AbstrakTujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengeksplorasi citra matematika dari sudut pandang mahasiswa program sarjana dan faktor-faktor yang mungkin memengaruhinya. Pada penelitian ini, citra matematika dimaknai sebagai pandangan atau representasi mental terhadap matematika, yang dialami oleh mahasiswa program sarjana dalam perjalanan akademiknya melalui interaksi secara luas di sekolah. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori kekerasan simbolis oleh Pierre Bourdieu untuk mengevaluasi citra matematika di mata mahasiswa. Desain penelitian ini adalah eksploratif kualitatif dan interpretatif. Wawancara semi terstruktur digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data teks dari tiga subjek penelitian yang merupakan mahasiswa tingkat akhir program sarjana matematika di Universitas Tribhuvan di Kathmandu. Berdasarkan analisis dan interpretasi tematik dari data tekstual, terdapat empat citra matematika yang muncul dari sudut pandang subjek. Citra-citra tersebut adalah: matematika itu sulit dan abstrak; tidak konteksual; mata pelajaran yang misterius; dan dapat diterapkan di berbagai bidang ilmu. Faktor-faktor penyebab terbentuknya citra tersebut berkaitan dengan pendekatan kurikuler dan pedagogis dari jenjang sekolah hingga perguruan tinggi. Di antaranya adalah metode mengajar yang konvensional dan tidak menguatkan siswa; kurikulum, buku, maupun sumber belajar lainnya yang tidak kontekstual; media pengajaran; serta hakikat matematika itu sendiri.Kata Kunci: citra matematika, hakikat matematika, kekerasan simbolis, pendekatan pedagogis, penelitian kualitatif AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to explore images of mathematics held by undergraduate students and possible influencing factors. We conceptualize the image of mathematics in this study as the mental representations or views of mathematics as undergraduate students experienced during their academic journey through the interaction largely at school and university. Pierre Bourdieu's construct of symbolic violence served as the theoretical lens to evaluate the students' images of mathematics. The design of this study was explorative qualitative and interpretive. We used a semistructured interview to generate data texts from three participants who were senior undergraduate students studying mathematics at an affiliated college of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. From the thematic analysis and interpretation of the textual data, four common themes emerged as images of mathematics held by the participants. These include--mathematics as a difficult and abstract subject, decontextualized, mysterious, but applicable in different fields. The influencing factors for these images are mainly related to the curricular and pedagogical approaches from schools to university classes. These factors comprise--conventional and disempowering methods of teaching, decontextualized curriculum and textbooks, other teachinglearning resources, the medium of instruction, and nature of mathematics itself. We address pedagogical implications of the findings and present the conclusion.

Keywords: Mathematical beliefs, philosophy, curriculum, pedagogy and instructional practices. Setting the SceneMathematics has a crucial role for the development of the natural sciences, information and communication technology, space sciences, and other human disciplines as well. Mathematics has a power to express the physical world in simple, systematic and consistent ways so what many students, teachers and researchers valued mathematics (Ernest, 2008). In spite of having the foundational role for developing other human disciplines and enriching the problem solving, describing, interpreting, and decision making skills in the real world situation, many practitioners perceive mathematics as one of the difficult subjects and do not succeed sufficiently as per public expectation (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS], 2011; Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA], 2012). Why such condition arises is one of the challenging questions for the mathematics teachers, teacher educators and researchers. It opens an avenue of my inquiry. In my opinion, our school and university mathematics curricula and activities focus on only one aspect of cognitive development and often overlook other aspects of teaching learning activities; one of such hidden variable is belief (Leder, Pehkonen, &Törner, 2003).A recent research on teachers' beliefs explores a significant positive relationship among teachers' beliefs, practices and students' problem solving achievement (Polly et al., 2013). Classroom activities of teachers are guided by their prejudiced assumptions. They do not simply perform as robot. Being a human being, they have their own feelings, emotions and passions about their environments. These attributes appear in their classroom instructional practices. Handal and Herrington (2003) vital role in the nature of classroom instructions and implementation of mathematics curricular reform. For enhancing the quality of mathematics teaching and learning, we should understand the ideas held by the teachers and how these ideas or beliefs have reflected in their instructional practices (Boz, 2008).According to Thompson (1992), the efforts to improve the quality of mathematics instruction should not result significant outcomes, if the related personnel and authorities are not able to recognize a role that the teachers' beliefs might play in shaping their behaviour. Teachers' behaviour is primarily determined by their belief system rather than by their own knowledge. Experience and prior knowledge are also important, but beliefs act as the driving forces in shaping the structure and content of their practices in the classroom (Wilson & Cooney, 2003). Similarly, Ernest (1991) claimed that teachers' knowledge of mathematics is important but not account for every difference observed in the classroom. These perspectives elucidate the views that only mathematics content knowledge is not sufficient for a betterment of mathematics education practices. So why do many researchers focus on teachers'...

