Researching Teaching and Learning: Cultivating Equitable and Racially-Just Teaching in Brazilian Public Schools

Abstract

This special issue results from of the cultivation and sustenance of a research network in Brazil, which at once attended to empirical research in Brazilian schools and focused on in-depth conceptualizations of equity and justice. The authors of the articles which comprise this special issue submitted funding proposals. and were selected by a team of experts to receive funding from the Lemann Foundation to carry out their research. In addition, two members of each team went to New York for a weeklong intensive on educational research centering equity and justice. Throughout the course of two years they worked in their teams and met as part of the larger research network, engaging in much-needed research, pursuing in-depth questions, and producing research that met international standards. This is illustrated, for example, by their participation in the premier educational research conference in the world in 2020 and then again in 2021, the American Educational Research Association conference. In my introduction to this special issue, I review the context of inequity and racial injustice in Brazilian public schools, offer a conceptualization of equity, and explore (not) belonging and its effects, before illustrating how each of the articles in this special issue urge us to engage in the pursuit of justice. and descriptive adaptations in the teaching and learning process of fractal geometry for students with visual impairment. In particular, they attended to students’ access t o the curriculum and to learning content on this specific area and topic. This study took place in an educational service center specializing in educating students with visual impairment in a municipality in the midwestern region of the state of Paraná. Wh ereas there were identifiable gaps in students’ conceptual understandings of mathematical concepts necessary for learning fractal geometry, findings indicated that the use of adapted materials for teaching content-specific concepts, such as tactile images, contributed to students’ acquisition, development, and conceptual understanding. Implications shed light on the need for teacher education to juxtapose mathematics and inclusive education, thereby preparing teachers to better meet the needs of students with disabilities.