Disrupting mathematics while teaching for a sustainable future -

Abstract

Middle primary years (8 to 11 years), early secondary (12 to 15 years) and higher secondary (16 to 18 years)

Mathematics has a complicated relationship with the current global environmental crisis. It is a brilliant tool for understanding climate change, pollution, ecosystem decline or biodiversity. It is one of the key tools through which humans seek to control ecosystems for their own benefit and gratification. Mathematics is also quite bad at engaging with things that are not easily mathematisable, like beauty or dignity or the value of the existence of creatures for their own sake. The way we often teach mathematics tends to promote a particular kind of mathematical consciousness that encourages a technical, exploitative, human-centric approach.

How can we teach mathematics to disrupt this kind of mathematical consciousness (without rejecting what is undoubtedly valuable in mathematics)?

In this workshop, we will explore how we can tackle this question. I will share an example, drawn from my context in North America, focusing on reports of a wolf cull. As well as mathematical information about wolf populations, I introduce poetry, news reports, a story of Mahingan (the Anishinabe name for wolf), images and other prompts.

The goal is for participants to explore how these different texts set mathematics in a broader perspective, and to consider how this approach might work in their contexts.