BOOK REVIEW

Keitel, C. (ed.), Social Justice and Mathematics Education, Berlin: Freie Universität, 1998, ISBN 3-929-96812-6

Social Justice and Mathematics Education edited by Christine Keitel is a collection of selected conference papers that were originally presented at the 8th International Congress on Mathematics Education in Seville, Spain in 1996. The subheading of the book Gender, class, ethnicity and the politics of schooling accurately describes the range of papers. The book includes papers from different contexts and different educational systems but the thread that runs through them is a continuing concern for the mathematics education of girls and women. Although in many countries (like the USA and UK) the percentage of girls achieving high mathematics grades at school has increased there is now an increasing concern about the relatively low number of women engaging in undergraduate mathematics courses and ultimately mathematics based careers. In the UK there has been a recent groundswell in the press and from the ‘New Labour’ Government about the underachievement of boys and this book provides researchers and educationalists with valid arguments why research into the underachievement of girls and women is still essential. The research on gender issues now seems to be tending towards a more holistic exploration of concerns relating to social justice and this trend is shown in this book. Although many of the authors do not specifically mention social justice it pervades the majority of papers. In the introduction, Keitel describes how the book is divided into four parts. This separation is not obvious to the reader as the sections are not defined by title pages. The first part of the book is concerned with problems of how mathematics is conceptualised and the teaching and learning of mathematics. The second part contains papers on social and cultural influences relating to gender, class and ethnicity and has research papers from specific cultures like Papua New Guinea and South Africa. It was these papers that

Educational Studies in Mathematics 40: 91–92, 1999.

92

BOOK REVIEW

I found most revealing as they contained new insights and provided me with a view of different cultures that I would not normally meet. The papers in the third section describe policy issues like the effectiveness of co-education or intervention programs. What is clear from these is that single sex settings are not the panacea for solving the underachievement of girls. Indeed no single solution appears likely as the social context for learning mathematics is too complex for the alteration of a single variable to be conclusive. The final section has papers that discuss various methodological and theoretical issues. Although these could be difficult and dense papers to read they are not and are still related to current research being carried out by the authors. Inevitably in a book with a large number of authors there are a variety of views expressed: some of which a reader may not agree with. Having said that I feel it is only when alternative views are presented to a reader that one is able to clarify and develop one’s own understanding and refine one’s research methodology. This book contains such a wide range of papers relating to social justice and mathematics education that it contains something for everyone working in the field be they researchers, students, teachers or educational policy makers.

Research Fellow, Centre for Mathematics Education, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK E-mail: B.M. [email protected]

BARBARA A LLEN