The Potential of an Africa-Centred Approach to Theory-Use in Critical Mathematics Education

AbstractCritical mathematics education has been described as a developing and contextual approach to the relations between mathematics, mathematics education and power. Writing from the context of a South African university, in this conceptual chapter we demonstrate the potential of Africa-centred theory use in critical mathematics education. We draw on Hilary Janks’s four interrelated concepts for critical literacy, namely, access, domination, diversity and design. These concepts are put to work—they become Africa-centred critical mathematics education—when we analyse the case of mathematics education in a professional programme for prospective medical doctors. Our theory-use at multiple levels of the context—from the mathematics classroom, to the medical programme, university and societal contexts—surfaces that access to dominant knowledge involves physical, financial, academic, and social access. Access is structured by institutional practices, both mathematical and non-mathematical, with students acting agentically beyond the classroom to challenge dominant practices. We identify in this contested space some, but also many unrealised, opportunities both for the recognition of diverse knowledges, values, social relations, positionings, and ways of using language, and for generating new meanings. Crucially, our analysis shows some aspects of knowing, acting, being and interrelating in the current context of university education in South Africa that cannot be quantified. We argue that other scholars can entangle Janks’s four concepts in their contexts to ask, “What might critical mathematics education look like in my context at this moment?”