The Disorder Of Mathematics Education

Research within a socio-political paradigm or “turn” has been gradually recognized and institutionalized as an important part of mathematics education. This book focuses on the neglected problems, tensions and contradictions evoked by this process. The authors do this by challenging current regimes of truth about mathematics education; by identifying how recent technological developments challenge or suspend contemporary conceptions of mathematics education; by critiquing the ideological entanglement of mathematics, its education and schooling with capitalism; by self-reflective analyses of researchers' impacts on shaping what is and can be perceived as the practice of mathematics education (research); and by confronting main-stream mathematics education with socio-political contexts that are usually neglected. In this way, "mathematical rationality" becomes contextualized within contemporary society, where it reproduces itself through technologies, social practices, media and other spheres of social life.

This book documents and expands on the diverse social and political dimensions of mathematics education issues, concerns, perspectives, contexts, and approaches presented in Topic Study Group 34 of the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). The book also argues for and promotes the mainstreaming of the sociopolitical dimensions of mathematics education through an ongoing critique and inquiry into content, policies, practices and theories. Accordingly, the main theme throughout the book is captured and illuminated by bringing voices from the margin to the mainstream. In this respect it is both aspirational and a reality, as evidenced by the increasing references to the sociopolitical dimensions in other areas of mathematics education—for example, in several of the plenary presentations at the ICME-13. The authors have reflected on their ideas with a view to orienting and enhancing research in the sociopolitical dimensions of mathematics education that is grounded in current education systems within their specific sociocultural contexts.

This volume discusses semiotics in mathematics education as an activity with a formal sign system, in which each sign represents something else. Theories presented by Saussure, Peirce, Vygotsky and other writers on semiotics are summarized in their relevance to the teaching and learning of mathematics. The significance of signs for mathematics education lies in their ubiquitous use in every branch of mathematics. Such use involves seeing the general in the particular, a process that is not always clear to learners. Therefore, in several traditional frameworks, semiotics has the potential to serve as a powerful conceptual lens in investigating diverse topics in mathematics education research. Topics that are implicated include (but are not limited to): the birth of signs; embodiment, gestures and artifacts; segmentation and communicative fields; cultural mediation; social semiotics; linguistic theories; chains of signification; semiotic bundles; relationships among various sign systems; intersubjectivity; diagrammatic and inferential reasoning; and semiotics as the focus of innovative learning and teaching materials.

The book provides an overview of state-of-the-art research from Brazil and Germany in the field of inclusive mathematics education. Originated from a research cooperation between two countries where inclusive education in mathematics has been a major challenge, this volume seeks to make recent research findings available to the international community of mathematics teachers and researchers. In the book, the authors cover a wide variety of special needs that learners of mathematics may have in inclusive settings. They present theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for research and practice.

This book takes a fresh approach to using educational tools to solve profound problems in societies. The authors bring perspectives from curriculum studies, mathematics education, environmental education, and Indigenous epistemologies to a new consideration of “geometries to think with”. These tools reveal the wealth of resources and interrelationships in our world that have the potential to reconfigure and revitalize education. The transdisciplinary nature of the chapters and authors emphasizes the need for thinking beyond boundaries, while respecting the wisdom inherent in intellectual disciplines and traditions.

This volume is a forward–looking intersection of Sociological perspectives on mathematics classrooms and socio-political perspectives on mathematics education. The first perspective has generated a substantial body of knowledge in the mathematics education. Interactionist research has deepened our understanding of interaction processes, socio-mathematical norms and the negotiation of meaning, generating a ‘micro-sociology’ or a ‘micro-ethnography’ of the mathematics classroom. More recently, socio-political perspectives on mathematics education interrelate educational practices in mathematics with macro-social issues of social equity, class, and race and with the policies that regulate institutionalized mathematics education. This book documents, strings together and juxtaposes research that uses ethnographical classroom data to explain, on the one hand, how socio-political issues play out in the mathematics class. On the other hand, it illuminates how class, race etc. affect the micro-sociology of the mathematics classroom. The volume advances the knowledge in the field by providing an empirical grounding of socio-political research on mathematics education, and it extends the frame in which mathematical classroom cultures are conceived.

This open access book is the first major publication on the topic of “Interdisciplinary Mathematics Education” and arose from the work of the first International Topic Study Group of the same name at the ICME-13 conference in Hamburg in 2016. It offers extensive theoretical insights, empirical research, and practitioner accounts of interdisciplinary mathematics work in STEM and beyond (e.g. in music and the arts). Scholars and practitioners from four continents contributed to this comprehensive book, and present studies on: the conceptualizations of interdisciplinarity; implementation cases at schools and tertiary institutions; teacher education; and implications for policy and practice. Each chapter, and the book itself, closes with an assessment of the most significant aspects that those involved in policy and practice, as well as future researchers, should take into account.