Fostering ethical understanding in mathematics.
An afterthought.
I often hear Bill Callahan’s song “To Be of Use” playing in my head and I wonder if I am so…watching humanity wobbling like it needs to put its training wheels back on - Kristian Matson
In our current world, there is an awful lot we could get ourselves worked up about.
But then again, maybe there always has been.
When it comes to the issue of teaching mathematics in schools, we continue to argue white-knuckled with each other about how mathematics “should” be taught, with what I would argue to be unhelpful polarisations between different camps.
Why do we care?
Well, we could say that we argue so much about these issues as we believe in the power of mathematics teaching to influence the trajectory of students’ lives and aspirations. We want all students to succeed in life, we see studies that find links between mathematical knowledge, life satisfaction and income and understandably want to get mathematics teaching “right” in order to give our students the best chance of having these opportunities1.
Yes, mathematics teaching can support some students by opening doors to certain tertiary and employment pathways. But sadly, due to the inherent nature of the structures we have in Australian education (not to mention society at large), these opportunities must be closed to many. How then might mathematics teaching be powerful for all students?
In this post, I explore the opportunity that Australian teachers have to engage in teaching for ethical understanding in mathematics as an act of powerful and inclusive mathematics teaching. I use the term “opportunity” here, to indicate that there are indeed challenges to enacting this kind of teaching practice in Australia, due to the dominance of competing ideological perspectives that drive mathematics teaching towards competition and performance.
Let’s get into it.
Permission granted.
The Australian Curriculum has historically been a contentious beast when it comes to mathematics.
But to be honest, I don’t mind it.
It feels less cluttered than my home state’s curriculum, but most interestingly it has been developed as a 3-dimensional curriculum2 where what are defined as learning areas, cross-curricular priorities and general capabilities are interwoven into a singular, holistic set of educational outcomes.
What we see here is clear permission given to teachers - among other things - to provide opportunities for their students to engage with mathematics in a way that considers the ethical implications of its use in society.
Now this is a chance to engage in some powerful mathematics teaching.
Hold it right there.
Given the permission for teachers to embed ethical understanding into their mathematics teaching, why does it seem that no teachers are doing it?
Probably because they aren’t3.
Some time ago now, Forgasz and colleagues (2015) expressed caution following the inclusion of ethical understanding within the teaching of mathematics in the Australian Curriculum:
“We are concerned, however, that mathematics teachers generally steer clear of the controversies inherent in many of the contexts they select for students to engage in problem solving, believing that this is the purview of other disciplines in the school curriculum, or are better dealt with at home. With respect to ethical considerations, this level of avoidance may be exacerbated” (p. 148).
I don’t see any reason (or evidence for that matter) to believe that much has changed since this article was published, although I do not doubt there are mathematics teachers out there pushing beyond the tiring pedagogical fistfights between inquiry learning and direct instruction4.
However, in our current age, where for example threats of ecological disasters are a looming reality and our schools are too caught up in competing with one another to care, teaching for ethical understanding may be more important now than ever.
But who has the time?
The entrenched performative aspects of teaching and schooling that have come to define educational practice in Australia over the past 20 years have made it so that these valuable aspects of the mathematics curriculum are largely ignored, as schools stay focused on becoming “winners” in an educational “race”.
Enacting teaching for ethical understanding in mathematics then becomes a challenge as teachers, school leaders and our broader society continue to increasingly value student performance over ethical deliberation in mathematics education.
Knock on the door.
This presents a challenge, but also an exciting opportunity for teachers, one that holds the potential for more innovative and transformative curriculum and teaching practices.
It seems to me more plausible that a focus on the most “effective” approaches in mathematics will simply shape our students to seek effective - as opposed to ethical - decision making.
However, the ideological pressures placed upon mathematics teachers to perform, compete, and adhere to certain pedagogical preferences, understandably takes teachers away from this important work. Teachers may be unaware of the holistic aspirations of the Australian Curriculum, or simply do not have the time, headspace or support to be able to enact this kind of work in their practice. It would also be understandable that a number of individuals may consider that teaching students for ethical understanding does not form their role as mathematics teachers, rather attempting to hold an apolitical position that simply teaches “the math”.
However, we cannot assume that providing students with “the math” will support students in considering the ethical implications of it. Much like the way direct instruction enthusiasts seem to imbue some kind of faith that retainable and accessible mathematical facts will result in a better world, we cannot assume that students will “pick up” ethical use of mathematics simply because they have the mathematical skills or fact fluency. Foragsz and colleagues (2015) said it well when they remark that:
“Presenting students with routine mathematical problems that call for procedural approaches to arrive at a solution does little to facilitate the exploration of ethical issues or the learning of ethics/value, and students’ moral development” (p. 158).
It seems to me more plausible that a focus on the most “effective” approaches in mathematics will simply shape our students to seek effective - as opposed to ethical - decision making.
If we wish to take mathematics education seriously, it is important to continually return to questions of purpose:
What are we trying to achieve through school-based, mathematics education?
What kind of individuals do we hope to send into the world?
What are the hopes we have for mathematics education?
Returning to these questions can support the critical evaluation of the drivers of teaching practice to more closely align our practice with the values we hold for education.
No better time than now.
In her PhD thesis exploring the way various teachers, including mathematics teachers, engaged with the general capability of ethical understanding in the Australian Curriculum, Mitchell (2018) found that it presented a powerful opportunity for transformation in both students are teachers.
Concluding her thesis, she states that:
“The experience of participants in this study reminds us that there is a vein of gold waiting to be mined further in explicitly bringing the capability of ethical understanding into subject disciplines.” (Mitchell, 2018, p. 262)
You have permission, go and dig some holes.
Till next time,
References
Forgasz, H., Bleazby, J., & Sawatzki, C. (2015). Ethics and the challenges for inclusive mathematics teaching. Deakin University. https://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30116620
Mitchell, J. (2018). Teaching the General Capability of Ethical understanding in the Australian Curriculum: Classroom teachers’ perspectives. Doctoral dissertation. University of Melbourne.
Probably an unfair caricature in some respects, but this is often how I find arguments about teaching mathematics framed.
This was brought to my attention by one of Steven Kolber’s contributions to the Teachers’ Education Review podcast.
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