Promoting Students’ Self-Directed Learning Ability through Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice

Abstract

Mathematics is a subject which is often taught using abstract methods and processes.  These methods by their very nature may for students alienate the relationship between Mathematics and real life situations.  Further, these abstract methods and processes may disenfranchise students from becoming self-directed learners of Mathematics.  A solution to this may be to teach Mathematics utilizing real world social justice issues and a social justice pedagogy promoting the use of Mathematics as a tool to further investigate, address and potentially to change issues involving social justice.  This unique Australian study investigated a Western Victorian District High School year nine Mathematics class using social justice pedagogy to learn Mathematics.  The class comprised of gifted students, mainstream students and students who had diagnosed learning disabilities.  The learning content of the Mathematics unit required students to make comparisons between their own lifestyles and those of different families from around the world. This was socially and educationally important as Mathematics was used as a tool to investigate social inequality to improve numeracy and engagement with real world Mathematics tasks.  One aim of the study was to determine if this pedagogy motivated students by allowing them to become more self-directed as learners.  The findings from this study suggested that when mathematics is taught using a social justice pedagogy, both student learning and engagement improved and students became more self-directed as learners throughout the course of the study.

Keywords: social justice mathematics, mathematics education, practical mathematics, student engagement.