Social/Cultural Issues In Mathematics

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Social / cultural issues on mathematics teaching / learning and curriculum development. Students enter mathematics classroom with a wide range of background, knowledge, experiences and dispositions. These differences which arised both before they came to school and while they are in school create different orientations and learning experiences. For some their experiences will not help and they need to support their learning. How teachers work with this diversity is informed by their own ideologies. Some teacher will see the differences as something biological or innate in the students where as other will see such differences as something constructed and reified through school practices. The following questions are arises about the practices of the mathematics curriculum found in most classrooms: i. Why do disproportionate numbers of indigenous students fail mathematics in comparison to their non endogenous peers? ii. Why are students from working class background more likely to fail mathematics than their middle class peers? iii. Why are students who live in remote or rural setting more at risk of failing or performing poorly at school mathematics than their urban peers? iv. Why are some students whose first language is not English or Nepali more at risk of performing poorly in school mathematics than their peers who speak English or Nepali? v. Why is it that when these variables are combined, the risk of failing is even higher? Mathematics is one thing to some, another thing to other. Some enjoy it, other do not. Mathematics is difficult for many peoples. It produces two classes of citizens those who acquire key concepts, special terminology and master the role of game and those who never quite learn and who never still struggling with step 1. When the instructor has finished with the final step of the explanation. When considering

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