This desire-based study explores two immigrant students’ (Amelie, 14, and Zian, 13) stories of mathematics learning through the lens of immigrant futurities. Drawing on Deleuzian theory and desire-based research, the study examines how their visions of thriving futures, shaped by migration, geopolitics, and personal aspirations, produce meaning in mathematics education. Four assemblages of desire emerged: a sovereign home country, transitions among multiple sites, wealth and prosperity, and love and happiness. Mathematics was positioned not only as a tool for personal success but also for political change and healing. The students’ playful-serious imaginaries challenged dominant narratives of deficit and assimilation, offering alternative perspectives on empowerment and agency. This study raises critical questions about how mathematics education can support immigrant students’ futurity practices and contribute to more affirming pedagogies. In addition, the study offers a concrete approach to examining futurities in mathematics education research.

School mathematics is not universal. It produces and is produced by social norms. What is considered as normatively appropriate school mathematics may vary when immigrant students (re)produce school mathematics in transitions between school mathematical practices at home and at school. In this study, one group of primary school students and two groups of secondary school students were interviewed to investigate their experiences with school mathematics in transitions. In contrast to some previous studies, the present study reveals instances where students positioned their parents as mathematically knowledgeable. To some students, it was important to know mathematical concepts in the mother tongue to be positioned as knowledgeable in mathematical conversations at home. This suggests that pedagogical practices should not only facilitate the transition of students' everyday experiences into mathematics classrooms but also explore how school mathematics can be transitioned out of school, particularly considering transnationalities where ways of knowing transcend national boundaries.

This edited collection contains publications based on presentations given at the NOFA 9 conference on May 9 to 11, 2023, at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland. The conference theme this year was Education, knowledge and Bildung in a global world.

The notion of multilingual students’ first language has been advocated as a resource in mathematics learning for some time. However, few studies have investigated how implementing students’ L1 in the teaching practice impacts multilingual students’ mathematics learning opportunities. Based on a 9-month-long ethnographic study conducted in Iran, we investigate what a long-term shift from mathematics teaching in the language of instruction (Persian) to mathematics teaching that includes students’ first language (Turkish) may mean in terms of learning opportunities. In language positive classrooms, students’ socialization into mathematics and language includes using students’ first languages and paying explicit attention to different aspects of language use in mathematics. Among other things, socialization events provide possibilities to share explanations of mathematical thinking. The results of this study suggest that using students’ first languages may reinforce other language positive socialization events and provide mathematics learning opportunities during individual assignment activities. Furthermore, the results suggest that the conceived value of mathematics education in the local communities changed with the introduction of students’ L1 in the teaching practice. Consequently, this study indicates that using students’ first languages in mathematics classrooms may be a key issue in multilingual contexts.

Recently there has been a trend to include Computer Programming and Environmental Education in national syllabuses due to the accelerated technological development and the climate crisis. This study aims to investigate how notions of Action Competence, Computer Programming and Environmental Education converge or not in Discourses in educational policy documents in Colombia and Sweden. Action Competence is the capacity to play an active role and act intentionally in addressing issues that matter to students. The Discourses that we identified are: (1) Qualification is what counts, (2) Programming has little to do with environmental education, and (3) Students are not decision makers.

Recently there has been a trend to include Computer Programming and Environmental Education in national syllabuses due to the accelerated technological development and the climate crisis. This study aims to investigate how notions of Action Competence, Computer Programming and Environmental Education converge or not in Discourses in educational policy documents in Colombia and Sweden. Action Competence is the capacity to play an active role and act intentionally in addressing issues that matter to students. The Discourses that we identified are: (1) Qualification is what counts, (2) Programming has little to do with environmental education, and (3) Students are not decision makers.

Bokens kapitel utgör viktiga bidrag i en kritisk granskning av svensk matematikutbildning utifrån sociopolitiska samhällsperspektiv. Mot bakgrund av bokens olika kapitel belyser vi upplevelser och konsekvenser av att konstrueras som den andre i svensk matematikutbildning. Med hjälp av begreppet andrafiering synliggör vi författare till detta kapitel tillsammans ’dom andra’ och deras erfarenheter i relation till migration och matematikutbildning. Vi som författat detta kapitel, två nyutexaminerade lärare och två forskare, har därför ingått en så kallad allians. Vårt kapitel visar hur matematikutbildning bidrar till processer av andrafiering och skapandet av den andra och hur dessa processer påverkar flerspråkiga elevers och lärarstudenters identitetsskapande och därmed även deras möjligheter att lära matematik. Flerspråkighet behöver synliggöras och normaliseras. Alla elevers och lärarstudenters språk och kulturer måste få ta plats, inte som exotiska inslag av kulturella uttryck utan som en del av den ordinarie matematikutbildningen.

