Place-Based Mathematics Education: A Conflated Pedagogy?

Overview & Synopsis

Place-based mathematics education (PBME) has the potential to engage students with the mathematics inherent in the local land, culture, and community. However, research has identified daunting barriers to this pedagogy, especially in abstract mathematics courses such as algebra and beyond. In this study, 15 graduates of a doctoral program in rural mathematics education were interviewed about their attempts to integrate PBME in their classrooms. By using qualitative methods to code and categorize interview data, three themes emerged: (a) PBME was easier to teach about than to practice, (b) several factors contributed to participants' level of depth and authenticity in employing PBME, and (c) teaching place-based statistics was fundamentally different than teaching place-based mathematics. The findings suggest that making a distinction between mathematics education and statistics education would benefit research and practice in place-based education as well as in related pedagogies. (Contains 2 tables and 5 footnotes.)