Conceptualising one mathematics teacher’s process of becoming in relation to teaching mathematics and climate justice: The story of Karl

In this study, we explore a small-scale professional development project for secondary (students aged 11-18 years) mathematics teachers in the UK in the context of mathematics teaching and climate justice. Ten secondary mathematics teachers participated in the project consisting of three full-day workshops over the course of an academic year, facilitated by a multi-disciplinary team consisting of two mathematics teacher educator researchers, a research mathematician, a practicing site responsive artist, a novelist and creative writing lecturer and a geographical scientist. In this paper, we focus specifically on one mathematics teacher’s process of becoming in relation to teaching mathematics and climate justice which we observe through his actions and articulations in relation to the professional development activities and capture by co-creating The story of Karl in the form of a layered text. We present this layered text as both the process and the product of our analysis to demonstrate the way in which Karl embraces contradictions and draws upon multiple forms of knowing over the course of the project. We draw on existing and pertinent theoretical frameworks from critical mathematics education and education for sustainability to develop a set of conceptual tools which we identify throughout Karl’s story and in doing so illustrate the different ways in which mathematics teaching and climate justice are conceptualised and enacted by Karl. Finally, we present a framework that we call Teaching Mathematics 4 Climate Justice (TM4CJ), consisting of four dimensions (Teaching mathematics about climate justice; Teaching mathematics with climate justice; Teaching mathematics for climate justice; and Teaching mathematics as climate justice) that emerged through the process of analysis. We show that TM4CJ is relevant to mathematics teaching beyond lessons where the content relates directly to issues of climate justice, towards a way of being a mathematics teacher. Implications for mathematics teacher education and professional development are discussed in light of the TM4CJ framework as well as the process by which the framework emerged.