Dissertation Defense Announcement

College of Education announces the Final Dissertation Defense of

Wesam Salem

for the Degree of Doctor of Education

March 28, 2019 at 11:30 AM in Ball Hall, Room 405   

Advisor: Celia Rousseau Anderson

"I am a Quiet Struggler": Conceptualizing Racialized and Mathematics Identities of Muslim American High school Students within the Context of Islamophobia

ABSTRACT: The spread of Islamophobia in the U.S. positioned Muslims as different and inferior to American society and racialized their experiences by subjecting them to narratives of prejudices and stereotypes. This postcolonial interview study examined how Muslim American high school students conceptualized and negotiated their racialized identities within the context of Islamophobia and how the negotiation process informed their learning in school particularly the construction of their mathematics identity. The study built on postcolonial theorists, mathematics research, and decolonizing approaches to research to interrogate and (un)settle traditional and predetermined interviewing practices. Participants included six high school students (2 males and four females) ages 15-17 years old who attended public high schools in the city of Windson (pseudonym) in the Midsouthern USA. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this dissertation interrogated the Eurocentric discursive practices and the dominant socio-political discourses that informed Muslim American students' positionalities and their mathematics identities within the social and the educational contexts they navigated.