School

Subjects,
the
Knowledge,
and
the
Intellectuals in Change

Politics
Projects

of
of

Thomas S. Popkewitz

The study of school subjects has shown little interest in the culture, sociology or
history of schooling to understand classroom practices. The focus has been
didactics or the pedagogical content of teaching. Its organising principles relate to
psychological studies of learning and instruction. The dominating question of
research has been the effective learning environments related to childrens mental
processes and a social psychology of childrens problem-solving, often talked about
as situated learning. This book offers a contrasting and important systematic
attempt to bring the scholarship on teaching schools subject within the preview of
social, anthropological and political theories. In doing so, it extends and revises a
tradition that took the knowledge of teaching and curriculum as a strategy to
explore the ways schooling produces and reproduces exclusion related to class,
race, and later, issues of gender in the USA and Britain. 1 Further, in a world of
research that focuses on microanalysis and empiricism, the contributors to this book
continually move between empirical studies of mathematics classrooms and
interdisciplinary discussions about assumptions, implications and consequences of
teaching and the sciences that explain classrooms.
The choice of mathematics education in this conversation is important. Mathematics
is one of the high priests of modernity. Mathematics education carries a salvation
narrative of progress into the upbringing practices of schooling. The mathematics of
the school is told as a story of progress about the cultured, modern individual whose
reason is bounded by the rules and standards of science and mathematics. The
narrative is of the enlightened citizen who contributes to the global knowledge
society. But mathematics is not only the story of culture but of social progress
through equity. The story told is that the proper teaching of mathematics will
prevent any future joining of the ranks that deviate from the norm. The chapters of
this book engage the ambiguities, anxieties and anomalies of the tales of progress
and equity.
My discussion considers the contributions and debates opened through the dialogue
of this book. I proceed in the following way. I first consider the general issue of the
politics of knowledge in teaching school subjects. Second, the particular politics of
mathematics education as a movement from the space of academic mathematics
into the social space of schooling is explored, in what I call the alchemy of school
subjects. In the third section, two different problematics of change are discussed as
organising principles in pedagogical research. The notion of problematisation gives
attention to the intellectual traditions in the studies of school
subject matter as embodying ordering and governing practices. One is called the
equity problematic and the other, the knowledge problematic. The fourth section
pursues the politics of research produced through the methodologies of research
raised in this book. I conclude with some reflections on the politics of educational
research as it relates to change and progress. These foci are drawn from my
Reading of the contributions in this volume and intend to engage in a conversation
about the paths taken.
TEACHING SCHOOL SUBJECTS AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE

One notion that travels through todays discussions and the papers of this book is
that of mathematical literacy. The concept of literacy, if I can be schematic, places
mathematics within issues of progress and inclusion. It is assumed that those who
have mathematics knowledge literacy are better able to work in modern
society, to participate more fully as citizens, and, importantly to engage in critical
analyses of social practices. The notion of mathematical literacy assumes a major
trajectory of contemporary social thought about modernity. That trajectory of
modernity is about the mind as having a critical understanding and competence in
mathematics as it functions in the world. From organising ones checking account to
understanding the statistical notions of populations in social policy, mathematical
skills are believed to be central knowledge components of the modern citizen. But
this assumption of mathematical literacy has disenchantments and anxieties that
circulate in the book. The anxieties relate to the production of social exclusion as a
consequence of inadequate instruction. The study of pedagogical practices,
therefore, is to illuminate the practices that divide social class, ethnicity, and
gender
embodied in the everyday classroom practices and the methods of research.