Mathematics Education and Social Justice: Learning to meet the Others in the classroom
Leaders: David Guillemette and Cynthia Nicol
A properly ethical relationship to the Other, and the acceptance of a genuine personal responsibility, implies the presence of a loving consciousness and the absence of a reifying and interested look. The abstract contemplation of the world incessantly risks of supplanting our active and embodied participation in a common horizon of values and meaning. Pullout the interactive context that links the Self, the Other and the World, the subject succumbs to solipsism. He then loses his footing, becomes empty, arrogant, degenerates and dies (Bakhtin, 1978/1997, p. 40, free translation).
In this context where reigns the Object and where sovereignty of technical powers is exalting, freedom consists in maintaining ourselves against the Other, despite any relationship with the Other, ensure the autarky of the Self. (Levinas, 1961/2010, p. 36-37, free translation)
All human interaction involves the experience of Otherness. Mathematical activity is not an exception. Whether through history, social practices, language, aesthetic experiences or cultural practices, the experience of Otherness in mathematics comes ineluctably, consubstantial of teaching-learning. In this light, different kinds of reasoning, languages and orientations appear, as many voices claiming their legitimacy and space of action in the mathematical world.
But what are these marginal voices? What actions can be taken to give them more space to be heard? What implications does this have for the mathematics classroom? What are the current prospects for research on/in this thematic? Above all, what conceptual or theoretical frameworks can help us think about mathematics education in these terms?
In this context, the mathematics classroom doesn’t assign itself the role of promoting an individualistic idea of autonomy, but rather one as social engagement (cf. Arendt, 1961), where the fundamental openness to the Other and the respect of the Otherness appear central and decisive to us.
This is the deep sense in which we will try together to question the idea of Social Justice and theme of Otherness in the context of mathematics education. We will try to do so by examining various theoretical and conceptual frameworks that address mathematical education in these terms and examples of research issues and problems experienced in mathematics classrooms. The numerous and bright works from the recent Mathematics Education and Society (MES) conferences (Mukhopadhyay and Greer, 2015) will provide some material for our exploration
References:
Arendt, H. (1961). Between past and future: six exercises in political thought. Cleveland: World Pub Co.
Bakhtin, M. (1997). Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris : Gallimard. (Originally published in 1978)
Levinas, E. (2010). Totalité et infini : essai sur l’extériorité. Paris : Librairie Générale Française. (OEuvre originale publiée en 1961)
Mukhopadhyay, S. & Greer, B. (Eds.) (2015). Proceedings of the Eighth International Mathematics Education and Society Conference (MES 8). Portland, Oregon: Portland State University.