What if I was harmful? Reflecting on the ethical tensions associated with teaching the dominant mathematics

Abstract

What are the effects of teaching the dominant mathematics on the wholeness and integrity of the cultural, social and linguistic resources of diverse communities? In this text, I seek to capture the risks associated with utilising non-Western resources in the teaching of the dominant mathematics in order to elucidate possible types of harms that conventional mathematics education could cause to various non-Western communities. In particular, I challenge various dominant theoretical views that endorse the employment of the social, cultural and linguistic (re)sources of others to teach and learn mathematics, without paying similar or even deeper ethical attention to the mutual and reciprocal effects of the taught and learnt mathematics. I propose an epistemology of interrelationships; I call attention to possible harms caused by utilising the social, cultural and linguistic (re)sources of some non-Western communities as part of the teaching and learning of dominant school mathematics on the same (re)sources of those communities.