A socio-ecological turn in mathematics education: Reflecting on curriculum innovation

This article proposes that mathematics education has reached a socio-ecological turn. I identify three strands to this turn. Firstly, current advances in the sciences point to the interconnectivity of life and the ecologies living within and without human bodies. Secondly, advances in the humanities point towards the need to re-think human and non-human relations. And thirdly, the ecological precarity of the world points to the need to re-think the purposes and aims of mathematics education. Two possible curriculum innovations, in response to a socio-ecological turn, are offered. In one case, the curriculum starts from a pressing ecological issue facing a community. In the second case, in a more standard schooling context, a communal mathematics is promoted, with an emphasis on students asking their own questions. A commonality is the dramatization of the curriculum.