

(Bright 2017) Who does the curriculum say
mathematics is for?
Critical Race Theory 58 Graduate Students Emergent-Grounded Mathematics curriculum is historically
Feminist Theory (Teachers and Future situated and thus is a product of power
Poststructuralism Teachers) structures. This limits the scope of
access of who mathematics is for to
straight, White, middle-class men.
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education
Table 2 Results from Phase 2: Emergent-Discovery Search, Ancestral-Progeny Search, and Professional Colleagues’ Recommendations

Author & year Research Question/Purpose Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings

(Rands 2009b) Many schools lack understanding Define: Gender, trans, gender n/a n/a Propose the “gender oppression
of transgender people. This is a oppression, heteronormativity. This is a theoretical piece. This is a theoretical matrix” to understand
problem because school is Note that education is gendered, piece. heteronormativity.
where most children come to and gender stereotyped.
know the sociocultural aspect of Imagine teacher education with
gender. Schools are also the site trans included.
of much violence against trans
students.
(Rands 2013) Trans kids face disproportionate Gender-complex framework for n/a Teachers can expand Three stages of elaborations to
amounts of violence towards education takes a critical and This is a theoretical piece. existing incorporate gender complex
them at school. In many cases, liberatory lens to challenge and curriculum into approach and teach social
this prevents them from rectify gender discrepancies and gender-complex justice perspective.
accessing equal educational binary construction. This allows realm by
opportunities. School staff and stereotypes and norms to be following the
faculty also infrequently challenged through series of
intervene in these issues. mathematics. “elaborations.”
(Esmonde Gender equity research in math ed Achievement gaps can be useful as n/a n/a Gender as performance (Butler), or
2011) typically focuses on gender a unit of analysis, but they do This is a theoretical piece. This is a theoretical the repertoires of practice
achievement gaps, instructional not fully explain the genderism piece. (Gutierrez and Rogoff) notions
experiences of girls and boys, of school experiences. Further, are helpful in understanding
boys’ and girls’ attitudes they can produce findings that how genderism effects math
towards mathematics, and reinforce sexism. This paper education. The goal is not to do
de-gendering the math proposes a new away with gender, but to
classroom. Most uses of the conceptualization of gender challenge the binary.
terms sex and gender are equity through a framework of: Mathematics resources
erroneously interchangeable. - Queer Theory frequently reinforce it.
Clear definitions have also not - Critical Theory
been reached in the mathematics Genderism means valuing people
education community, although for their gender as seen as
locally gender normative.
A. S. Moore
Table 2 (continued)
Author & year Research Question/Purpose
Damarin and Erchick (2010)
have specifically called for this.
(Esmonde - How do students describe
2009a) cooperative group work in their
mathematics class?
- How do students describe the
way their socially constructed
identities influence the nature of
their group interactions in
mathematics classrooms?
Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings
Note that this is situated and
contextual, because gender may
be more or less valued in
different contexts and situations.
Who students are influences what Case study of 30 11th and 12th They were asked Coded into four categories:
and how the learn together; i.e., grade mathematics students. about their beliefs - Interactional style
issues of identity are critical part 14 agreed to an interview. about group work. - Mathematical understanding
of doing group work. Wenger’s Semi-structured - Friendships and relationships
notion of the “nexus of interview to - Social identities
multi-membership” (Wenger address both RQs.
1998, p. 158).
Their framework includes three
positionalities:
- Critical Race Theory
- Stereotype Threat
- Sociological Theory of Status
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education
Table 2 (continued)

Author & year Research Question/Purpose Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings

