ABSTRACT

Learning takes place both inside and outside of the classroom, embedded in local practices, traditions and interactions. But whereas the importance of social practice is increasingly recognised in literacy education, Numeracy as Social Practice: Global and Local Perspectives is the first book to fully explore these principles in the context of numeracy. The book brings together a wide range of accounts and studies from around the world to build a picture of the challenges and benefits of seeing numeracy as social practice  ̶  that is, as mathematical activities embedded in the social, cultural, historical and political contexts in which these activities take place.

Drawing on workplace, community and classroom contexts, Numeracy as Social Practice shows how everyday numeracy practices can be used in formal and non-formal maths teaching and how, in turn, classroom teaching can help to validate and strengthen local numeracy practices. At a time when an increasingly transnational approach is taken to education policy making, this book will appeal to development practitioners and researchers, and adult education, mathematics and numeracy teachers, researchers and policy makers around the world.

part I|80 pages

Using case studies to expose the significance of what ‘surrounds’ mathematics in numeracy practices

chapter 3|19 pages

Building stone walls

A case study from the Philippines

chapter 4|17 pages

‘Tear it out and rip it up or you might get charged again’

Paying debts at the company store in a farm workers’ camp in Mexico

chapter 5|23 pages

Mathematics in pre-vocational education

A model for interfaces between two different teaching contents

part II|69 pages

Mathematics education and everyday numeracies Theoretical resources for analysis

chapter 6|20 pages

Word problems as social texts

chapter 7|12 pages

Broadening school mathematics curriculum

The complexity of teaching mathematical language games of different forms of life

chapter 8|16 pages

‘Limits of the local’ in theorising numeracy as social practice

A case study of mathematics education in Palestine

part III|72 pages

Numeracy and power Facilitating learning of numeracy as social practice

chapter 10|15 pages

‘Occupation of our minds’

A metaphor to explain mathematics education in South Africa in the apartheid era

chapter 11|18 pages

Learning for life, from life

Adult numeracy and primary school textbooks in India

part |14 pages

Conclusion

chapter 14|12 pages

Expanding and deepening the terrain

Numeracy as social practice