In this paper, I have tried to explore hegemonic western cultural worldview which heavily influences the traditional disciplinary egocentric curriculum practices. Western hegemonic culture's overriding inspirations in mathematics education have established western modern worldviews, culture, and traditions as universal standards. Through the so-called standard norms and values, the powerful countries (mainly western and European countries) have seized others' cultures, values, and perspectives and thus developed the culture of silence. Conventional disciplinary egocentrism indoctrinates hegemonic culture that makes the learners unaware of their ways of being, knowing, and doing. It severely affects less powerful (politically, economically and technologically) countries' education systems by pervading instrumental, decontextualized and bureaucratic thought and beliefs. It engulfs humanitarian, biocultural, political, and spiritual perspectives of mathematics education. It signifies that we urgently need to revitalize mathematics education by incorporating newly emerging perspectives; one such perspective might be STEAM education. I would like to discuss the different perspectives of STEAM education and explore how STEAM education contributes to creating new synergetic learning spaces in mathematics education by enhancing transformative learning practices. The primary concern of STEAM education is to acknowledge local and contextual ways of beings, knowing, and doing. The recognition of the local cosmological knowledge, perspectives, and values support authenticate the learning process. The learning authentication widens the possibilities of active engagement of learners in the learning and decision-making process by deploying creative, critical, and imaginative thinking and skills. A deep engagement in a multi/inter/transdisciplinary learning process embraces the learners into bio-cultural differences; the lifelines of the human being support developing awareness, self-consciousness, and spiritual sensibility. STEAM perspectives always focus on enriching transformative agendas to create more authentic, inclusive, and empowering educational practices. It also empowers the learners to act as change agents for enhancing socially, ecologically, and bio-culturally just society that underpins to transform mathematics education.

We have encountered the views of research as apolitical, ahistorical, aculture, and value free: the most powerful weapon for the imposition of Western-Eurocentric thought. It does not embrace the voice and epistemology of Othered people. Against this backdrop, we offer significant features of postcolonial autoethnography. It has three major attributes: exploring the colonial legacy for revitalizing others, dialectical reasoning to create a synergy of meaning perspectives, and metaphor of transformative praxis to bring a paradigm shift. Likewise, we describe three ethical considerations: empathy, inclusiveness, and healing, which possibly help empower the researcher and research participants to become conscious citizens.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the present mathematics assessment practices in local and global contexts. For this, I decisively review educational policies, practices, curricular documents and contemporary researches. In doing so, I select the Finland, China, USA, as they have stood in the significant positions in an international comparative study such as TIMSS, PISA and Nepal. It reveals that the assessment practices in mathematics are not an isolated phenomenon that have been executed by an external authority at the end of the academic sessions to quantify the individual attributes relating to mathematical performances. It is largely embedded in educational activities from the very beginning and simultaneously works throughout the programme for enriching mathematical outcomes and performances of students. I capture two major trends of assessment practices of these countries; post-positivist approaches of assessment and integral approaches of assessment. The post/positivist perspective incorporates summative evaluation techniques and assessment of learning whereas integral perspectives concentrate on assessment for learning as having broad goals of reconstructing, reframing and transforming the entire programs. These trends of assessment practice largely blend with philosophy of mathematics education. The comparing and contrasting views of assessment practices would be helpful for the policy makers, educators, mathematicians and other related personnel for critically re-evaluate their respective assessment practices and thus encourage to transform the deep-rooted conventional assessment practice that is one of the major hindrance to sanction the mathematics education within the positivistic paradigm. The Sapta Gandaki JournalVol. IX, 2018 Feb. Page: 1-16