Shifting Our Gaze: Critical Mathematics Education in Conversation With African Frameworks

• In Event: Accepting the Responsibility to Examine and Innovate With Frameworks Used in Education Research

Abstract

Critical Mathematics Education (CME) aims to address social injustices in local and broader communities using mathematics (Gutstein, 2016; Kokka, 2018). CME has often been conducted in the U.S. typically within school contexts while weaving mathematics with sociopolitical and community knowledge (Gutstein, 2013). However, research is extant on CME work with Sub-Saharan African youth. Recognizing that CME is not a concept that originated from an African context; I wanted to interrogate and theorize if and how it applies to an African context, recognizing that “concepts come with their own cultural and philosophical baggage” (Oyewùmí, 1997, xi). I collaborated with five Sub-Saharan African youth over the course of the spring 2019 semester. We met weekly for approximately two hours utilizing African storytelling. The purpose was to study if and how the youth used mathematics in understanding social issues related to the African continent.
It was imperative that I employed decolonial frameworks and methodologies often not engaged with in CME. This enabled me and the youth co-researchers to disrupt the impact of coloniality within the spheres of power, knowledge, and being within CME. I drew on [African] decolonial theory (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015, 2018; Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986) and frameworks (Ubuntu, Sankofa, and FAM) that pushed CME theoretically and methodologically. Ubuntu is a humanist perspective rooted in African thought that allows us to shift from I to we (Tutu, 1999). Engaging Ubuntu allowed us to focus on cultivating a space where we reflected on our shared African identity as we engaged in understanding these social issues. Sankofa comes from the Twi people of Ghana and roughly means “going back to retrieve what was lost” (Dei, 2012; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017). Sankofa helped us learn about self and past histories before we could begin disrupting social issues. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Music (FAM) methodology comes from my analysis of Fela’s (Anikulapo-Kuti, 1986) song, Teacher don’t teach me nonsense. FAM consists of three tenets: co-learning, disruption, and making space for joy in research. At the heart of these frameworks is the importance of centering local knowledge in the research space. It is necessary to note that Sankofa, Ubuntu, and FAM moved across all aspects of this research in implicit and explicit ways.
Engaging these frameworks within the framing of decolonial theory opened the space for co-learning, reflection, and disruption of false narratives about our ways of knowing. These frameworks enabled me not to teach nonsense but instead, to be open about my own learning within our research space. Moreover, the findings point to the necessity of expanding our understanding of social justice as not only considering issues of justice at present, but also cognitive justice that calls to the past. Cognitive justice works at redressing epistemicides caused by colonization and pushes us towards epistemic freedom (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015, 2018). In other words, these frameworks help to consider changing the center. The choice to start from a recognition of the knowledges that is often marginalized by school mathematics and not from issues of injustice changed the way we approached the issues.

Author

• Molade Osibodu, York University