Mathematics as Simulacra: Implications for a Critical Mathematics Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mathematics as Simulacra: Implications for Research in Mathematics Education
Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, 2012
Mathematics education has failed to drag itself from the grips of humanist ideas about knowledge, in particular an a priori ontological status of mathematics. The postmodern re-inscriptions of truth, what is real, or what counts as real, have not impacted our ways of thinking with our core concern. In this paper I use Baudrillard to rip mathematics free of this anchor, to cast mathematics itself as a simulacra, references to a reference, constructions of a real that is not there. I argue that it is not until once freed of the weight of reality that considering a non-fascist mathematics education is possible. I extend the argument through the development of a possible four-point framework for thinking of a mathematics education for social justice, then discuss a small sample of research on adolescents’ mathematical identity in order to begin to propose what might be a renewed direction for a research agenda toward a critical mathematics education.
The Fabrication of Knowledge in Mathematics Education: A Postmodern Ethic toward Social Justice
Towards an Education for Social Justice: Ethics Applied to Education, 2012
In this chapter it is my intent to draw upon a post-epistemological view of knowledge so as to reinscribe the discipline of mathematics in such a way that a more socially just manner of teaching can be recognized and embraced. Taking mathematical knowledge as constructed—fabricated—ways of knowing and thinking redefines the positionality of the teacher in relation to the learner, and the learner to others. The resulting need for the other, an ethical imperative, is established. Understanding knowledge differently, acknowledging this need for the other, and recognizing the emergence of a more just expectation for interaction—in particular educational interaction, provides the ethical dimension to this work.... From the strong position that takes knowledge as constructed and thus embracing a new politics of truth, I shape a four-pronged orientation to teaching mathematics for social justice. Then I consider the work of teaching in order to devise a pragmatic framework through which to enact a mathematical education for social justice. The chapter closes with a return to the post-epistemological view of knowledge in order to emphasize the ways that such an orientation creates a more socially just mathematics education.
Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2011
Students' engagement with fictions in the form of "word problems" plays an important role in classroom practice as well as in theories of mathematical learning. Drawing on the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga and the Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller, I show that this activity can be seen as a form of play or game, where it is pretended that mathematics is useful in real life in a way that it is not. With Pfaller, I argue that play can take hold of the imagination of the players, infusing everyday life with meaning borrowed from the imagery of the play and that these effects are more powerful when the play is forced and takes an institutionalized form. I show that mathematics education does in fact have these characteristics, including sophisticated mechanisms for translating in-game performance (test scores) to real-life goods (grades and examinations). A central theme of the article is the perceived discrepancy between mathematics education as it is, and how it supposedly could and should be in light of the properties of mathematics. The analysis implies that this gap actually is an effect of play and thus an inherent property of mathematics education itself.
Mathematics education and the dignity of being
Pythagoras, 2012
On the grounds of our work as researchers, teacher educators and teachers engaging with a socio-political approach in mathematics education in Colombia, we propose to understand democracy in terms of the possibility of constructing a social subjectivity for the dignity of being. We address the dilemma of how the historical insertion of school mathematics in relation to the Colonial project of assimilation of Latin American indigenous peoples into the episteme of the Enlightenment and Modernity is in conflict with the possibility of the promotion of a social subjectivity in mathematics classrooms. We illustrate a pedagogical possibility to move towards a mathematics education for social subjectivity with our work in reassembling the notion of geometrical space in the Colombian secondary school mathematics curriculum with notions of space from critical geography and the problem of territorialisation, and Latin American epistemology with the notion of intimate space as an important ele...
Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2018
The intent of the book Sociopolitical Dimensions of Mathematics Education: From the Margin to the Mainstream is to capture, promote, critique, and reflect on the mainstreaming of the sociopolitical dimensions in mathematics education. The editors, Murad Jurdak and Renuka Vithal, state: Bmathematics for all is an illusion that allows the status quo of its systemic failure to remain^(p. 11). From this lens, I came to the title of my book review. It is a juxtaposition between fantasy and reality in the quest for mathematics for all. The book's analysis of the sociopolitical dimensions in mathematics education highlights the challenges and the action necessary to make mathematics for all a reality. First, a deeper understanding of the term mathematics for all in its simplistic aspects of meaning keeps the possibility of attainment at a distance and possible only in an ideal society. Second, the complexity of contemporary society calls for mathematics educators to take action beyond what mathematics is to be learned. For example, mathematics educators could see themselves with power to inform and impact school mathematics education at all levels through social media with authentic suggestions based on research. Therefore, the intricacies of sociopolitical dimensions in mathematics education force us to zoom in and zoom out repeatedly on the research and the decisions that are made for each learner, or groups of learners. The International Conference on Mathematics Education (ICME) meets every four years and provides an update on the current condition of mathematics education. In 2016 (ICME-13), the Topic Study Group (TSG 34), Social and Political Dimension of Mathematics Education was inaugurated. Although I attended and presented at ICME-13, I was not familiar with TSG 34. However, I was familiar with the content of Deborah Ball's plenary session: Uncovering the Special Mathematical Work of Teaching. She along with Bill Barton, and Günter Ziegler, spoke directly about aspects of the sociopolitical in mathematics education.
Mathematics Education as Dystopia: A Future Beyond
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, 2022
We argue that scholars and practitioners of mathematics education need to find new directions through recognition of its dystopic characteristics, and embrace these characteristics as both the source of challenges and method of response. This contrasts with the generally utopic approach of most scholarship in the field. We offer critical ethnomathematics education as a model, since it has its own origins in lingering dystopic legacies. A perpetual hopelessness and disempower- ment is one implicit curriculum of contemporary mathematics education, where the mathematics one learns might help to describe things, yet hardly assists in transforming the reification of power and agency in society. Embracing dystopia rather than trying to circumvent it generates new questions and pathways. Keywords: mathematics education; dystopia; critical ethnomathematics
A Manifesto from the Margins: A New Epoch for (Non)Theoretical Mathematics Education Research
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022
This editorial, introducing the Journal for Theoretical & Marginal Mathematics Education, is historically situated in a moment when the field of mathematics education research is on the precipice of acknowledging that the old world is dying. That is to say, the way research has been done before is no longer adequate for operating within the White, Colonial, cis-hetero Patriarchal, Abled Capitalist dystopia we find ourselves. This inadequacy is, however, not a reason for despair but instead for celebration. Instead of directing our resources towards reifying existing norms and structures, towards adopting exhausted methods and theories-as is the way of the old worldwe can instead foster a 'new aesthetics' of mathematics education research, wherein we remake the very material that constitutes mathematics education research itself. In doing so, we engage with the politics of the margins of mathematics education research. We discuss the critical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic as three potential, but non-exhaustive, departures from mathematics education research as it has been. Each of these marginal approaches, in their own way, points to the ways that presuming a fixed mathematics education research enacts exclusionary politics and precludes change. Let this be our manifesto, written from the margins, for a more root-grasping, more self-reflective, and freer mathematics education research.
The Mathematics Enthusiast, 2022
In this article, we present a decolonial stance in Mathematics Education, which is not understood as a qualification attributed to particular actions or practices as opposed to others, nor as a tendency that theoretically or methodologically constrains research production, but as a political and epistemic position of permanent transgression and insurgency concerning the patterns of world power established by the myth of Western modernity. From this understanding and towards a political agenda in Mathematics Education, we propose, with no pretensions of totality, a set of situated actions: in Mathematics, in its ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives, problematizing the naturalization of practices and conceptions on the discipline and its teaching, and setting it in a movement of political-epistemic disobedience; in collective memories linked to Mathematics and Mathematics Education, deconstructing Eurocentric narratives which invibilize bodies, knowledges, and ways of being in the world; in Mathematics teachers' education processes, incorporating and acknowledging the protagonism of other subjects, territories, and their knowledges.
2019
This paper considers what the praxis of ‘Funds of Knowledge/Identity’ (FoK/I) might offer to researchers and practitioners of mathematics education. Building on a critique of FOK/FOI as reflecting cultural capital (in Bourdieu’s sense) we posit the notion of ‘use value’ in the knowledge and practices of oppressed communities: in knowing how to live poor, how to resist capital, and how to solidarise in social movements related to class, nationality, race, gender, sexuality etc. We focus on ‘dark’ FOK - defined as difficult or challenging experiences for learners and/or communities; we reconceptualise these as related to the objective relations of oppression under capitalism whereby ‘dark funds’ are the surfacing of class contradictions in our learners’ experiences. The implications for critical mathematics education are led by these considerations: in the problems we choose to tackle, the partners we choose to work with, and the research methodologies we adopt.