Student’s critical mathematic competencies in a climate change context

Commentary paper (Steffensen_ Symposium_Student’s critical mathematic competencies) for the AERA Session – Symposium: SIG Research in Mathematics Education: Is Another Mathematics Possible? Mathematics and the Living World.

Climate change is one of society biggest challenges and is both urgent and complex to deal with. The extent of mathematics involved to describe, predict and to communicate on the problem calls for the involvement of mathematics education (Barwell, 2013). The objectives of this research were to investigate how climate change in the mathematics classroom can develop a student’s critical mathematics competencies. This objective has both a teacher perspective, e.g. how teachers can facilitate for such competencies, as well as a student perspective, e.g. identifying how student’s critical mathematical competencies appear. While the first perspective has been the main issues in previous writings1, the student perspective is the main issues of forthcoming research and writings. The focus of this study is on how to develop students’ critical mathematics competencies, and how the competencies appear.