DoctorShweta Sharma

My research programme is driven by a central question: what counts as legitimate mathematics, and what are legitimate ways of doing and learning mathematics? Drawing on Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Foucault's concepts of discourse, power, and knowledge, I investigate how mathematics is not merely learned but continually negotiated through classroom interactions and institutional practices, and is informed by broader social and cultural realities. My work is informed by my experience as a primary school teacher in Delhi and as a researcher in the culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms of Aotearoa New Zealand. 

In my research, I examine how learners construct and communicate mathematical meaning through language, gesture, prosody, and other semiotic resources. This work has explored multilingual mathematics classrooms, children's speech genres, classroom discourse, embodied communication, and the participation of linguistically diverse learners. Through these studies, I seek to understand how certain forms of doing and knowing mathematics become recognised as mathematically legitimate while other ways are overlooked or marginalised. A closely related focus of my work is the relationship between mathematics, culture, and diversity. I investigate how our teaching practice can move beyond a deficit or (limited-) resource perspective on language and cultural difference to recognise the rich potential of the meanings available in language/s and culture/s that learners bring to mathematics classrooms for meaning-making. This commitment is reflected in my work on multilingual learners, culturally responsive and language-responsive pedagogies, and the role of language in mathematics learning. 

More recently, my research has expanded to curriculum and policy, examining how official documents may construct particular understandings of what counts as legitimate mathematics and its implications for the construction of mathematics learners, culturally and linguistically diverse learners, and indigenous learners. Through comparative analyses of curriculum reforms in Aotearoa New Zealand and India, I explore how questions of equity, culture, language, and knowledge are negotiated within contemporary mathematics education discourse. Through my research, I seek to contribute to more inclusive and socially just mathematics education by making visible the processes through which mathematical legitimacy is produced and sustained.