ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 introduced critical literacy (New London Group, 1996) and posited the idea that a similar pedagogical approach could be adopted in mathematics. Just as critical literacy approaches “view language, texts, and their discourse structures as principal means for representing and reshaping possible worlds” (Luke, 2012, p. 6), a critical numeracy approach would present teachers with opportunities to engage pupils in reviewing mathematical structures and systems in order to interrogate possible worlds. At the very least, such an approach provides the raison d’être for encouraging pupils to engage in authentic investigations that, while not always solving problems, at least contribute to richer mental models of the phenomenon at their conclusion. Such approaches require an appreciation of the situated learning approach that Askew (2012) discusses when looking at the research undertaken by Lave (1988), who investigated how women used fractions in their everyday lives. She discovered that while the women had quite sophisticated and practical mental models of measuring fractional quantities of food for their diets they could not find answers to similar questions when presented with textbook examples. Lave (1988) argued that learning is far more context dependent, and Askew (2012) suggests her work challenges the idea of the transference of learning. I believe that such judgments may fail to take into account the richness of the mental models that individuals build over time to deal with phenomena in their environment.
