Culture, worldview and transformative philosophy of mathematics education in Nepal: a cultural-philosophical inquiry

This thesis portrays my multifaceted and emergent inquiry into the protracted problem of culturally decontextualised mathematics education faced by students of Nepal, a culturally diverse country of south Asia with more than 90 language groups. I generated initial research questions on the basis of my history as a student of primary, secondary and university levels of education in Nepal, my Master’s research project, and my professional experiences as a teacher educator working in a university of Nepal between 2004 and 2006. Through an autobiographical excavation of my experiences of culturally decontextualised mathematics education, I came up with several emergent research questions, leading to six key themes of this inquiry: (i) hegemony of the unidimensional nature of mathematics as a body of pure knowledge, (ii) unhelpful dualisms in mathematics education, (iii) disempowering reductionisms in curricular and pedagogical aspects, (iv) narrowly conceived ‘logics’ that do not account for meaningful lifeworld-oriented thinking in mathematics teaching and learning, (v) uncritical attitudes towards the image of curriculum as a thing or object, and (vi) narrowly conceived notions of globalisation, foundationalism and mathematical language that give rise to a decontextualised mathematics teacher education program.With these research themes at my disposal my aim in this research was twofold. Primarily, I intended to explore, explain and interpret problems, issues and dilemmas arising from and embedded in the research questions. Such an epistemic activity of articulation was followed by envisioning, an act of imagining futures together with reflexivity, perspectival language and inclusive vision logics.In order to carry out both epistemic activities – articulating and envisioning – I employed a multi-paradigmatic research design space, taking on board mainly the paradigms of criticalism, postmodernism, interpretivism and integralism. The critical paradigm offered a critical outlook needed to identify the research problem, to reflect upon my experiences as a mathematics teacher and teacher educator, and to make my lifetime’s subjectivities transparent to readers, whereas the paradigm of postmodernism enabled me to construct multiple genres for cultivating different aspects of my experiences of culturally decontextualised mathematics education. The paradigm of interpretivism enabled me to employ emergence as the hallmark of my inquiry, and the paradigm of integralism acted as an inclusive meta-theory of the multi-paradigmatic design space for portraying my vision of an inclusive mathematics education in Nepal.Within this multi-paradigmatic design space, I chose autoethnography and small p philosophical inquiry as my methodological referents. Autoethnography helped generate the research text of my cultural-professional contexts, whereas small p philosophical inquiry enabled me to generate new knowledge via a host of innovative epistemologies that have the goal of deepening understanding of normal educational practices by examining them critically, identifying underpinning assumptions, and reconstructing them through scholarly interpretations and envisioning. Visions cultivated through this research include: (i) an inclusive and multidimensional image of the nature of mathematics as an im/pure knowledge system, (ii) the metaphors of thirdspace and dissolution for conceiving an inclusive mathematics education, (iii) a multilogical perspective for morphing the hegemony of reductionism-inspired mathematics education, (iv) an inclusive image of mathematics curriculum as montage that provides a basis for incorporating different knowledge systems in mathematics education, and (v) perspectives of glocalisation, healthy scepticism and multilevel contextualisation for constructing an inclusive mathematics teacher education program

Radical Reflection: Toward the Transformation of Everyday Teaching and Learning in English Composition

Education is a necessary component in the emancipatory transformation of current capitalist society, with its exploitative social relationships, to one which is based on promoting and supporting human growth and potential. A libertarian education, as Paulo Freire writes of it, must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 59). An additional impediment to developing education useful for this transformation is the separation of thought from action in educational theory and practice. The field of composition studies similarly operates according to its tendency to separate reflection from writing. While I find that compositionists intuitively know that reflection and action are best theorized as inseparable, our practices tend to separate theory from practice, writing from action, teachers from students, epistemology from ontology. This dissertation is an extended consideration of what might result if we truly took seriously how thought and action (epistemology and ontology) can not and should not be separated and to posit a composition course that can support the conditions of this transformed (unified) relation between these dichotomized parts of our existence. I ground this consideration in an examination of reflection as conceived in composition studies which, in its theoretical and applied treatments of reflection, often employs the dichotomy. In order to rethink reflection in composition studies so that it is unified with action and writing, I argue for a deliberate refocusing of the field\u27s attention toward enacting physical/institutional change, attention which is inordinately given to theorizing language and the power of rhetoric. The human agency in our social structures necessary for emancipatory change is enacted through the dialectical linking of this dual attention to conditions/structural change and language/power. My understanding of this dialectical necessity begins with Karl Marx\u27s unified theory of consciousness, which does not separate thinking from action, and traces its development through the 20th and 21st century theorists who have also drawn upon it in efforts to effect emancipatory change

