Atmospheres of Exclusion: Dante’s Inferno and the Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

This paper employs allegory to examine how pupils experience exclusion in mathematics education. Using Dante’s Inferno as a structural frame, I present nine fictional narratives aligned with the nine circles of Hell. These depict recurring learner experiences: displacement, disorientation, mechanical drill, grade-chasing, resistance, doubt, internalised failure, performance without understanding, and withdrawal. The narratives are not verbatim accounts but constructed stories synthesising themes from research, classroom practice, and observed discourse. Through narrative inquiry, each story reframes issues such as language barriers, high-stakes assessment, proceduralism, and stereotype threat—not as individual shortcomings but systemic conditions shaping learner identities. The allegorical mode makes these conditions vivid, positioning mathematics education as a moral landscape where inclusion and exclusion are continually negotiated. The analysis yields three insights: first, forms of exclusion are diverse yet interconnected, often drawing pupils into cycles of silence, resistance, or performance; second, metaphor and fiction can serve as rigorous research tools, allowing affective and structural dimensions of schooling to be understood together; and third, teacher education and policy must confront the hidden costs of privileging narrow forms of knowledge. Reimagining classrooms through Dante’s allegory, this paper calls for pedagogies that disrupt exclusion and open pathways to belonging and mathematical meaning.