Questions:
•Is mathematics 'neutral', or is it connected with social/ environmental justice?•What are your ideas about the author's intentions in writing this textbook?
•Can these ideas from middle school math inspire teaching ideas for your secondary math classes?
•Are there topics in mathematics that are more or less possible to connect with social justice issues?
Reflection:
I feel that math is definitely driven by social and environmental change and justice, or it can be. It is ultimately up to the educator to decide whether to touch on outside factors related to math, or to just teach the basics. The intention of the author, in my eyes, was to open up the eyes of teachers in order to show them that there is more to teaching math than meets the eye. There is a definite way of incorporating the outside world to math. David Stocker's purpose was to give teachers the option of being able to bring social awareness into their teaching; this is wonderful as I feel that most teachers maybe feel confused about how exactly to incorporate these things into teaching, but Stocker gives great examples along with his writing.
In secondary math classes, it can definitely be harder to incorporate social justice into teaching, but again, it is up to the teacher to attempt to do so. Personally, thinking of senior level math classes, I feel it would be more difficult to associate lessons with social justice, as students would just want to focus on the concepts in order to get a good mark for post-secondary. A teacher could try to connect probability with social justice issues, but topics like logarithms and transformations may a bit harder to relate to real-world problems, though this does not mean they are impossible to relate.
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