Proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education · Volume 1
Tracy Helliwell, Alf Coles
University of Bristol
⬇ Download PDFWe situate this theoretical report within the growing swell of interest in socio-ecological and “ecological practices” of teaching mathematics. We take ecological practices to imply a faithfulness to ethics and relationality, and we draw insights from biological ecologies for our work in mathematics education. We argue that ecological practices of teaching mathematics imply an attention to ontology, or the nature of knowing, and, in particular, an ethical stance of “not knowing together”. What we mean by this is, in part, a teacher holding open a space of communication in the classroom which allows for the emergence of the new and a supporting of ambiguity. We illustrate what “not knowing together” might look like through a re-looking of some historical classroom data and draw out implications for mathematics education.
Socio-ecologicalecological practicesontologyteaching practices