ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we address the issue of crosscurricular teaching and learning in mathematics education from different viewpoints and base our discussion on both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence. A pivotal question is why school mathematics is frequently conceived as difficult to integrate with other subjects, sometimes even consciously left out when teachers plan for crosscurricular activities. We argue that the marginal position of mathematics within crosscurricular teaching and learning can be explained by the dominance of an instrumental view on mathematics and its learning. If mathematics education is instead viewed from a complementary perspective, from a relational view, we argue that a crosscurricular educational context could provide a meaningful, realistic setting for doing mathematics and making learners’ mathematical knowledge less inert.
