Paola Valero

A socio-political look at equity in the school organization of mathematics education

This paper presents some theoretical tools to help understand the meaning of mathematics education as socio-political practices and the implications of these for researching mathematics education. Taking two cases of schools and students in Denmark and South Africa, the paper illustrates how the theoretical and methodological ideas come into operation when illuminating issues of equity. It is contended that the disadvantaged positioning of some students for participating in mathematics teaching and learning is the result of the routines, ideas, shared meanings, and ways of talking and conceiving mathematics education among the actors in the school organization, inside as well as outside the classroom.

Researching Mathematics Education in Situations of Social and Political Conflict

We explore the thesis that given that our societies are fraught with various social and political conflicts, and that mathematics education is concerned with contributing to the life possibilities of students in that world, then mathematics education as a field of practice and research has to be concerned with the implications of recognising those conflicts. In particular, we explore the implications of considering social and political conflict situations for: the kinds of research questions and agendas constructed; the theories and methodologies adopted; and the criteria used for judging the quality of research in mathematics education. In building our argument we draw not only on international literature in the discipline of mathematics education and outside it, but also on our experiences as researchers struggling with the complexity of conflict contexts.

Beyond Disavowing the Politics of Equity and Quality in Mathematics Education

It is widely recognized in mathematics education research that issues of social justice, democracy, inclusion or diversity are political in nature and extend beyond mathematics education. However, the great majority of mathematics education research lacks a theoretical understanding of how the problems it tries to solve are related with broader social and political structures in society. In this chapter, we will make a contribution to this understanding, by analyzing how social discourses and forms of ideology permeate the way mathematics education research engages with the issues of equity and quality. We base our reflections on theoretical tools drawn from the philosophy of Gert Biesta and Slavoj Žižek. Our argument is that exclusion and inequity within mathematics education and education in general are integral parts of current school education and cannot be conceptualized without understanding the relation between school education and capitalism as the dominant mode of social living.

Mathematics education and language diversity: The 21st ICMI study

Introduction.- Challenges and opportunities for second language learners in undergraduate mathematics.- Mathematics in the hands of deaf learners and blind learners: visual-gestural-somatic means of doing and expressing.- Challenging deficit perspectives: student agency in multilingual mathematics classrooms.- Language diversity in mathematics teacher education: challenges across three countries.- Impact of differing grammatical structures in mathematics teaching and learning.- Addressing multi-language diversity in mathematics teacher education programs.- Language diversity and new media: issues of multimodality and performance.- Making use of multiple (non-shared) first languages: state and need of research and development in the European language context.- Purposefully relating multilingual registers - building theory and teaching strategies for bilingual learners based on an integration of three traditions.- Trends in mathematics education in multilingual contexts for indigenous population: experiences from Latin America.- Tensions in teaching mathematics in contexts of language diversity.- Research rationalities and the construction of the deficient multilingual mathematics learner.- Language diversity in research and its consequences.- Using ICTs to facilitate multilingual mathematics teaching and learning.- Mathematics teaching, language policy and the political role of language: perspectives from around the world.- Reflections.- Index.

Socioeconomic Influence on Mathematical Achievement: What Is Visible and What Is Neglected

The survey team worked in two main areas: Literature review of published papers in international publications, and particular approaches to the topic considering what in the literature seems to be neglected. In this paper we offer a synoptic overview of the main points that the team finds relevant to address concerning what is known and what is neglected in research in this topic.

In between the global and the local: the politics of mathematics education reform in a globalized society

Understanding recent globalization processes demands grasping the relationship between the social practices in micro-contexts and macro-contexts, in search of the mechanisms that have worsened the distribution of material, human and knowledge resources in the world. If mathematics education research and practices are to be committed to social equity and justice in the midst of globalization, then they need to address the ways in which they are implicated in the production of a particular social order. In order to do so, mathematics education research needs to open its scope and allow linking the classroom with other spheres of social action. In this way it is possible to gain a broader understanding of the multiple forces that constitute mathematics education, and particularly its reform. Based on a case of a Colombian school, the paper illustrates the way in which mathematics education is being constituted in between macro, global and micro, local contexts in a time of reform

Tracing the Socio-Cultural-Political Axis In Understanding Mathematics Education

Research is always carried out from a standpoint, an epistemological stance that shapes the ontological assumptions about what is being researched, even though the researchers might be unaware of or unconcerned about what it is. Despite apparently being evident, this assertion needs to be revisited when reviewing the insertion of socio-cultural approaches to mathematics thinking, learning and education in the last 10 years of research in PME.

A Aprendizagem Matemática em uma Posição de Fronteira: foregrounds e intencionalidade de estudantes de uma favela brasileira

In a large metropolis, students from different neighbourhoods can experience very different life opportunities. This can influence their attitude towards schooling and learning, including the learning of mathematics. We interviewed a group of six students from a favela in a large city in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo in Brazil. We invited the students to look into their future and explore whether or not there could be learning motives that linked mathematics in school to possible out-of-school practices, either in terms of possible future jobs or further studies. We identified some themes in the students’ descriptions of their experiences. The first theme is discrimination. The students feel discriminated against due to the fact that they come from a poor neighbourhood. They fear being trapped in some stereotypes. The second theme is escape. There is a strong motivation to begin a new life away from the favela. A third theme concerns the obscurity of mathematics. It seems clear to everybody that education is relevant to ensure a change in life. However, the mathematics lessons do not provide any clues regarding how mathematics might function is this respect. The fourth theme is uncertainty with respect to the future. The students could easily formulate almost unattainable aspirations,

A Comparison of Creativity in Project Groups in Science and Engineering Education in Denmark and China

Different pedagogical strategies influence the development of creativity in project groups in science and engineering education . This study is a comparison between two cases: Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in Denmark and Project-Organized Learning (POL) in China. The empirical resources are based on the results from a Master’s study that was carried out with respect to POL in China (2004–2007) and a Ph.D. study that was conducted with respect to PBL in Denmark (2008–2012). The results suggest: (1) there are many diverse influencing elements in learning environments of creativity in both PBL in Denmark and POL in China, and there are interactions between the different elements that underpin a systematic view of the influences of project contexts on creativity; and (2) supervisors in China and Denmark have different attitudes towards the development of creativity in students, which reveals the differences in the learning cultures and the implications for improvements in the fostering of creativity through project strategies in engineering and science education for the future.

Mathematics Teachers as Products and Agents: To Be and Not to Be. That’s the Point!

Studying mathematics teachers in the Political invites to understand how teachers’ subjectivities emerge in the entanglement of the individual in discursive-material formations. We focus on the power effects of the expert discourses by international agencies such as OECD and UNESCO in the fabrication of the mathematics teacher’s subjectivity. Deploying a Foucault-inspired discourse analysis on a series of documents produced by these agencies, we argue that nowadays cultural thesis about who the mathematics teacher should be are framed in a double bind of the teacher as a policy product and as a sales agent. Narratives about the mathematics teacher are made possible within a dispositive of control, which makes mathematics education and mathematics teachers the cornerstone for realizing current market-oriented, competitive, and globalized societies.