240096 SE An anthropologist's suggestion on mathematics education (P4) (2014S)

Lectures Vienna.

Lecture 1: Anthropology and math education: Chee in thecanyon.
Abstract:Working with Navajo Indian informants in Arizona, USA I became aware of the capabilities of children and adults to find their way in vast and clearly ‘chaotic’ canyons. One thing I did was describe what people actually did and said about their ways to find the way back home in such contexts.
A second one was to use these data in order to build a curriculum book for a bicultural school on the Navajo reservation.
I start from this example to ask what the political choices are, which I confront when working with such material: how much mathematics (or is it Mathematics) is needed in daily life? And what mathematics should we promote or develop, without becoming colonialist again? I introduce the concept of multimathemacy (after multiliteracy) to discuss the political agenda of ethnomathematics.

Lecture 2: Multimathemacy: elaboration of the issues in lecture 1. Discussion of the multimathemacy concept.

Syllabus for lectures 1 and 2: ‘Politics in an Indian canyon’

Lecture 3: What Ifs: Thinking about education and about training in formal thinking should start from four reflections on learning and situated cognition: the 4 WhatIfs.

Syllabus: introduction to the MS ‘Ethnomathematics: anthropology and math.’

Lecture 4: the concept of world view in anthropology and beyond: the cognitive anthropological work, the Marxist views and the ‘psychic unity’ hypothesis in anthropology. Recent versions of world view thinking.

Syllabus: Chapter on world view in the MS

Lecture 5: World view and Foreground Knowledge in math education: discussing the place of FK and BK in children attending schools, with feebback to the first lecture.

Lecture 6: education in a post-industrial world: shifts in the educational perspective today; impact of schooling on learning in a global context. Views on human beings, society and cultures.

Syllabus: Chapter I of the MS

Lecture 7: learning theories: basic insights into learning theories today. A first introduction to ‘cultural’ learning theories : J.Lave, M. Cole. Basic lines of the socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky).

Syllabus: chapter 2 of the MS

Lecture 8: sociocultural theory and math education: discussing the impact of culturally inspired theories of learning on math education, with special feedback to the case of Chee (lecture 1).

Syllabus: chapter 2 (sections 2.3 ) of the MS

Lecture 9: on the nature of formal thought (math): some philosophy: drawing on views on formal thinking in whitehead , Dingler, and contemporaries like Hersch. .

Syllabus: chapter 3 of the MS

Lecture 10: language and thought: the long history of anthropological work on this issue is relevant in presentday views on math education: linguistic anthropologist D. Hymes, Whorf, but also Campbell’s view on categorizing and thinking..

Syllabus: chapter 4 (sections 1 and 2) of the MS

Lecture 11: mathematician B. Barton takes anthropology to heart. His view on math as language and the impact of such a view on math learning and culture. A critical assessment.

Syllabus: last section of chapter 4 of the MS

Lecture 12: Multimathemacy again: what does this concept stand for? A general introduction with a vivid metaphor. Invitation to use imagination and use drawings.

Syllabus : chapter 5, section 1 of the MS