Re-imagining mathematics and mathematics education for equity and social justice in the changing South African university

Abstract

Debates about transformation for a more equitable and socially just South African university and society more broadly have highlighted the need to consider how university curricula may (re)produce  enduring  historical  and  societal  inequities.  They  also  suggest  the  need to  bring student  voices  into  conversations  about  reimagining  these  curricula. There  is a  silence in these  crucial  debates about the  role  that  the  practices and  language of  mathematics  and mathematics  education  may  play in (re)producing or  transforming inequities.  This  article proposes conceptual tools that help, firstly, to understand and to challenge this silence in the historical  and  socio-political  context  of  the  South  African  university.  Secondly  these  tools can  be  used  to  re-imagine mathematics  and  mathematics  education  for  equity  and  social justice  in  the  changing  South  African  university. These tools −a socio-political  perspective and a framework of equity as access, achievement, identity and power are drawn mainly from the work of critical mathematics educators Rochelle Gutiérrez, Ole Skovsmose, Paola Valero and Renuka Vithal, and critical linguist Norman Fairclough. The proposed equity framework offers  a way to  work  with  the  tension  between  providing  access  to  and  achievement  in  the dominant mathematics practices and critiquing and transforming these practices. To illustrate the potential of these tools I use the voices and actions of university students as represented in my  research  conducted at  an  elite  English  medium  historically white  university  in  South Africa.