Mathematics Education for Future Humanity: Using Freire to Oppose the Status Quo and Propose Alternatives

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Applications of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy

Abstract

The objective of this conceptual paper is to explore what mathematics education could look like if it were designed for a future where humanity lives in balance with the ecosystem and all living and nonliving things that encompass it. Before developing this alternative, we first critique mathematics education as currently practiced for the manner in which it does not correspond to social and environmental justice. In this two-pronged approach to oppose the status quo and propose for an alternative, a triad of theoretical perspectives/framings guides our philosophical inquiry: we employ ecocritical frameworks (e.g. Martusewicz et al 2011), new materialism understandings (e.g. Barad 2007), and anarchist traditions (e.g. Bookchin 2005) to critique and suggest a new framework for mathematics education.

Authors

• Nataly Z. Chesky, SUNY - College at New Paltz

• Mark Wolfmeyer, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania