As students prepare themselves for a disruptive future, one Australian Catholic University (ACU) researcher says maths must receive greater attention from education policymakers.
Professor Vince Geiger, a professor of mathematics education at ACU’s Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, led a study examining the connections between citizenship education and mathematics education, and the implications of strengthening the link between the two.
He says mathematics is essential in enabling active and informed citizens.
“All students need the opportunity to learn how to engage with the mathematics they encounter in school, in their personal, civic and work lives as they move through life,” he told EducationDaily.
“This includes those who aspire to careers in STEM, where most problems require the application of mathematics in some way, through to using mathematics to deal with day-to-day demands, for example, tracking the effects of interest rates on loans, or making the best use of a public transport schedule.
“There is also the practice of informed and responsible citizenship – for example, being able to understand and make judgements about the validity of reports in the media (mass and social) that use mathematics to support claims or arguments.”
Professor Geiger says, that as international pressures continue to threaten the economy, maths becomes required knowledge for citizens to get by.
“It has long been established that innumeracy hurts the life chances of individuals, for example, their financial security and well-being,” he says.
“This is especially the case for the disadvantaged and marginalised. There is also research that suggests numeracy, even more so than literacy, is a key factor in taking opportune chances in life.”
“Authentic school mathematics teaching and learning addresses these important capabilities.”
Assessing and analysing disruptions
Professor Geiger said mathematical concepts and skills including statistics, probability, risk, area, volume, and location were vital to help students evaluate claims about disruptions, such as global warming.
“We need to reimagine the concept of citizenship and rethink curriculum goals along with creating greater connections between mathematics, science, economics, and studies of society,” he says.
“Citizenship is often just tucked away as a small study in Year 10. It should be present in every subject and not compartmentalised – an engaged and informed citizenry depends on it.”
Implications for teacher education
The research analysed three interconnected layers of influence on the practice of teaching and learning in citizenship education and mathematics education: 1) perspectives from citizenship education and mathematics education, 2) institutional factors, and 3) emerging influences.
The first layer of influence, Professor Geiger says, included research that had implications for teacher education, thus impacting directly on school students.
The second layer related to how institutional factors, such as policy and curricula, were implemented in the classroom. The third layer incorporated emerging influences which created new mathematical demands for citizens and greater attention on the critical aspects of citizenship itself.
By exploring connection between citizenship and mathematics education, Professor Geiger revealed serious implications for educators, policymakers, and researchers.
“Decisions by governments, expert and non-expert commentary, and media messaging relating to global disruptions, societal changes, and systemic structures are increasingly being delivered using sophisticated mathematics,” he says.
“It is essential citizens can comprehend and critique such claims, decisions, and predictions.”
Professor Geiger has called for educational policymakers to consider the role maths education will play in the post-COVID era – when mathematical modelling and graphic representations of data were prevalent in the media.
“The recent revision of the Australian Curriculum appears to be aimed at addressing some of this issue via the inclusion of mathematical modelling, statistical investigations, and probability experiments as mathematical processes – all related to using mathematics to solve problems in authentic contexts,” he says.
“At the same time, these new aspects have been included without any advice to teachers about how they can be done well. Ideally, funding could be provided to provide teachers with professional learning across each of these new areas in the mathematics curriculum.”
