Cultural Beads and Mathematical AIDS: A critical narrative of disadvantage, social context and school mathematics in post-apartheid South Africa, with reflections and implications for ‘glocal’ contexts

Abstract

Drawn from my doctoral dissertation[i], this contribution serves as a critical exploration of the construction of disadvantage in school mathematics in social context. Applying a narrative-based methodology, CULTURAL BEADS AND MATHEMATICAL A.I.D.S. engages rhizomatically with critical issues in mathematics education and highlights contradictions and dilemmas within different research and pedagogic contexts. It addresses dominant social domain discourses and hegemonic practices in classrooms and communities of practice in terms of ‘glocal' relationships and principles of power. More specifically, it addresses issues of universalism, pedagogic constructivism, and progressivism in mathematics education, and how these are recontextualised in local contexts in ways that may contribute to the construction of disadvantage. In particular, progressive education rhetoric of ‘relevance' in mathematics education is interrogated in terms of its recontextualisation across pedagogic locations, and how it might facilitate pedagogic disempowerment rather than liberation in situated contexts.