Bal Chandra Luitel

Multi-paradigmatic Transformative research as/for teacher education: An integral perspective

How can science education research constitute an empowering form of professional development that generates essential higher-order skills for personally tackling the global eco-cultural crises of the twenty-first century? In this chapter, we argue that graduate research schools need to provide a range of epistemologies for novice researchers to engage in transformative learning about their own professional practices. Epistemological pluralism involves multiple research paradigms – interpretivism, criticalism, postmodernism. We outline the characteristics of these relatively new paradigms, consider how their methods can be combined, and illustrate how one such hybrid research method – critical auto|ethnography – has been employed by transformative culture studies researchers. We conclude by proposing an integral perspective which is inclusive of all research paradigms.

“What Is Ours and What Is Not Ours?”: Inclusive Imaginings of Contextualised Mathematics Teacher Education

How can we address the problem of culturally decontextualised mathematics education faced by Nepali students who, as citizens of the world’s most recent democracy, are far from realising the positive contribution of mathematics education to the development of a socially just, egalitarian and pluralist society?

Storying, Critical Reflexivity, and Imagination

‘A flower garland for the storyteller and a gold garland for the story listeners’ is a famous Nepali adage spoken at the end of each storytelling ritual. It indicates the value of telling stories in our cultural context. It also indicates the value of reading and interpreting others’ stories, as the listener is supposed to be awarded a gold garland. With this inspiration, my initial narrative journey starts with a story about my experience of primary school mathematics. Gradually, I create an impressionistic plot with a special focus on my theme – foreign mathematics – that emerges from my experience. Perhaps, it depicts my predisposition towards the way I had been taught mathematics in my school education. In the very beginning of my exploration, I wish to raise a number of questions: Why did I raise this issue? Why did I write this particular story?

Kincheloe’s Bricolage

Today, we are writing a different type of letter, one that celebrates the important karmic culmination of your recent lifetime and that presents our view on a number of issues you have discussed in “Describing the bricolage: Conceptualising a new rigor in qualitative research” (Kincheloe, 2001). It was this paper that introduced your textual self to me (Bal Chandra) for the first time in 2003 when, during my master’s study at an Australian university, I was preparing to conduct an auto|ethnographic inquiry into the nature of culturally decontextualised mathematics education in Nepal.

A mindful inquiry towards transformative curriculum vision for inclusive mathematics education

ABSTRACT Exploring ways to develop a transformative curriculum vision for mathematics education that is inclusive to opposing perspectives and ideologies, this mindful inquiry explores “mindless” views embedded in the mathematics curriculum of Nepal; explores narrowly conceived disempowering assumptions within it; engages in dialectical interactional texturing among perspectives; and eventually emerges with its transformative potentiality. In so doing, this reflection on hegemonic worship of modernity identifies Newtonian reductionism, absolutism, and non-fluidity of language, serving mono-cultural perspectives as restraints underlying inclusive mathematics curriculum. Reflecting on this meaning-making, and in seeking an equilibrium view of reality, the inquiry hopefully offers pluralism, synergy, and montage as imperative in making mathematics education more meaningful.