2025 AMTE Dissertation Award
Sandra Zuniga Ruiz
San José State University
Towards a Critical-Mathematical Consciousness: Understanding the Construction of a Counterspace for Prospective Maestras Mexicanas
Biography
Sandra’s passion in education emerged from her desire to create more humanizing math experiences for young people. From learning alongside with sixth graders to college students, Sandra saw the ingenuity and joy that emerged for learners when they had opportunities to engage collectively about and with mathematics. Her commitments to nurture expansive learning opportunities is the groundwork for her teaching and research.
Currently as an assistant professor at San José State University, Sandra continues to try to understand how we can support future teachers to dream of a math classroom that centers children’s brilliance, ingenuity and potential with mathematics. Her work is grounded on Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives and critical approaches to learning that takes a community engaged, relational, and humanizing approach. She is currently working on a project funded by the National Academy and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where she aims to understand how maestras Mexicanas embody emancipatory approaches to teaching and learning mathematics in an elementary classroom. In another line of inquiry, she seeks to understand how bilingual elementary preservice teachers make sense/disrupt/embody narratives about language, mathematics and learning.
Sandra would like to thank the women in this project for sharing their stories, pieces of their lives, aspirations and commitments to math education. She would also like to thank her mentors for this project, Drs. Alan Schoenfeld, Kris Gutiérrez, Tesha Sengupta-Irving. A special thank you to Dr. Megan Franke for her support as a National Academy mentor. Immense gratitude to Dr. Miguel Lopez for his support throughout my graduate career and beyond. There are many others that are not named that have shaped Sandra’s intellectual curiosity. It takes a village to do heart work.