Preface: The disorder of mathematics education, Part II. Critique, imagination and play

Straehler-Pohl, H, Felix, L, Pais, AJS and Swanson, D (2018) Preface: The disorder of mathematics education, Part II. Critique, imagination and play. The Mathematics Enthusiast, 15 (1). pp. 3-7. ISSN 1551-3440

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Abstract

The idea of conceiving mathematics education as a disorder evolved at a small conference held at the Freie Universität Berlin from January 15th to 17th in 2015. The conference aimed at destabilizing taken-for-granted truths that lay at the heart of mathematics education as a research field. While the "socio-political branch" proclaims a critique of "mainstream" mathematics education to be at the core of its "collective identity", the common premise of the participants of the meeting was that the radicality of this critique is more often than not domesticized for the sake of ordering its object in a way that it suits well the storylines that are commonly narrated. The conference and the book that resulted from that conference (The disorder of mathematics education; Straehler-Pohl, Bohlmann & Pais 2017) had a clear focus: developing a critique of the status quo of mathematics education research, including, and perhaps more importantly, research within a sociopolitical vein.