The power of place: spatializing critical mathematics education

ABSTRACT

Place-based education has traditionally had a limited focus on mathematics, and critical mathematics education often lacks explicit attention to place and space. We explore integrating theories of place, spatial justice, and critical mathematics education. To begin, we consider various frameworks of place—including Indigenous, urban, and critical perspectives—to situate a discussion on how place acts as a shaping force on social relations like race, gender, and sexuality, and, conversely, how social relations shape place. We include mathematics as a category of social relations in that guiding framework. We next summarize and build on various notions of place and spatial justice, toward their integration with critical mathematics education. In so doing, we present teaching mathematics for spatial justice, or using mathematics 1) to identify power relations in and through place and 2) to transform the world by re-imagining and remaking place. We sidestep a false urban-rural divide and instead, illustrate the potential of teaching mathematics for spatial justice using rich examples organized around four thematic categories: geographies of opportunity, mapping, human mobility, and land relations and obligations.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• spatial justice
• critical mathematics education
• teaching mathematics for spatial justice
• Indigenous perspectives
• critical geography

Notes

1. The decades-earlier removal of wolves in Yellowstone by hunters and centuries earlier removal of Indigenous peoples by settlers are also examples of humans shaping place.

2. Parallel arguments can be made about gender or sexuality (see McDowell, 1999).

3. Statistical analysis of spatial data using GIS itself relies on a wide range of mathematics (see Dale, 2004).

4. A low-income section of a medium-sized city in the south-eastern U.S., in the state of Tennessee.

5. A low-income section of a large city in the north-eastern U.S., in the state of Pennsylvania.

6. A small city in the south-eastern U.S., in Tennessee.

7. A medium-sized city in the north-eastern U.S., in the state of Maryland.

8. Others argue that constraining access to the highway is a response to the previously dangerous conditions before access was limited. A commitment to human mobility as a human right prioritizes mobility for all over security for some.

9. The solution to the “stable-marriage problem” (Gale & Shapley, 1962) is used in various matching processes, such as assignment of residents to hospitals in the U.S.

10. The Nechako River originates in the northwest central mountains of British Columbia, Canada.

11. Because of budgetary constraints, the city of Flint changed its water source in 2011 and exposed residents to lead poisoning.

12. Waldron, founder and director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health [ENRICH] project, collaborates with academics and communities to address the disproportionate effects of pollution and contamination in their communities.

13. Located in a large city on the west coast of the U.S., in the state of California, formerly a navy shipyard.

14. An Indigenous people in the state of Utah in the Western U.S.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laurie H. Rubel

Laurie H. Rubel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa, Israel.

Cynthia Nicol

Cynthia Nicol is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada.