research overview
- Dr Hand researches the participation gap in K-12 mathematics, or differences in opportunities for groups of students to participate in mathematics in ways that honor practices and identities that they value. She blends situative, sociocultural and critical theories of learning to characterize mathematics education as a cultural, racial, and political system, which privileges certain discourses, practices and identities over others. Her research illuminates: affordances and constraints on opportunities to learn in mathematics classrooms; design features that support broad-based participation; and the relation of teachers' dispositions towards learning, race, culture and power to their approaches to mathematics instruction. She draws on participatory methodologies to bring researchers, teachers, and members of the community together to study issues of equity and justice in mathematics education.