Making visible “the invisible”: Can mathematics embedded in work practices enable critical questioning?

This short report explores and unpacks mathematical knowledge embedded in work practices (which often remains invisible or sedimented) and how this ‘invisible’ knowledge-form underpins sociocultural resources and issues. In so doing, this report argues that the middle graders’ awareness of embedded mathematical knowledge in work practices not only creates opportunities and affordances for furthering mathematics learning but in the process, this awareness builds potential for enabling the doers to see the “invisible,” leading to a possibility of questioning the complex societal meaning of justice, fair distribution, welfare and access. This possibility of questioning plays a dual relationship of cause and effect with doers’ (read learners’) foregrounds (see Skovsmose, 2014) and creates a platform which enables and empowers them for critical questioning. This broad platform is referred to as “landscapes of investigation” (Skovsmose, 2001). There is not much research in the literature which uses instances of income-generating work practice as examples of landscapes of investigation for exemplifying out-of-school mathematical knowledge of children immersed in such work-contexts and also as possible tools for manifesting and investigating societal issues. In this report, we use examples of out-of-school work contexts and the community’s rich cultural knowledge resource for responding to this gap in the literature.

Citación

The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, Vol. 70, N° 101028 (2023) p. 1-7.

Palabras clave

Learning mathematics, Extracurricular mathematics, Mathematics in everyday contexts

Licencia

Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Chile (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 CL)

Licencia URL

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/cl/

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