Michigan State University

Beth Herbel-Eisenmann is Director of the Program in Mathematics Education and Professor of Mathematics Education at Michigan State University and a Professor 2 at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Her work draws on critical, feminist, and participatory theories/methodologies; includes long-term partnerships with teachers and youth; focuses mostly on power and voice in formal and informal spaces; and challenges ideas and research processes in mathematics and data education. She has spent most of her academic career working in partnership with secondary mathematics teacher-researchers to understand how math teachers talk about and use these various critical discursive theories/ideas to improve their practices. By doing so, the work generated within the partnerships not only explore theories/ideas in practice but also speak back to the theories/ideas through engaging praxis. For example, these partnerships have broadened the conceptualization of some key discourse theories/ideas in mathematics education, have examined implicit bias and developed strategies to mitigate it in math classrooms, and have developed ways teachers might engage and include students in considering positioning and authority toward creating more inclusive math classrooms. For the last five years, she has been involved in three additional areas of work. One involves a youth participatory action research (YPAR) collaboration where youth identify and study issues they care about to create change in their own communities; another focuses on working with youth, families, and school educators to develop strengths-based pedagogies in contexts with newcomers and Indigenous youth in Norway; and the third draws on PAR methodologies to partner with youth, mathematics teacher educators, and prospective mathematics teachers to design ways to incorporate Norwegian values (specifically: ethical awareness, human dignity and democratic participation) into mathematics classrooms.