Numeracy, an intellectual and social practice: implications for schools mathematics in the new millennium

Abstract

What would it mean to accept that numeracy, however it is constructed in diverse sociocultural contexts, can no longer be seen to be a commodity or product that we can give to our students but rather a fragmented, always-in-process social practice - a result of discursive positioning? What would it mean for the teaching of school mathematics were we to accept that all knowledge is discursively constituted; that is, to unhook classroom practices from humanistic understandings of the individual and rather to recognise how classroom uses of language, activities and practices position students in ways that sometimes enable them to take themselves up as numerate individuals, and sometimes not? As we move into the next millennium might it be that we are at last genuinely ready to concentrate our energies on the quality of teaching relationships, recognising their constitutive powers, and their importance to the lives and work of those who would consider themselves numerate in a world of globalisation and rapid change?