Swapna Mukhopadhyay

Modelling for Life: Mathematics and Children’s Experience

We make the case for introducing fundamental ideas about modelling early, in particular through reconceptualizing word problems that describe real-world situations as exercises in modelling. Further, we argue for modelling as a means of giving children a sense of agency through recognizing the potential of mathematics as a critical tool for analysis of issues important in their lives.

The Hegemony of Mathematics

In this chapter, we use the term “hegemony” with specific reference to how mathematics and mathematics education are implicated in various forms of interpersonal dominance and in ideological struggles, in particular cases of dominance and suppression of some cultural groups by others, and the attempts by dominated groups to find voice and agency. We analyse symbolic violence of several kinds; we do not attempt to deal with the extensive uses of mathematics in dominance by means of military or economic force.

Honoring diversity in intercultural mathematics education

Mathematics is often portrayed and perceived as culturally neutral, so the idea of mathematics as a subject constituting a core part of intercultural education may appear strange at first sight. Indeed, previous issues of this journal contain relatively few papers that deal with mathematics, so the reader may be wondering why a whole issue should be devoted to this topic. We start from the position that, far from being culturally neutral, mathematics education, and indeed mathematics itself, only makes sense when considered as embedded in historical, cultural, social, and political – in short, human – contexts. Accordingly, we welcome the opportunity to state the case for intercultural mathematics education, as documented in the accounts assembled here of how mathematics education is embedded in intercultural contexts across the globe. As mathematics education developed as a field, it became progressively humanized through interactions with disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, and there emerged a group of ‘critical mathematics educators’ (see Greer and Skovsmose (2012) for a historical overview). For example, Frankenstein (1983) showed how the ideas of Paulo Freire could be reinvented in the context of mathematics education. A pivotal moment in this development occurred when D’Ambrosio (1985) introduced the concept of Ethnomathematics, which, over the intervening years, he and others have developed as a research and pedagogical program (D’Ambrosio 2006). D’Ambrosio defined Ethnomathematics as “the mathematics which is practised among identifiable cultural groups, such as national-tribal societies, labor groups, children of a certain age bracket, professional classes, and so on” (D’Ambrosio 1985, 45); it thus extends well beyond academic mathematics. The definition implies that mathematics is diversely manifested within mathematics as academic discipline, mathematics as embedded in cultural practices, and mathematics as a school subject, and the relationships between these three families form a framework for the background to the papers presented here. A prominent aspect of Ethnomathematics has been deconstruction of the pervasive narrative that the development of academic mathematics was the intellectual achievement of Europeans alone (for a counter-narrative, see the key collection of papers edited by Powell and Frankenstein (1997)). Arguably, the influence of this Eurocentric narrative persists in continuing claims about the intellectual superiority

A Sociocultural Approach to Mathematics Education

A Journey in Mathematics Education Research provides an integrated account of the lifework of a reflective mathematics education scholar, Paul Cobb. Composed of tributes from eminent scholars and six of his publications, framed by retrospective introductions written by Cobb and colleagues, the book traces the story of his commitment to the communities of practice in which he has been active, beginning long before that term became part of his theoretical vocabulary. It is no accident that so few of his publications are single-authored and that, fittingly, social construction is reflected in the authorship, content, and form of the book.