Mathematics education and social-environmental crises: an interdisciplinary proposal for didactic innovation with rural communities in Mexico

ABSTRACT

We report our progress on the “River Memorial Museum” didactic intervention project developed with schools, in the basin of the Atoyac River in Mexico, that are significantly impacted by the pollution produced through industrialisation. The teachers of the elementary schools in these communities, environmental scientists, educators, and community activists participated jointly in a co-construction process, designing interdisciplinary educational activities to study local environmental issues and recovering the principles of a socio-critical perspective of mathematical modelling. In this paper, we centre on presenting the methodology of the didactic intervention with the teachers of one school of an Atoyac River basin community and the principles for designing educational activities we developed collaboratively with them. We believe this methodology could be helpful to support others in thinking about similar opportunities in their communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Interdisciplinary education
• socio-critical mathematical modelling
• social-environmental crises

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FT003545%2F1 or https://red-comunidadcienciaeducacion.org.

2 https://www.ipcc.ch.

3 https://www.cinvestav.mx.

4 https://www.bristol.ac.uk.

5 https://epsrc.ukri.org.

6 https://www.ukri.org/our-work/collaborating-internationally/global-challenges-research-fund/.

7 https://www.gob.mx/conagua.

8 https://www.centrofrayjuliangarces.org.mx.

9 In Mexico there are several instant messenger and social network services that are usually included “with no data transmission limits” by the internet providers. Thus, they are widely used by the teachers, the students, and their families. However, the data transmission speed, coverage and the stability of the connection are often problematic for smooth communication, especially in rural areas.

10 https://red-comunidadcienciaeducacion.org.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) – United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) https://www.ukri.org; under grant EP/T003545/1.