Thirdness and its bearings on students’ views of the ‘Other’: Tying the knot between the literary and the intercultural

Admittedly, English language teaching philosophy should not include preaching about linguistic and communicative skills solely. The shortcomings of the preceding approaches result in students being unable to solve problems of cultural clashes, probable to take place in learning English. Hence, the insertion of the intercultural paradigm as a new educational philosophy facilitates the process of discovering other foreign cultural dimensions and enjoying that cultural difference most importantly. It gives for urging students to get along with the calls of active learning in creating a third space of interculturality from which to consider the other. The world of literature is a perfect depiction of the sociocultural realities of people and so it offers a short path through the way of learning about certain social conducts that were up till then alien. Equipping students with aspects of thirdness will help them develop positive perceptions towards the content being read in English. This paper provides the theoretical background that led to the inclusion of the concept of thirdness with its relation to language and literary text. It also suggests some classroom activities for the sake of fostering a positive stance towards the foreign culture

Researching without “methods”: an experiment in socio-ecological sustainability research with rural communities

This article describes an improvisatory or ‘no method’ research approach in socio-ecological sustainability in two rural Ugandan communities. A team of multidisciplinary researchers purposed to understand how rural community members make sense of their role in, and relationship with, the environment. In addition, they sought to unsettle pre-existing assumptions, categories of knowledge, and methods of knowledge generation, through a practical and conceptual exploration of community-academy collaboration in research. The authors present an account of the research process as an experiment towards a decolonial, context-specific, and post-qualitative practice of inquiry and collaboration. The paper describes the context of the Ugandan communities involved and the socio-ecological issues that impact their lives. Related methodological practices are discussed to support the description and discussion of the improvised methods employed in this study. The methodological findings that conclude this paper have implications for global sustainability research, partnership, and action

Inferentialism and Science Education: Towards Meaningful Communication in Primary Science Classrooms

Classroom talk is a central aspect of teaching and learning science. A significant challenge for primary teachers is to think and talk about science with pupils in ways that support meaning-making in science classrooms that develops meaningful understanding. An influential response to this challenge is Mortimer and Scott’s research framework. They analyse social interactions in science classrooms, identifying patterns that represent communicative and pedagogic practices that make classroom talk visible. Their representational approach is inspired by Anglo-American Vygotsky scholar James Wertsch and his sociocultural theory. However, the present thesis challenges sociocultural approaches, drawing on alternative but emerging Vygotsky scholarship. Of significant interest is Jan Derry’s philosophical perspective, which attends to Vygotsky’s Hegelian heritage, long-neglected by Anglo-American interpretations and (post-) Vygotskian research. Furthermore, her interpretation acknowledges developments in contemporary philosophy, namely ‘Inferentialism’ – a neo-Hegelian perspective on language, mind and epistemology. Inferentialism offers a more fine-grained analysis of thought and talk than representational approaches by privileging the role we humans, as rational, knowing agents, play in making judgments and being responsible for those judgments in discursive practices. Inferentialism offers rich theoretical resources in explaining meaningful communication that make these neglected human dimensions explicit. Adopting an inferentialist-Vygotskian lens to challenge Mortimer and Scott’s meaning-making research framework, the present study illustrates how an inferentialist epistemology critically informs theory and analysis and illuminates practical challenges in science classroom research. This first involves re-theorising concept-meaning and communication. Secondly, it involves a critical revision of analysing classroom discourse and, thirdly, a re-interpretation of meaning-making in classroom practice and pedagogic research. These critical insights systematically reorient our understanding of meaning-making, which remains under-theorised by sociocultural perspectives. This thesis aims to demonstrate how these inferentialist insights have implications for teachers in planning, teaching, and talking science in supporting children’s meaningful understanding of science concepts in primary classrooms

Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World

While the discipline of rhetoric and composition has looked at a variety of topics related to the materiality of writing, the majority of materialist approaches limit their scope to local, situated writing practices. However, with the spread of digital media and the establishment of a global, networked infrastructure for communication and inscription, the abundant textuality that has emerged in the early 21st century demands that we develop more rigorous materialist approaches to the study and teaching of writing. This growing textual environment has been called, in popular and academic discourse, Web 2.0—a more “social Web” than its early form in the late 1990s, one that encourages more interaction and collaboration between users. The ethos of sharing that defines Web 2.0 has been celebrated by writing scholars as a qualitatively new public sphere where we are writing and participating more than ever. Yet, underlying our exuberance of Web 2.0 is the problematic assumption that more writing is an intrinsic good. As more writing is produced, the logic goes, the richer the opportunities for human agency. In a world of infinite resources, such a productivist ethos makes sense; but in a world of finite resources, one whose health is intertwined with our global network of writing technologies, unrestrained textual production has become a threat to other human and nonhuman systems. In this dissertation, I analyze current materialist approaches to writing to theorize how the usefulness of Web 2.0 technologies--and the writing labor they harness—have become necessary agents in the production of capitalist, consumer culture. Drawing on ecological models of writing and supplementing them with Marxian concepts of value, metabolism, and capital circulation, I explore the historical and dialectical relations that have given rise to a new phase of digital culture, one called Web 3.0, where the celebrated use value of Web 2.0 writing is eclipsed by the ascendant exchange value of Big Data--the massive substratum of consumer data that is produced as a by-product of our writing. Because the economic value of user data depends on two critical resources--the labor of our writing and the finite natural resources of the planet—our celebration of the productivity of Web 2.0 is in direct antagonism with other natural systems, including the organic system of the writing body. I conclude with a sequence of writing activities designed to help students foster critical, ecological literacies that will prepare them to grapple with the social and ecological problems emerging in Web 3.

The contribution of drama in education to discourse-making and language development in the Foundation Stage curriculum

The importance of early childhood education in children's social, emotional, cognitive, physical and spiritual development is only recently gaining coinage in the formal education system in the UK, despite the fact that extensive research has been conducted in the fields of child development and child psychology for many years. Such studies reveal the importance of a child centred, humanising education in the development of the young child, and pay particular attention to the role and value of language acquisition and meaningful language use in the holistic education of young children. Against the background of a newly introduced early years curriculum in the UK (2000), this study traces the historical origin of early childhood education and the socio-cultural, political and economic factors that impact upon its delivery and implementation in various curricula, both nationally and internationally. The recent Foundation Stage curriculum document (2000) identifies language, play and human interaction as tools not only for the development of personal, social and linguistic skills but also as key processes of learning and teaching in early childhood education. However, in the absence of a well developed methodology and with insufficient Early Years training for the Foundation Stage Curriculum (2000), language teaching and learning is generally regarded more as a preparation for the formal school curriculum rather than in the context of discourse and communication for the development of personal and social skills. This situation has led to a considerable degree of professional conflict and insecurity amongst Early Years practitioners about the aims of the new curriculum and its implementation. The thesis argues that young children develop holistically (cognitively, personally and socially) through the medium of 'speech' and 'discourse', and that language is a social construct and a product of human culture. Therefore in early years, language and literacy development cannot be separated from the child's social world and the focus, in terms of teaching and learning, should be on discourse-making: the making, negotiation and development of rules, terms and conditions of the child's social world. This can offer children the linguistic resources they need to be confident and secure in familiar and unfamiliar environments and to problem-solve, organise and maintain their social worlds. The thesis argues that play and well structured Drama in Education activities can provide opportunities for meaningful communication and discourse. Drawing from the research findings, a model to structure and develop children's play for personal, social and linguistic development through Drama in Education is proposed. It will be shown that drama contains interactive tools and meaningful forms of learning which can assist teachers to create living contexts and fictitious worlds with the children within which the different functions of language can be identified and developed