Suchergebnisse

In her portion of this session, Wilding-Martin will extend her 2011 PES analysis of Paul Ernest's proposal for reconstructing high school mathematics. Ernest argues that democratic principles require a differentiated high school mathematics curriculum based on student choice and career goals, with a common core based on mathematics appreciation and critical social awareness to empower students. Wilding-Martin has argued that Ernest's democratic aims for this curriculum are threatened by mathematical elitism and social power structures. In this session, Wilding-Martin will draw from Nel Noddings' theory of care to further explore these issues. Noddings also calls for differentiated curricula, but with a de-emphasis on privileged disciplines. Both Ernest and Noddings argue that students should not all be required to complete the traditional mathematics sequence, and that this curriculum can be irrelevant and demoralizing for students who are not mathematically inclined. However, they disagree on what the alternatives should be. Should mathematics education incorporate a liberal arts element to expose students to the intrinsic beauty and power of mathematics, or should it be streamlined to include "just what students need"? Wilding-Martin will explore the philosophical tensions between these two perspectives.

The main focus of this project is to critically analyze Ernest's philosophy of mathematics education and his conceptions of mathematical knowledge and democratic education. Specifically, I use textual analysis to interpret what he intends for each group of students and to critically analyze the conceptions of mathematical knowledge and democratic citizenship implicit in each set of recommendations. I examine whether these conceptions are consistent with each other and with his philosophy of mathematics education. I argue that while Ernest's general conceptions of mathematical knowledge and democratic citizenship are similar for these two groups, he views mathematicians as producers of mathematical knowledge and the general public as users of this knowledge. This characterization seems to place research mathematicians in a privileged position. Finally, I explore the implications of Ernest's framework for developmental mathematics at the community college level. I discuss what his view would contribute to conversations about educational opportunity, and I use specific examples to illustrate how this framework might be used to evaluate policy and practice in this context.