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The Disorder of Mathematics Education pp 53–63Cite as

The Narcissism of Mathematics Education

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Abstract

Why does mathematics education research create a reality so at odds with the one experienced by the vast majority of teachers and students worldwide? This chapter is part of an ongoing venture that seeks to analyse the ideological belongings of contemporary educational research, by focusing in the particular case of mathematics education. Here, the author displays some elements of Pfaller’s materialist approach to philosophy and Žižek’s ideology critique to analyse common shared assumptions of researchers when conceiving the influence of their work in practice. It is argued that mathematics education research needs to shift its perspective and recognise in its symptoms—students’ systematic failure, absence of change, increasing of testing, pernicious political and economic influences, etc.—the violent expression of the disavowed part of itself.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some would argue that the object of mathematics education research cannot be reduced to the teaching and learning of mathematics —notwithstanding this being constantly stated in some of the most important publications of the field (e.g. Clements, 2013; Presmeg, 2013). Their argument rests on a set of research work that has been occurring in mathematics education that is instead focused on developing an analysis of the cultural, social and political landscapes that animates mathematics education. However, the fact remains that most of these studies do so with the ultimate goal of improving the teaching and learning of mathematics. As stated by Christine Keitel (2013, p. 1), in the introductory chapter of the section of the recent Third International Handbook of Mathematics Education (Clements et al., 2013) dedicated to the Social, Political and Cultural Dimensions in Mathematics Education, this research—on the social, political and cultural dimensions—has the goal of “informing mathematics education researchers as they strive to achieve more equitable and effective environments in which the teaching and learning of mathematics occurs.”

  2. 2.

    Elsewhere (Pais, 2011, 2013) I discuss in depth the fallacy supporting the idea that people use mathematics in their daily lives, as well as the dialectic at play when confronting the mathematics people learn in schools with the mathematics people use in their daily activities (as professionals, consumers , lovers, etc.).

  3. 3.

    Here the reference is the work of people such as Marx , Freud, Wittgenstein, Althusser, Lacan and Žižek .

  4. 4.

    In previous research (e.g. Pais, Fernandes, Matos, & Alves, 2012; Straehler-Pohl & Pais, 2014) I explore a set of “dirty” examples to criticise the entire discourse on the beatitude of mathematics education.

  5. 5.

    Such a “commoditization” has been happening with ideas coming from ethnomathematics (Pais, 2011) and critical mathematics education (Pais et al., 2012) two fields that are highly critical towards existing school mathematics .

  6. 6.

    For example, see Abreu, Bishop, and Presmeg (2002 p. 4).

  7. 7.

    As I explore elsewhere (Pais, 2016), the fascination towards the importance of mathematics results from something that gets attached to school mathematics , which then starts to colour its entire dynamic. Remember when a teacher proudly brings into the classroom a particular application of mathematics, a bit of history or some other curiosity, and students immediately ask: “will this appear in the exam teacher?” Teachers are compelled to say yes, if keeping students’ interest in the agenda. Or imagine the feeling of betrayal that a teacher feels when a student openly admits that he or she does not want to “like” mathematics, but only to pass the exam. A student that says to the teacher: “train me the best you can, so that I can do the exam, and never again go through mathematics!” Something is coupled with mathematics (the object a, the credit system ) that stands for its functioning. This something that structures students’ desire to learn mathematics is the credit associated with this school subject. It is the object cause of desire (Lacan, 2007 ), which makes both teachers and students “enjoy” this school subject.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Ditte and Uwe for their tenacious criticism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Alexandre Pais

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  1. Alexandre Pais
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Correspondence to Alexandre Pais .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Hauke Straehler-Pohl

  2. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Nina Bohlmann

  3. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Alexandre Pais

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Pais, A. (2017). The Narcissism of Mathematics Education. In: Straehler-Pohl, H., Bohlmann, N., Pais, A. (eds) The Disorder of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34006-7_4

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