Socio-political Perspectives on Mathematics Education

Flu viruses, a lucky community and cosine graphs: The possibilities opened up by the use of a socio-political perspective to study learning in an undergraduate access course in mathematics

“…By constructing certain students as in deficit, the psychological perspective exerts power, and as the brief literature review in this paper suggests, this power is being reproduced in mathematics education research at undergraduate level. This argument provides support for the view that mathematics education research as a practice is socio-political (Valero, 2004b).…”

Who succeeds in mathematics? Caribbean perspectives on the mix of schools and mathematics

“…I have argued elsewhere that schools provide an enabling means via which mathematics is used as a positioning strategy (George 2009). And so it is that mathematics as taught and enacted in schools performs a socio-political function (Valero 2004) resulting in the empowerment and disempowerment of students from different social groups. Findings from this study suggest that this way of doing school, this mix of school and mathematics, is a potent mix for some students, presenting barriers simply too high for them to overcome.…”

Doubtful rationality

“…Here I can refer to a project carried out by Otavio Roberto Jacobini (2004). It exemplifies how university students can be involved in mathematical modelling not as a technique, but as a transition between a natural language environment and 11 See also Valero (2002Valero ( , 2004. 12 See also Skovsmose and Valero (2001), for a discussion of the notion of democracy.…”