Term of Award

Spring 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading

Committee Chair

Marla Morris

Committee Member 1

John Weaver

Committee Member 2

Daniel Chapman

Committee Member 3

Jayne Fleener

Abstract

This dissertation examines how secondary mathematics education functions not only as a curricular and institutional structure but as a lived, relational, and affective experience for students. While mathematics education research has extensively documented patterns of achievement, access, and anxiety, far less attention has been given to how students come to experience mathematics as a site of threat, shame, and diminished worth. This study introduces the concept of math toxicity to describe the cumulative harm produced when mathematics operates as a gatekeeping mechanism that links performance to identity and value. Drawing on historical analysis, psychoanalytic theory, and autobiographical inquiry, this research investigates how educational structures, cultural narratives, and classroom interactions converge to shape students’ relationships with mathematics. Central to this analysis is the concept of the blip - small, affectively charged moments in schooling that appear minor in isolation but acquire meaning retrospectively. These blips are examined as sites where curricular expectations and institutional power become internalized as personal inadequacy. Historically, the dissertation traces the development of the secondary mathematics sequence as an elite, exclusionary structure that was later universalized without reimagining its purpose or accessibility. Psychoanalytic analysis reframes student disengagement, avoidance, and resistance not as deficits or lack of effort, but as defensive responses to perceived psychic threat. Cultural analysis further demonstrates how dominant myths of mathematical ability, neutrality, and meritocracy reproduce social hierarchies within ostensibly objective systems. By naming math toxicity and tracing its formation, this dissertation contributes a language for understanding harm and envisioning repair within mathematics classrooms.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

Download

Share

COinS