Page 427 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

402 B.C. Luitel and P.C. Taylor

Similarly, I hold the view that an extreme form of scepticism is not helpful
either, for it becomes another foundation of one’s thinking which does not make
sense of anything but scepticism. My notion of healthy scepticism entails three
major steps: engagement, critical reflection and renewal, as bases for acting wisely
in our pedagogical contexts. In the first step, our teachers’ authentic engagement is
pivotal for generating personal practical knowledge about their pedagogic contexts.
Being encouraged to view their pedagogical engagement from critical and reflec-
tive eyes, teachers will be able to identify gaps between their beliefs and actions,
between theories and practices, and between justified and emergent knowledge
(Kenyon and Randall 1997). For me, such gaps offer an authentic source for
renewal of my personal pedagogical thinking and actions (Granger 2006).
Dear Dr. Authority, I envisage that by embracing healthy scepticism, we will be
able to humanise your extreme foundationalism that often places a set of beliefs and
knowledge systems outside of the human domain of practice in the name of the
non-derivability principle (Polkinghorne 1992). In my mind, bringing those knowl-
edge systems and beliefs to the domain of critical reflectivity can help transform
our teacher education program as a forward-looking endeavour. The effort of huma-
nising your foundational view entails: (a) introducing a multi-perspectival view
(historically, epistemologically and logically) of mathematics education (e.g., Almeida
and Joseph 2007); (b) questioning disempowering features of the foundation;
and (c) envisioning multiple foundations for incorporating knowledge systems and
pedagogies arising from people’s practices in the teacher education program.
Deconstructing Decontextualisation
Dear Dr. Authority, your idea of embracing an extreme form of foundationalism
is likely to continue promoting a decontextualised mathematics education.
According to my recent exploration, foundationalism rests upon a realist ontology
and objectivist epistemology with regard to valid knowledge systems being inde-
pendent of political, cultural, social and spiritual influences (Fumerton 2005).
Indeed, it is really hard for me to believe in the perspective that knowledge is
(or can be) free from those influences because imagining knowledge that is free
from human influence is to imagine the world without soulful humans or populated
by machine-like humans. Which would you prefer, machine-like teachers or teachers
with souls, feelings and sense of being in time and context?

Frogs in the garden
Butterflies’ funeral
Normalcy perpetuates

Your foundationalism is less likely to be compatible with knowledge systems
arising from people’s practices, rather it seems to privilege a form of mathemat-
ics that is exclusively algorithmic, abstract and disembodied, as you indicate that
the logical aspect of the foundation of mathematics education is required to pre-
serve the analytical rigor of mathematics. If you want to incorporate logic as an
aspect of your foundation, why don’t we include different forms of logics instead
of privileging conventional logics (i.e., propositional, deductive and analytical) that