AKC 5Theology – Spring Term 2011 – Social Justice in a Pluralist World24/02/11
AKC 5 – 24February 2011
Social Justice in a Pluralist World
Lecture 4: Mathematics and/or Social Justice
Dr Clive Kanes, Lecturer in Mathematics Education, Department of Education & Professional Studies, KCL
In this lecture I want to look at the difficult question of social justice in mathematics education. I’ll start with some preliminary thoughts leading to a challenging statement by Urbitan D’Ambrosio, a highly influential Brazilian mathematics educator.
“Mathematics is absolutely integrated with Western civilization, which conquered and dominated the entire world. The only possibility of building up a planetary civilization depends on restoring the dignity of the losers and, together, winners and losers, moving into the new.” ( from The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 October 2000)
Based on this, I propose to ask a number of questions – all very difficult and none with uncontentious responses. However, of these, today I will only focus on one: What understanding of the challenges facing mathematics education do we need in order to come to grips with the thrust of D’Ambrosio’s statement?
Ipropose to address this question by taking one approach among many. The first step will be to gather the theoretical resources needed.For reasons that will remain in the background I will refer to the work of the contemporary German political theorist and philosopher, Jürgen Habermas. He distinguishes between three kinds of what he calls knowledge constitutive interests: the technical, the practical, and the critical, and these will prove useful in helping us sort out features of mathematical experience that can be linked to the actual and latent ability of knowledge to challenge and change social circumstances. His theory of‘communication action’ makes use of an ideal speech situation, we will also find this useful.
Having set the theoretical terms, the session explicitly then returns to mathematics education. It explores how some recent scholars and practitioners have worked usefully with Habermas’s ideas in generating a platform for social justice action. Several, what I refer to as ‘visions of social justice’, emerge. These open contemporary debates within and about mathematics curriculums. Issues of the academic status of mathematics, school mathematics, assessment, culture and indigeneity, basic skills and so on – quite a list! – find places for further discussion here. In the short time available I try to relate these to some examples I hope you find thought provoking.
In the conclusion I return to my prompting question – and make some suggestions that might be worth careful consideration.
APPENDIX
Habermaslabels these knowledge constitutive interests(Habermas, 1984, 1987) as follows:
- Technical interest – knowledge as solving strictly technical, process-product problems and obtaining solutions; getting an anticipated outcome achieved using knowledge techniques and tools in a “can-do” style.
- Practical interest – trying to find meanings and lines of communication in order to get the spirit of things done. Discovering and overcoming obstacles, revising goals and developing new plans depending on circumstances, as well as using technical knowledge is important here.
- Critical interest – By taking in the bigger picture, asking questions that sometimes lead outside of the activities or problems at hand, or put in them in a very different light from the way they were initially intended or proposed. Thinking about purposes, values, and broader effects, may lead to awareness of contradictions and tensions that are otherwise glossed over – and this could reveal ways kinds of knowledge depend on systematic distortions of human interactions, communication and lead to inequality.
Gutstein (2007)
Quoting Osler’s (2007 paraphrase of Gutstein (2007):
“Community knowledge refers to what people already know and bring to school with them; knowledge that and involves how people understand their lives, their communities, power relationships, and their society resides in individuals and in communities that usually has been learned out of school.
“Critical knowledge refers to the sociopolitical conditions of one’s immediate and broader existence. It includes knowledge about why things are the ways that they are and about the historical, economical, political, and cultural roots of various social phenomena.
“Classical knowledge generally refers to formal, in-school, abstract knowledge… Classical mathematical knowledge clearly has high-status in society as well as a strong Eurocentric bias, and
while [we] critique it, [we] recognize its power and cultural capital and argue that students need to develop it for several reasons. They need it for personal, family, and community survival, especially for students who come from economically marginalized spaces. But even more than that, [we] believe it is crucial that students appropriate, in this case, the “master’s tools” with which to dismantle his house.”
Example A
Working by yourself and using paper and pencil, do the following
(i) Subtract 1, 127 from 1, 500; (ii) Divide 1, 100 by 73.
Example B
(i) How many 73p stamps can you get from £10? What is your change?
(ii) Your grocer bill from Tesco is £11.27. How many 55p chocolates can you buy with the change if you have £15 to hand?
Example C
In this problem, work with the person next to you
Here is a table indicating the distribution of the world’s population and wealth by geographic region.
Region / Population (%) / Net worth (%)North America / 5.17 / 34.39
Central/South America / 8.52 / 4.34
Europe / 9.62 / 29.19
Africa / 10.66 / 0.54
Middle East / 9.88 / 3.13
Asia / 52.18 / 25.61
Other / 3.14 / 2.56
(Source: accessed 10/11/2008)
- Use the chart below to help you represent these two distributions using the 50 counters provided.
Region / Population
(Number of counters) / World net worth (Numbers of
counters)
North America / 34.39
Central/South America
Europe
Africa
Middle East
Asia
Other
- In your representation, what percentage of the total does each counter represent?
- When you compare these distributions, what do you notice? What questions does the distribution suggest to you?
- Find as many ways as you can to illustrate this comparison. Of these, which are the clearest, and why?
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