Democracy and Mathematics Education: Rethinking School Math for Our Troubled Times

In Democracy and Mathematics Education, Kurt Stemhagen and Catherine Henney develop a way of thinking about the nature and purposes of math that is inclusive, participatory, and thoroughly human. They use these ideas to create a school mathematics experience that can enhance students’ math abilities and democratic potential. They locate mathematics’ origins in human activity and highlight the rich but often overlooked links between mathematical activity and democratic, social practices. Democratic mathematics education foregrounds student inquiry and brings to light the moral dimensions of a discipline that has both remarkable utility and inevitable limitations. For math educators, the book’s humanities approach helps to see the subject anew. For philosophers, it provides an important real world context for wrestling with perennial and timely questions, engaging democratic and evolutionary theory to transform school math. This alternative approach to mathematics and mathematics education provides a guide for how to use math to make democracy a larger part of school and wider social life.

2021 Winner of the AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award.

Kurt Stemhagen is Professor of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education with a concentration in Philosophy of Education from the University of Virginia. At VCU, he teaches doctoral courses on philosophy of educational research and philosophy of education as well as undergraduate and master's courses on democracy, diversity, and ethics. Dr. Stemhagen is co-founder and an active member of Richmond Teachers for Social Justice, a group dedicated to creating a just, democratic, sustainable, and caring society through education, solidarity, and social action.

Catherine Henney is a veteran math educator, having worked with students and teachers as both a grade level teacher and a K-8 mathematics specialist. She also teaches mathematics education courses to pre-service and in-service teachers in Virginia. She is co-author of the book It’s Elementary: A Parent’s Guide to K-5 Mathematics, published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and is currently a doctoral student at Virginia Commonwealth University.