ABSTRACT
What does mathematics education have to do with citizenship education? Some might argue,
‘nothing’. Those people might believe that mathematics is a playground for the imagination,
filled with abstract concepts, complicated procedures and imagined objects with no direct
relationship to the physical or the social world. Others might suggest that mathematics
is much more than a playground for the imagination; those people believe it is a tool for
understanding the physical and social worlds we experience. Yet others argue that the
world itself — political, social, economic — is informed and transformed, or, in Skovsmose’s
(2000) terms, formatted by mathematics. As the societies in which we participate are
being formatted by mathematics, the visibility of mathematics in society is becoming ‘more
and more hidden from view, forming an invisible universe that supports much of our lives’
(Devlin, 1998: 12). If as Skovsmose claims, ‘Every classroom becomes a micro-society and
may represent democracy in spe (or otherwise)’ (Devlin, 1998: 2) then we must ask, what
does the formatting power of mathematics mean for the interactions between students and
teacher in the mathematics classroom? (Devlin, 1998: 2).
