Cognition and Instruction

Endacott, Jason L.

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2026.2673812pmid: N/A

Abstract The literature on historical empathy is clear about the importance of fostering students’ engagement with historical figures’ positionalities, though the nature of that engagement remains less settled. This descriptive qualitative study examined the proposition that deeper understanding of the convergences between inquirer positionality and historical empathy could reveal nuanced considerations for engagement and instruction. Participants included thirty preservice teachers in a secondary social studies methods course who completed an inquiry-based historical empathy experience focused on lived experiences during the Vietnam war. Operationalization and analysis of inquirer positionality was theoretically framed by John Dewey’s pragmatic theory of transactional constructivism, while the conceptual framework for historical empathy employed the interrelated aspects of historical contextualization, perspective taking, and affective connections as an underlying structure that was bolstered by recent empirical findings and additive constructs from social empathy. Analysis revealed four overarching themes in participants’ engagement in historical empathy and resultant historical understanding: 1) Identification & Self-Other Awareness; 2) Contextualized Historical Perspectivity & Affective Considerations; 3) Reflexive Historical Perspectivity & Affective Resonance; and 4) Affective Mentalization & Macro Self-Other Awareness. Discussion focuses on each theme’s unique contribution to historical empathy, potential implications for instruction, and the consequences of historical empathy as an inquiry-based transactional experience.

Gargroetzi, Emma C.

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2026.2673829pmid: N/A

Abstract This article argues that centering dignity in analyses of mathematics classroom activity serves as a necessary rejoinder to histories of oppression, domination, and subjectification baked into US-based schooling and rife in school-based mathematics education. Defining dignity using Lloyd’s definition of dignity as struggle against domination, I add a literature-based Framework for Axiomatic Dignity in Mathematics Learning as a heuristic for considering the practices, positions, and micro-enactments of dignity evidenced in one classroom. Situated in a year of ethnographic research in one mathematics classroom at a predominantly Latine-serving high school in California, this article examines how conditions of possibility for dignity might be organized into classroom life and how minoritized youth participate in micro-enactments of dignity in school mathematics spaces. Findings revealed that even in a classroom where instructional practices and local positions strongly aligned with storylines of students as community members, learners, and mathematical thinkers, students at times resisted or renegotiated classroom expectations, particularly if the mathematical thinker storyline might compromise one of the other two. This article contributes to the learning sciences and mathematics education to articulate dignity as a productive analytic lens and better understand what, where, and how dignity may exist in the school-based mathematics classroom.

Antonides, Joseph; Norton, Anderson; Battista, Michael T.; Zwanch, Karen

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2025.2571509pmid: N/A

Abstract In this article, we present a coordination of two prominent theoretical perspectives in mathematics education—spatial structuring and units coordination—for building models of students’ spatial enumerations and measurement. The authors, each experienced in either theoretical perspective, hypothesized that a coordination of the two theories may be possible, given their common grounding in Piagetian theory. We argue that such a coordination is not only possible, but important for supporting collaboration across research communities and for building more robust explanatory models of students’ mathematics. Indeed, a central claim of this article is that by building a coordinated theoretical framework, researchers can explain students’ mathematics better than if they apply either theory alone. Methodologically, our coordination of the two theories was empirically driven. We conducted clinical interviews with pre-service elementary school teachers, analyzed interview data from each theoretical perspective separately, then engaged in a process of coordinating our spatial-structuring- and units-coordination-based models. In addition to our proposed coordination of these two theoretical perspectives, secondary contributions of this article include revised definitions of certain theoretical constructs, a case study of analyzing one pre-service elementary school teacher’s reasoning through our coordinated framework (and how our coordinated analysis contributes to insights into this student’s spatial-numerical reasoning), and an illustration of how two epistemologically-compatible theories focusing on students’ mathematical thinking can be coordinated.