Freirean Critical Theory Within Mathematics Teaching and Learning

• In Event: 60.038 - Exploring Different Theoretical Frontiers in Mathematics Education Research: Toward an Empowering Mathematical Experience for All

Abstract

In this presentation, the panelist discusses how Paulo Freire’s theoretical, epistemological, pedagogical, and philosophy perspectives (see, e.g., 1970/1998, 1994, 1998), as one branch of critical theory, have much to offer (mathematics) education. Researchers, teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, and others can come to understand Freire’s practices and theories in his settings, and then reinvent his ideas in their own contexts. As Freire wrote: “To follow me, it is essential not to follow me!” (Freire & Faundez, 1992, p. 30). The panelist briefly addresses five interconnected aspects of Freire’s work, with respect to, and also beyond, mathematics education:
1. Building on popular (or community) knowledge to support critical and classical knowledge (Gutstein, 2007),
2. Problem-posing pedagogies,
3. Praxis,
4. Dialectics, and
5. “Education is politics” (Freire & Shor, 1987).

First, popular knowledge, for Freire, was the knowledge of one’s lived experiences, culture, and language, and was also the starting point for liberatory teaching and learning. In this perspective, teachers have the responsibility to understand students’ realities and to create opportunities for them to study the conditions of their lives and develop deeper meaning of their reality—for they already understand much about their world. Within a school setting, this can take the form of social justice mathematics teaching (Wager & Stinson, 2012) or culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995,1997).

Second, from a Freirean framework, teachers start from popular knowledge, and then develop problem-posing pedagogies. These pedagogies not only support students’ classical (i.e., academic) knowledge but also their capacity to critically understand the world. Problem-posing teaching provides students the opportunity to reflect on their reality and ask their own questions while and through learning academic subjects. In such a setting, students can interrogate and challenge all knowledge—mathematical or otherwise.

Third, praxis, for Freire, was the inextricable connection of action and reflection, whose relationship he described as: “To practice always to learn and to learn in order to practice better” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 71). Freire’s epistemology was that one learns about social reality through interacting with, and in, the world, and one’s theorizations help one “better” interpret and re-create society—then one studies and learns anew from those actions, and so on.

Fourth, Freire’s dialectics (e.g., of action and reflection) framed tensions and contradictions not as irreconcilable, but as realities to navigate. These manifest in teaching: “The role of critical pedagogy is not to extinguish tensions…[but] to lead students to recognize various tensions and enable them to deal effectively with them” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 49). Freire used a dialectical perspective as a way to understand relationships within and between social phenomena as a unity of opposites that mutually constitute each other, evolving, transforming, and moving history forward in their interdependent interactions.

Finally, Freire’s notion “education is politics” can support (mathematics) educators to better understand and re-think their research, teaching, and teacher support within a larger sociopolitical context.

Scholars concerned with justice and equity can use these precepts to help transform mathematics teaching and learning as part of the process of remaking education, and thus help shape the world.

Author

• Eric Rico Gutstein, University of Illinois at Chicago