Mathematics Research Seminar Series: Being Critical about Critical Thinking and Mathematics Education

Mathematics Research Seminar Series
Being Critical about Critical Thinking and Mathematics Education

by Dr. Bill Atweh
Affiliate Faculty,
Department of Mathematics,
Ateneo de Manila University

Date: Friday, 8 April 2022
Time: 4 pm
Venue: bit.ly/AdmuMathSeminar

One of the ironies in mathematics education in most countries that I am familiar with is that it often posits critical thinking as one of the highest aims of teaching mathematics, but often is all but absent from articulations of the curriculum and regimes of testing that dominate the practice of teaching mathematics. Further, educational discourse and research is very limited in problematizing the very construct of critical thinking. The first part of this presentation discusses my understandings of what critical thinking is and is not! I will apply this understanding of critical thinking to question some taken-for-granted truths about mathematics education as a discipline and a field of practice and suggest types of research that open under these understandings.