Reviewing the Research on Marginalization in Mathematics Education

In light of decades of research seeking to document and transform extensive injustices in mathematics education in the United States, we examine how different conceptualizations of which students are marginalized and by what processes they are marginalized in order to contribute to a more thorough, nuanced understanding of marginalization in mathematics education. To do so, we review literature theorizing marginalization across social identity categories and synthesize the disciplinary traditions they draw on and the mechanisms of marginalization they articulate. Findings from this review highlight the normality of marginalization in mathematics education, the material and ideological means of marginalization, and the interlacing of individual and structural sources of marginalization. As a result, we argue for critical bifocality in attending simultaneously to the processes of marginalization that occur in individual mathematics classrooms alongside the systemic structures that organize marginalization in society more broadly.