Red Latinoamericana de Etnomatemática

Diversity in Mathematics Education: Towards Inclusive Practices

Editors
Alan Bishop
Hazel Tan
Tasos N Barkatsas

- Examines diversity in mathematics education, including methods to enhance inclusivity
- Includes multi-national perspectives on diversity and inclusivity in math education
- Delves into classroom practices, with a close look at challenges to classroom inclusivity

This book presents a research focus on diversity and inclusivity in mathematics education. The challenge of diversity, largely in terms of student profiles or contextual features, is endemic in mathematics education, and is often argued to require differentiation as a response. Typically different curricula, text materials, task structures or pedagogies are favoured responses, but huge differences in achievement still result. If we in mathematics education seek to challenge that status quo, more research must be focussed not just on diversity but also on the inclusivity, of practices in mathematics education.
The book is written by a group of experienced collaborating researchers who share this focus. It is written for researchers, research students, teachers and in-service professionals, who recognise both the challenges but also the opportunities of creating and evaluating new inclusive approaches to curriculum and pedagogy – ones that take for granted the positive values of diversity. Several chapters report new research in this direction.
The authors are part of, or have visited with, the mathematics education staff of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. The chapters all focus on the ideas of development in both research and practice, recognising that the current need is for new inclusive approaches. The studies presented are set in different contexts, including Australia, China, the United States, and Singapore.

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Visuospatial Reasoning: An Ecocultural Perspective for Space, Geometry and Measurement Education
Kay Owens

Series: Mathematics Education Library, Vol. 111

▶ The first comprehensive book on mathematical reasoning in Papua New Guinea
▶ Utilises an ecocultural perspective while focusing on current research
▶ Provides a strong focus on space, geometry and measurement

This book develops the theoretical perspective on visuospatial reasoning in ecocultural contexts, granting insights on how the language, gestures, and representations of different cultures reflect visuospatial reasoning in context.
For a number of years, two themes in the field of mathematics education have run parallel with each other with only a passing acquaintance. These two areas are the psychological perspective on visuospatial reasoning and ecocultural perspectives on mathematics education. This volume examines both areas of research and explores the intersection of these powerful ideas.
In addition, there has been a growing interest in sociocultural aspects of education and in particular that of Indigenous education in the field of mathematics education. There has not, however, been a sound analysis of how environmental and cultural contexts impact visuospatial reasoning, although it was noted as far back as the 1980s when Alan Bishop developed his duality of visual processing and interpreting visual information. This book provides this analysis and in so doing not only articulates new and worthwhile lines of research, but also uncovers and makes real a variety of useful professional approaches in teaching school mathematics.
With a renewed interest in visuospatial reasoning in the mathematics education community, this volume is extremely timely and adds significantly to current literature.

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