(Esmonde and How can you describe the figured Figured Worlds (Holland et al. High school mathematics Observation of the Teacher-led figured world aligned
Langer-Osuna worlds of the mathematics 1998) – Each student and classes near San Francisco Classroom with with the standards-based
2013) classroom (both mathematical teacher brings their own figured that were Field Notes curriculum. Some topics were
and social) as expressed by world into interaction with socioeconomically, racially, Videotapes of the off limits. Teachers position
racialized and gendered student others’. The classroom itself is a and linguistically diverse. Lessons and White boys as the most able.
interactions How can you figured world, defined by They focus on three Interactions Romance and friendships
analyze multiple figured worlds tensions of approaches to students in particular. worlds were heterosexual in
from the standpoint of power teaching, and defined by power nature.
structures and dynamics and structures. Foucauldian
how they impact interactions of approach to power, in that it is
the students in the mathematics defined by interactions and not
classroom? pre-owned by anyone. Such
power structures are defined by
influences of race, gender,
language, and other categories
of social identity.
(Sumara and “Curriculum has an obligation to Foucault – Western society has Participants in a series of book Interview and Heteronormative structures in
Davis 1999) interrupt heteronormative enculturated sexuality as a groups who were LGBTQ Discussion curriculum are limiting.
thinking.” What does it look merger of identity and teachers. Groups Heterotopic events can mitigate
like when literature is knowledge. A group of teachers, parents, Discourse Analysis this. This follows much of
considered from the Sedgwick – This confused and children at an curriculum theory which seeks
Foucault/Sedgwick/Queer approach has perpetuated elementary school. to investigate the ways that
Theory framework by a group heterosexism and homophobia. sexualities are organized and
of people? How does this create Thus, sexuality becomes a how knowledge is produced and
a useful parallel for curriculum universalized analytic category. represented.
theory? Queer Theory – Researchers need
to examine how curriculum is
already sexualized, and
specifically how it is
heterosexualized.
A. S. Moore
Table 2 (continued)
Author & year Research Question/Purpose
(Solomon et How might those who do not or
al. 2016) cannot participate in
mathematics come to see
themselves as doing so? What
implications does this have for
wider social change?
(Britzman Fundamental Question which
1995) supports the present work:
“What if gay and lesbian theories
were understood as offering a
way rethink the very grounds of
knowledge and pedagogy in
education?
Conceptually speaking, what is
required to refuse the
unremarked and obdurately
unremarkable straight
educational curriculum?”
(Snapp et al. What is the relationship between
2015) LGBTQ supportive curricula
and bullying/overall school
climate of safety and
experience?
Theory or framework
Bakhtin / Holland et al. (Figured One individual named Roz,
Worlds) Vygotskian notion of
“resolution of a conflict,” that is, previous work by the
imagining how it is to be
something or someone. “[W]e
suggest that we need an account
of how individuals are propelled
to consistently resolve
contradictions over time.” And
in this specific context, how
people resolve the conflict of
identification as a female and a
mathematician.
Queer Theory – When brought to n/a
