Dialogical Inquiry in Mathematics Teaching and Learning

The collection of papers in this anthology represents what
may be a broad exploration of the role of philosophical
inquiry in the classroom and in mathematics teacher
education, a topos characterized by multiple, intersecting
themes, all of which converge on a central question: what is
the role of mathematics in the construction of the realities
we live by, and could that role be different if we became
aware of its invisible power? In the age of the Anthropocene
- an era in which technological intervention plays an ever
more central role in the way we build, develop and attempt
to maintain our increasingly fragile and risk-prone human
and natural world, what are the implications of the
hegemonic epistemic status of mathematics in those
processes? Does mathematics define the conditions of
possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory
or silently invested in a practice? Does or can mathematics
and its presumed value-neutrality serve to limit, constrain,
suppress, and even preclude other, perhaps more valuable
forms of knowledge? Alternatively, can philosophical
dialogue about mathematics serve to clarify, unmask, reframe
and recreate our understanding of mathematics and its
symbolic power in the human and material world, and act as
an emancipatory form of knowledge in culture and society?
What would such dialogues look like in the mathematics
classroom? The papers in this volume address these questions
in various contexts and registers, and provide prospective
and in-service teachers with compelling and suggestive ways
of responding to them. A must-read for math educators
everywhere.
Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy, Associate Professor
of Mathematics Education, City University of New York, USA.
Eva Marsal, Professor of Philosophy, University of
Education, Karlsruhe, Germany & University of Warsaw,
Poland.