Exploring Scottish secondary mathematics education as an environment for global citizenship education

Abstract

This thesis brings mathematics education (ME) and global citizenship education (GCE) into conversation both theoretically and in the context of Scottish ME. Hannah Arendt’s writing is used to connect ideas from the different areas of scholarship with each other and with the methodology of the research. Synergies are explored between a GCE ‘otherwise’ and post/more than critical ME evoked as a ME-otherwise. Dissonance is explored between GCE ‘otherwise’ and a neoliberal ME evoked as business-as-usual-ME. The thesis reports on five years of engagement in the Scottish mathematics education community including working alongside a development education centre to devise and facilitate bespoke professional learning to attract and meet the needs of secondary mathematics teachers. Conversations were recorded with a single/collective case study of 14 teachers and some online writing collated from the wider group of approximately 200. The study found that teachers recognised the importance of GCE for the young people they worked with. They were initially unsure how to reconcile GC with the content of school mathematics and then constrained by what is described here as a curriculum for assessment. Despite these difficulties the teachers demonstrated their care for young people, for wider purposes of ME and for their own professional praxis by finding, making, and giving space for activity that aligned with the values and practices of education ‘otherwise’ to a curriculum for assessment. The thesis suggests that these classrooms and professional learning contexts may be thought of in Arendtian terms as spaces of appearance where human plurality is acknowledged through going visiting to different perspectives. The study, which was interrupted and partially shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic makes a contribution to the sparse literature about mathematics classrooms in Scotland.