bear on education, it becomes a This is a theoretical paper.
lens through which researchers
can view knowledge of bodies
and bodies of knowledge as
politicized and operating within
a bounded economy of affection
and representation.
Three methods: the study of limits,
the study of ignorance, and the
study of reading practices.
Curriculum – Include lives and
histories of LGBTQ persons in
the curriculum. Students’
perceptions of climate. Some
curriculum relies on objective
measures, but parts of it are
Respondents
who has been the study of
authors.
Middle and high school Interview questions:
students who participated in - Have you ever
a school harassment survey.
(Secondary analysis of
data.)
Method Results or findings
Interview analysis Roz doesn’t imagine a future as a
longitudinal) mathematician; she has to live
using six codes: with the ongoing struggle that
-Contradiction this entails because the
-Motive contradictions persist in wider
-Leading activity social structure.
-Leading identity
-Hybridity
-World-making
n/a Queer Pedagogy refuses normal
This is a theoretical practices and practices of
paper. normalcy, begins with one’s
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education
own reading practices, & looks
to what one cannot bear to
know, the ideas of being
separated from dominant
discourses.
Individual level:
Inclusive and supportive curricula
learned about were associated with safety but
LGBTQ issues as also with more frequent
part of a lesson at bullying.
school? School level:
Table 2 (continued)
Author & year Research Question/Purpose
(Gutiérrez How should researchers address
2007) equity?
Through studies of access,
achievement, identity, and
power.
(Gutiérrez How do researchers navigate and
2013) understand the sociopolitical
“turn” of the mathematics
education field?
- It is the influences of
anthropology, sociology, and
cultural psychology on
mathematics education.
Theory or framework
subjective. Need individual
student level data.
Sociocultural theory – Learning is 9 US high schools with
intricately connected to the
contexts in which it occurs e.g., math departments.
Lave and Wenger 1991).
“The sociopolitical turn in
mathematics education.”
Researchers are working in an
increasingly inequitable and
diverse world, yet the research
that is used in policymaking and
tenure decisions does not favor
methodologies that researchers
Respondents
effective versus ineffective
n/a
This is a theoretical paper.
Method Results or findings
- My school is safe Supportive and inclusive curricula
for <social were associated with more
group>. safety and less bullying.
- How many times
have you been
bullied this year
Effective Math Teacher communities:
Departments had Couldn’t be drilled down to a set of
these four traits, but overall, they provided
characteristics: a vision for their students. They
- Setting the norm were advocates for their
that advanced students. They got to know their
math classes were students and saw them in their
the norm. foregrounded context. Learning
- Rotating teachers to environments should not
different classes so pathologize the achievement
they formed a gap. Research should focus
community of more on situated and contextual
practice work.
- Commitment to all
students
- Innovative
instruction
n/a Identity and power are key
This is a theoretical concepts moving forward. But
paper. researchers need to move
beyond victimization and
challenge norms like teacher
quality, racial hierarchy, and
“school” mathematics.
A. S. Moore
This will be challenging.
Table 2 (continued)

