CIME 2025 Opening Panel (Q1) - 4:30-6:00 p.m. by Aris Winger

We communicate through many languages and their framework, how well do we see math as an integral language for humanity for more than commerce, science and structures.

2025-04-02 23:41:02 UTC

Mathematics is Human Activity

2025-04-02 23:42:17 UTC

Mathematics should be viewed as an element of human be-ing.

Hope

ariswinger — 2025-04-02 23:45:51 UTC

I hope for a time when we aren’t surprised to connect math with citizenship and freedom

Critical thinking => Problem solving

2025-04-02 23:45:57 UTC

A framework could emphasize how math and proofs can be adapted to developing steps to achieve desired outcomes and solve problems. These steps could lead to civic action, so this ties into citizenship.

Media & Quantitative literacy

dtkung1 — 2025-04-02 23:47:36 UTC

So many aspects include here - I'll just add two that I don't think academia has addressed very well: media literacy and quantitative literacy.

Torres' Rights of the Learner

fph818 — 2025-04-02 23:48:28 UTC

Olga Torres continues to influence my work and the work of others in her framework for Rights of the Learner (the right to be confused, to make a mistake, to speak, listen, and be heard, and write, do and represent what makes sense to you). Olga speaks about how she was influenced by the UN Charter for Rights of the Child and the Constitution as a living document that communicates citizenship, participation, and the limitations of our rights (not just citizens, but all people) in a democracy. And Bob Moses and the Civil Rights movement helped to solidify Olga's thinking on these rights (and my own).

Math and STEM

2025-04-02 23:50:08 UTC

How is connecting math to STEM a problem? How is it opportunity? How would a different frame change how math is conceptualized and taught?

Ownership of Mathematical Questioning and Answering

2025-04-02 23:50:54 UTC

The ability and disposition to ask mathematical questions that are meaningful to one's opportunities, challenges, and situation. And be able to work to generate, make sense of, and critique potential answers to mathematical questions that are meaningful to one's opportunities, challenges, and situation.

Disciplinary Ways of Knowing

bpkatzteach — 2025-04-03 00:04:26 UTC

I think each discipline has ways into these questions. Other disciplines seem to be better about making their ways of knowing part of the overt discussion in their classrooms, and I think often that overt discussion makes room for connecting with seemingly-larger issues of civics and literacy. I think math needs to make a shift toward this for this goal and to redress the ways our discipline are used for authoritarianism and white supremacy.

Civic duties and responsibilities

2025-04-03 00:04:52 UTC

Being a full citizen includes civic duties but more broadly betterment of our communities. Math literacy and problem-solving are needed to fully do this.

Let’s start with people, not the current discipline of mathematics

2025-04-03 00:07:32 UTC

An attempt to define “Math Literacy” may be better served by not starting with the euromathematics that dominates and segregates, and instead with the mathematical activity of being human and communicating with other humans about these ideas and experiences. Brazilian street vendors must be viewed as mathematically literate, Hindi weavers, Māori seafarers, …

Anti-Problem-Solving

bpkatzteach — 2025-04-03 00:11:23 UTC

Not an answer, but I think the current math education system pays lip service to teaching "problem-solving", but I think it does the opposite right now. We are grinding out the creativity and persistence and making lots of people fragile; most of my college students seem to believe that if a task isn't perfectly predicted by prior learning, then they are broken or the task is unreasonable (even cruel or unprofessional) to be asked. The connection I want to make to literacy is that this stance against careful reading and intentional meaning-making feels like the opposite of literacy, as I understand it from my literacy expert colleagues.

Ability to analyze

2025-04-03 00:14:47 UTC

Analyze facts in a trial to make a reasoned decision

Ethnic Studies Mathematics

2025-04-03 00:16:56 UTC

integrates ethnic studies principles, explores the history of mathematical knowledge in global communities, and addressing systemic inequalities in math education

Element: mathematical language

bpkatzteach — 2025-04-03 00:17:32 UTC

I support the quantitative reasoning and modeling ideas that usually come up in this discussion, but I think this also needs to include something of the distinctive way that our discipline uses language. Our definitions are treated as stipulated rather than extracted, which opens a huge and powerful set of deductive tools that inform thinking much more broadly. And we can do things with that flexible language more quickly than lots of other disciplines, which gives math a distinctive affordance for this learning as part of a larger curriculum. I don't want to advocate for a dominance of abstract mathematics over other math or other disciplines, but I do think this is a way to learn to read the world. [Aside: I think we also need to work on this learning as being grounded in students' language expertise that they bring to class, rather than the violent ways we often position now as disconnected from those skills much of the time now.]

Math as an equity issue

2025-04-03 00:19:29 UTC

One panelist noted that math is an equaity issue. May I ask what do we mean by "math is an equity issue?"

Why Logarithms?

2025-04-03 00:19:33 UTC

One of the panelists doesn't know why logarithms are still in the standards. Logarithms are exponents. The logarithmic scale is useful for measuring things that are very big or very small, like the amplitude of seismic waves in an earthquake or decibels to measure sound intensity. A small change in decibels or seismic waves can represent a large change in the underlying physical quantity. A magnitude 7 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a magnitude 6 earthquake. It's easier to represent this change with exponents than with whole numbers.

"Digital Democracy Skills"

2025-04-03 00:21:31 UTC

This is a synthesis of theory-focused academic K-12 subjects (what we already have) with more applied and hands-on critical thinking skills (missing from the K-12 curriculum), that should become regular / automatic habits that are an expected foundation for students. "Digital Democracy Skills" and daily life skills would refer to media literacy, data literacy, financial literacy, quantitative reasoning, argumentation skills, and probabilistic thinking (hold possibility of 2 or 3 explanations for a phenomenon at once and weight the likelihoods of each), and do so in a complex online / digital environment with profound amounts of information & data.

Statistical Reasoning & Data Literacy

2025-04-03 00:25:25 UTC

Critical for deciphering news, weighing arguments, parsing misinformation / disinformation. Students should recognize mathematics and quantitative reasoning as a tool worth learning and that gives tangible value in applied contexts / environments that they "swim in" most often, and where their peers are also operating most. This connection is strongest and most critical if mathematics education includes + emphasizes statistics.

Questions about YPP

2025-04-03 00:28:28 UTC

How was YPP received in Oakland, what impacts did you see, and how to continue the momentum of math literacy?

William McCallum

2025-04-03 00:54:06 UTC

His answer made me sad.

Broadening the conversation

2025-04-03 01:02:22 UTC

How to broaden the conversation of the historical context in the US, between math and equity, to the international community? Math departments are very international.

2025-04-03 01:09:22 UTC

Math is a tool that is used for communication, can we also say it is language to bear understanding. What skills or method could we explore starting with us to move from compliance to ethical, moral, and righteous communication.

Any reason why the shift to quantitative literacy?

2025-04-03 18:18:40 UTC