The cognitive labour of mathematics dis/ability: Neurocognitive approaches to number sense

In this paper we discuss neurocognitive research into number sense to show how it reconfigures the cognitive labour of the mathematics student. Neurocognitive research is redefining mathematical proficiency and student agency in terms of the activation of “neuronal populations”. We show how this research deploys a particular image of number that stresses cardinality rather than ordinality. An emphasis on cardinality effectively reduces the time-value of students' cognitive labour, produces new kinds of dis/abled bodies, and recruits new kinds of value from those bodies. We discuss current research on dyscalculia in mathematics education, and situate this work in relation to literature in critical dis/ability studies and inclusive materialism. We suggest that the concept of 'student alienation' must be radically reconfigured in contemporary contexts in order to address the biopolitics of current education research. Our aim is to direct attention to the need for new kinds of neurocognitive research, not to reject it altogether.