TODOS Podcast · TODOS Mathematics for ALL

S4E14: Rebalancing Math Education with Niral Shah

·1 hr 11 min·4 clips

Niral Shah’s seven-year-old told another child, “what you did was white supremacy.”

Teddy and Sherry open the episode with the easy, familiar energy of hosts who know they are near the end of a season. They introduce Dr. Niral Shah as a friend whose work sits at the intersection of math education and anti-racism. Shah is presented as an associate professor of learning sciences and human development at UW Seattle. The conversation turns quickly toward Asian American identity in math classrooms. It also stays alert to the wider web of anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness that shapes those classrooms. Shah draws on his time teaching everything from pre-algebra to AP Calculus BC. That classroom history matters because he keeps asking how research would have changed the way he taught. He names a persistent stereotype that casts Asians as human calculators. In that story, Asian students are seen as precise and technically strong. They are also seen as quiet. And they are often treated as not especially creative. Shah says that this discourse is still alive in math education. He then asks what teaching should look like if that is the world students are walking into. One clear answer is to make room for Asian students to show their creativity publicly. He wants them to have chances to present their thinking in front of classmates. That kind of visibility matters because it pushes against the narrow script of speed and procedure. The episode keeps returning to the emotional and social weight of classroom expectations. It does not treat identity as an abstract category. It treats it as something students carry into every explanation, answer, and presentation. The critique of math instruction stays concrete. Shah argues that U.S. math teaching is still stuck in rote patterns. The field overvalues calculations, procedures, and right answers. That narrowness leaves little room for the kinds of reasoning this episode keeps calling for. By the end, the episode feels like a careful look at how math education can either flatten students or let them be seen more fully.

As heard by us

A reflective discussion of how math classrooms reward some students while boxing in others.

Niral Shah gives the episode its center. The conversation stays clear about a familiar squeeze in math classrooms: Asian American students can be praised for being fast, quiet, and technically strong while still being boxed in by that praise.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a thoughtful take on the 'Asian as calculator' myth, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from TODOS Podcast