Deception/Suspicion/Perception: Defining a Critical Stance in Quantitative Literacy Classrooms

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Culture and Power in Diverse Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

This cross-case analysis of quantitative literacy instruction at the undergraduate level provides insight into how mathematics instructors conceptualize the object of their instruction. Quantitative literacy is usually divided into knowledge and dispositional components. This report focuses on one element of those dispositions, the adoption of a critical stance towards mathematical claims. I worked with three mathematics instructors to introduce information-based problems, these are problems that require students to seek out and make use of information outside of the classroom, into their instruction. I found that the instructors demonstrated, both through the nature of the activities that they created, and their testimony about those activities, distinct conceptions of what it means to adopt a critical stance.

Author

• Ander Willard Erickson, University of Washington - Tacoma