Looking at My (Real) World through Mathematics: Memories and Imaginaries of Math and Science Learning

Abstract

Critical math and science educators have argued for pedagogies that focus on equity, social justice, and the identities of learners. To inform debates about the purposes and values of math and science pedagogy, we need to better understand how different kinds of curriculum and instruction are taken up by learners over time. This study examines the ways one Latinx immigrant learner, Calvin (a pseudonym), constructed the values and purposes of his earlier math and science learning experiences, as an adult hoping to pursue a career in science. Narrative analysis is used to explore the ways Calvin made sense of his learning of math and science in high school, in community colleges, and on his own. Drawing on the construct of appropriation, we examine the conceptual tools Calvin took up from different math and science pedagogies (reform, critical, and traditional) in narrating his desire to explore and understand scientific phenomena. Narrative frames position Calvin with greater or lesser agency as he navigates different learning environments, imagines possible futures, and constructs the purposes of science and mathematics. The narratives of Calvin’s learning illustrate the conceptual tools he appropriates from reform and social justice pedagogies: real-to-my-life mathematics, learning as connecting and imagining, harder-but-easier math for a purpose, and the ways reading and writing the world can be applied to imagining planets and the universe. The analysis suggests the usefulness of restorying as a way to explore how our pedagogies interact with learners’ subjectivities, desires, values, and purposes for learning.     

In Defence of Backyard Chickens

Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can be appropriate for chickens, but not humans, because of the obvious differences between the interests of healthy, adult humans versus those of chickens who have been bred for human use. We also argue that egg consumption is permissible based on the plausible assumption that no one's rights are violated in their consumption, and so while there may sometimes be morally preferable uses for eggs, you do nothing unjust in eating them. If we're right, then the rights view doesn't imply that veganism is obligatory; rather, it implies that the constraints on how we source animal products, though highly demanding, are not so demanding that they can't be met.     

Simple devices for restricting the visual fields of birds

The construction and use of several simple occluders designed for long-term use is described. They permit limiting vision either to one eye or to the frontal or lateral visual fields and permit rapid interchange among these conditions.