Author & year Research Question/Purpose Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings

- It creates critical mathematics must use to work in the research

education, with its roots in the area of equity. Thus, equity
Frankfurt School, and social research in mathematics
justice mathematics education. education is a politicized issue.
Champion the use of Critical
Race Theory, LatCrit Theory,
and Poststructuralism.
(Gutiérrez Why privilege indigenous concepts New guiding principles for n/a n/a Living Mathematx:
2017) when considering the mathematics forms the This is a theoretical paper. This is a theoretical How do researchers envision life as
relationship between “Mathematx” Framework: paper. lived Mathematx?
mathematics, humans, and the In Lak’ech – “You are the other Ecologies of Knowledge:
planet? Because they can guide me.” Seeing the world through Nepantla tells us there is “no
our work beyond the limitations someone else’s eyes. absolute
of a postcolonial epistemology. Nepantla – Interstitial space universalism or absolute
between worlds. Often, there are relativism.” Implications for
tensions between these worlds. Teaching and Learning:
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

For mathematics education, it “Am I doing mathematics with an

helps us see that mathematics is eye towards the three items in
both a universal enterprise, and the framework?”
not a universal enterprise.
Reciprocity – Orient
inter-knowledges towards
another (humility) rather than
for another. Different persons
have different strengths and
needs, and thus must rely on
others for what they lack.
(Shlasko “First, what is queer theory? Queer Theory (three n/a n/a Resulting Concepts:
2005) Second, what does queer theory interpretations): This is a theoretical paper. This is a theoretical - Complexity/Simplicity
tell educators about the failings - Theory about Queers paper. - Queer
Table 2 (continued)
Author & year Research Question/Purpose
and gaps of mainstream
pedagogies that we hope queer
pedagogy will remedy? That is,
why do we need a queer
pedagogy? And finally, what
does queer pedagogy look like
so far? What are some concrete
examples of what queer
pedagogy suggests for
educational practice?”
(McWilliams How do researchers take Queer
2016) Theory and apply it to
participatory research design?
Queer theoretical publications
document how Queer narratives
are not present (have been
erased from) in the education -As a methodological and analytic
research discourse.
(Leyva 2017) Lit Review of Gender in
Mathematics
Education
Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings
-Theory that is Queer/weird Knowledge/Queer Ignorance
- To Queer one’s theory [about - Queer Readings
something] - Queer Teachers
How to make pedagogy Queer: - Queer Youth Politics
- Take progressive pedagogies and - Queer Classroom
ask of them, “How does this
pedagogy speak to education
stakeholders’ treatment of
Queers (n.), queerness (adv.),
and identities of normalcy?”
Queer Pedagogy (three needs):
- For Queer students (they are
rarely acknowledged except in a
pathologized lens)
- For Pleasure (Sexuality is the root
of intellectual curiosity)
- For Queer topics (to keep them
Queer)
Queer Theory is well suited to Gender Diversity Unit at a Individual - The heterosexual matrix
education because it challenges Progressive K-8 School observations of permeates all aspects of culture
issues of identity, power, and (Implemented in 4th/5th classes and - All humans are gender and
epistemology. Two ways it has Grade Classes) children on the sexually variant
been integrated: playground and - Reject the progress narrative
-Theorizing Queer pedagogy interacting with because they privilege
one another. “normality” (through
tool to examine how the communities of practice).
“heterosexual matrix” impacts
the educational arena.
Categories of the Synthesis: n/a n/a - Call for intersectionality theory
- Achievement (problematizing This is a lit review This is a lit review (Crenshaw 1991) to be used in
A. S. Moore
male superiority on mathematics education research
Table 2 (continued)
Author & year Research Question/Purpose
(Sheldon and - What does it mean to
Rands queer/en-gender/transform
2013) mathematics?
- How can researchers begin to
build a sustainable network to
support our work?
- What does our activist agenda
look like?
(Meyer et al. What are the differences between
2015) LGBTQ and straight educators
on implementing Gender and
Sexual Diversity inclusive
education?
(Kumashiro What could it mean for educators
2001) within the core disciplines to
teach in anti-oppressive ways?
Theory or framework
mathematics assessments,
cognitive turn gender research)
- Participation (sociocultural and
experiential influences of
sex-based participation,
gendered sociomathematical
norms, gender-based
participation)
Theoretical Framework of Areas to n/a
Address: This is a proposal for a
- Gender
- Research
- Curriculum, Resources, and
Representations
- Pedagogy and Teacher Education
- Mathematical Concepts and
Content Areas
- Gender and Sexual Diversity
(GSD) inclusive education
- Seeks safety at school for all
students
- End to marginalization on basis
of GSD
Anti-oppressive education in social n/a
studies, English, mathematics,
and science.
Respondents Method Results or findings
on gender and other social
constructs (gender, race, class,
sexuality).
- Rethinking “gender gaps.”
- Math classrooms are gendered
and racialized.
n/a n/a
This is a proposal for This is a proposal for a working
working group at PME-NA. a working group group at PMENA
at PME-NA.
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education
Respondents of the Every Survey LGBTQ teachers are much more
Teacher Project likely than straight teachers to:
3400 teachers - Believe that it’s important to
13.6% were LGBTQ address LGBTQ issues and
71.7% were female gender expression issues.
- Allow students to optout of such
education if it’s against their
religion.
- Intervene when hearing slurring
harassment at school.
n/a Historically, mathematics has been
This is a theoretical paper. This is a theoretical a tool of colonialism and
paper. imperialism. It allows us to
Table 2 (continued)

Author & year Research Question/Purpose Theory or framework Respondents Method Results or findings

Specifically, anti-oppressive extend our control over nature

education means including the and society, and over each
“posts-” perspective: other.
- Postmodern “Posts” education would ask
- Poststructural questions about marginality and
- Postcolonial social positionality, looking to
decolonialize our academic
narratives.
A. S. Moore
Queer identity and theory intersections in mathematics education

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