Mathematics Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Mathematics consists of essays dealing with the mathematical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Inca, Egyptian, and African mathematics, among others, the book includes essays on Rationality, Logic and Mathematics, and the transfer of knowledge from East to West. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate the mathematical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

In this book, Ubiratan D’Ambrosio presents his most recent thoughts on ethnomathematics—a sub-field of mathematics history and mathematics education for which he is widely recognized to be one of the founding fathers. In a clear, concise format, he outlines the aim of the Program Ethnomathematics, which is to understand mathematical knowing/doing throughout history, within the context of different groups, communities, peoples and nations, focusing on the cycle of mathematical knowledge: its generation, its intellectual and social organization, and its diffusion. While not rejecting the importance of modern academic mathematics, it is viewed as but one among many existing ethnomathematics. Offering concrete examples and ideas for mathematics teachers and researchers, D’Ambrosio makes an eloquent appeal for an entirely new approach to conceptualizing mathematics knowledge and education that embraces diversity and addresses the urgent need to provide youth with the necessary tools to become ethical, creative, critical individuals prepared to participate in the emerging planetary society.

Insights from the history of numerical notation suggest that how humans write numbers is an active choice involving cognitive and social factors. Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of numerical notation--distinct ways of writing numbers--have been developed and used by specific communities. Most of these are barely known today; where they are known, they are often derided as cognitively cumbersome and outdated. In Reckonings, Stephen Chrisomalis considers how humans past and present use numerals, reinterpreting historical and archaeological representations of numerical notation and exploring the implications of why we write numbers with figures rather than words.

This book addresses key issues in the context of the national policy of educating children accused of crimes in Juvenile Courts in Australia. For several decades, National and State Governments in Australia have struggled to define education, constantly seeking to improve the way society applies the concept. This book presents an accurate portrayal of consequences of the education policy of trying to educate troubled children and young people in trouble with the law. It describes the work of juvenile detention centre mathematics teachers and their teaching contexts. It portrays teachers as learners, who ventured with researchers with a theoretical perspective. This book focuses on culturally responsive pedagogies that seek to understand the ways Indigenous children and young people in juvenile detention make sense of their mathematical learning, which, until the time of detention, has been plagued by failure. It examines how the underperformance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are strong determinants of their overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system in Australia. This book presents the argument that if the students’ literacy and numeracy levels can be improved, there is opportunity to build better futures away from involvement in the juvenile justice system and towards productive employment to improve life chances.

International Perspectives and Research on Social Justice in Mathematics Education is the highly acclaimed inaugural monograph of The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast now available through IAP. The book covers prescient social, political and ethical issues for the domain of education in general and mathematics education in particular from the perspectives of critical theory, feminist theory and social justice research. The major themes in the book are (1) relevant mathematics, teaching and learning practices for minority and marginalized students in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Palestine, and the United States., (2) closing the achievement gap in the U.K, U.S and Iceland across classes, ethnicities and gender, and (3) the political dimensions of mathematics. The fourteen chapters are written by leading researchers in the international community interested and active in research issues of equity and social justice.

This book consists of interviews with the most important mathematics educators of our time. These interviews were originally published in the International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education and are now being offered to a wider readership for the first time, collected in a single volume. Among the individuals interviewed are scholars from Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States who have made a significant impact on the development of mathematics education in their countries and internationally. The interviews cover their biographies, including their memories of their own studies in mathematics and their intellectual formation, their experience as researchers and teachers, and their visions of the history and future development of mathematics education. The book will be of interest to anyone involved in research in mathematics education, and anyone interested in the history of mathematics education.

Mathematics is traditionally seen as the most neutral of disciplines, the furthest removed from the arguments and controversy of politics and social life. However, critical mathematics challenges these assumptions and actively attacks the idea that mathematics is pure, objective, and value?neutral. It argues that history, society, and politics have shaped mathematics—not only through its applications and uses but also through molding its concepts, methods, and even mathematical truth and proof, the very means of establishing truth. Critical mathematics education also attacks the neutrality of the teaching and learning of mathematics, showing how these are value?laden activities indissolubly linked to social and political life. Instead, it argues that the values of openness, dialogicality, criticality towards received opinion, empowerment of the learner, and social/political engagement and citizenship are necessary dimensions of the teaching and learning of mathematics, if it is to contribute towards democracy and social justice. This book draws together critical theoretic contributions on mathematics and mathematics education from leading researchers in the field. Recurring themes include: The natures of mathematics and critical mathematics education, issues of epistemology and ethics; Ideology, the hegemony of mathematics, ethnomathematics, and real?life education; Capitalism, globalization, politics, social class, habitus, citizenship and equity. The book demonstrates the links between these themes and the discipline of mathematics, and its critical teaching and learning. The outcome is a groundbreaking collection unified by a shared concern with critical perspectives of mathematics and education, and of the ways they impact on practice.