Abstract
The world is in a period of rapid change. Climate chaos is leading to floods and droughts and exacerbating inequality. This paper asks, in such a context, what is the role of mathematics education and, in particular, what can mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) do, in supporting teachers to respond to global challenges, and the associated injustices, within their mathematics classrooms? We review work done within critical mathematics education and develop a model for reflection on the role of the MTE. We report on work taking place in one university in the UK where, for the last 6 years, MTEs have been encouraging teachers to address global issues in their classroom. One role which has emerged for a MTE is in supporting the translation of scientific work on climate change into classroom tasks. In the UK, the spaces for such work are being squeezed in an increasingly politicized education system. We end by considering possibilities for MTEs to provoke a generic questioning of assumptions, which we argue is possible even within such constraints.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-13 |
| Journal | London Review of Education |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, Alf Coles and Tracy Helliwell.
Keywords
- Global challenges
- climate change
- learning to teach mathematics
- role of the mathematics teacher educator
- critical mathematics education
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This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via UCL Press at https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.21.1.02. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.