This study investigates how grade five students in a multilingual mathematics classroom where the language of instruction (Swedish) is the only shared language act to inhabit the learning space in solidarity as they encounter epistemological difference. The study contributes with empirical knowledge on students’ solidarity acts when they engage in explanatory conversations in whole class or small group discussions. Theoretically, the study contributes with coordination of Levinasian conceptions of solidarity and inferentialism to capture solidarity in epistemological dimensions of explanatory conversations among students. The study provides 4 different events that illuminate students’ solidarity acts in encounters with epistemological difference. The events include willingness to accept otherness, substituting oneself for the other, disruption and idiolect bridging, and endurance in giving reasons when being asked nonnormatively appropriate questions.

Public media both reflects and shapes societal perceptions and attitudes. Teachers and others around students in mathematics classrooms have expectations for the students, projected with what appears in these media. We are most concerned about the expectations placed on students who are identified with minoritized groups—particularly students who are Indigenous or migrated to Norway. We investigate how minoritized group contexts and mathematics education appear together in Norwegian news media texts. Our analysis uses the notion of storylines to describe the expectations about minoritized groups that news media project. We found seven entangled storylines: “the majority language and culture are keys to learning and knowing mathematics,” “mathematics is language- and culture-neutral,” “minoritized groups’ mathematics achievements are linked to culture and gender,” “extraordinary measures are needed to teach students from minoritized groups mathematics,” “students from minoritized groups underachieve,” “students from minoritized groups put in extraordinary effort and time to learn mathematics,” and “minoritized mathematics students are motivated by gratitude.”

In this epilogue we elaborate on and synthesise what we have learnt from reading this book. We start by considering what the word "apply" in Applying Critical Mathematics Education might mean. Apply connotes to put into action, but it is also related to the following ideas: to work hard at, to pay close attention to, to have relevance for and to request something. In the context of our readings we think of being relational and dedicated as a matter of enhancing situated critical awareness, addressing relevant issues as a matter of highlighting complex global and local challenges and making demands as a matter of agency and power. To us, these themes together synthesise the insights on critical mathematics education in action that the authors of this book offer; namely, propositions on how to illuminate and execute social justice and heterogenous subjectification by critically entangling local and global knowledges in contextually situated educational enactments that hold the potential to address complex challenges. We close by sharing our ideas on how the contribution of this book gives us hope for the future in these times of crises and complex challenges.

AbstractIn this chapter, we report on a small-scale critical mathematics education project in a Swedish classroom with students of varied language backgrounds. The project departed from the student Arvid’s statement “Mathematics is bad for society.” Our research interest was twofold. On the one hand, we wanted to explore what knowledge is being (re)produced by students as they try to connect and reason with a statement like “Mathematics is bad for society.” And on the other hand, we were also interested in how the students in this classroom, in which they do not have shared mother tongues, can express and (dis)acknowledge knowledge when reasoning about mathematics in society. We found that when the students (and their teacher) grappled with unpacking critical aspects such as “mathematics in society,” their reciprocal assessment of claims was based on their individual ways of knowing and talking, and tended to shape both their actions and the outcome of their efforts. We show that the discussion around critical aspects of mathematics in society that came to the fore was intertwined with both students’ and the teacher’s (lack of) meta-understanding of language diversity.

This paper discusses the place of precision in mathematics education by exploring its role in curricular guidelines and in classroom life. By means of a joke on precision delivered by a school student in South Sweden, our study focuses on student participation in mathematical tasks that require precision in processes of measuring and reasoning. The paper uses theories on humour and inferentialism to revisit the normative place of "precision" in mathematics classroom discourse.

Recently the prevailing language-as-resource metaphor has been problematised and theorised. Using the philosophical theory of inferentialism, we trace an epistemological dimension of multilingualism in mathematics education and add it to the current language-as-resource discussions. With data from two different settings—a mathematics classroom in Sweden and a workshop in an indigenous settlement in Colombia—we show that in encounters between language practices and plural mathematics, the semantic and the epistemological are two sides of the same coin. Inferentialism captures such encounters without dichotomising either languages or mathematics. We contend that epistemological issues move beyond the scope of language-as-resource approaches, but they are not paths to improving school achievement. Neither are they matters of distinguishing between formal and informal language use. Rather, an epistemological dimension is about shaping meta-understandings of language diversity that are liberated from mathematics as fixed and pre-stablished knowledge.

In this article, I examine how a focus on preciseness in the mathematics classroom could affect group activity. The preciseness relates to the ways mathematical concepts, in this case angles are de ...

In this paper we unpack epistemological aspects of language and mathematics potentials embedded in the “language as resource” discourse. We use research literature, policy, and interviews with a mathematics teacher and a multilingual student to illustrate the potentials and how they are realised in the material. We identified a ‘lever potential’ and ‘one new whole’ potential. To consider the potentials in a nuanced way, we propose an analytical model which contributes with theoretical conceptualizations that allows for grasping a relation between epistemologies of language and mathematics from the perspective of the language as resource discourse.

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