Attuning to the mathematics of difference: Haptic constructions of number

CAPTeaM develops and trials activities that Challenge Ableist Perspectives on the Teaching of Mathematics. The project involves teachers and researchers from the UK and Brazil in reflecting upon the practices that enable or disable the participation of disabled learners in mathematics. In this paper, we focus on two themes that emerged from data analyses generated in the first phase of the study: deconstructing the notion of the normal mathematics student/classroom and attuning mathematics teaching strategies to student diversity. Here, we address these themes through exemplifying participants’ haptic constructions of number in the context of a multiplication task in terms of four strategies they devise: “counting fingers”; “tracing the sum”; “negotiating signs to indicate place value”; “decomposing”.