Dr. Gale Russell is the author of a new book released in summer entitled Transreform Radical Humanism: A Mathematics and Teaching Philosophy (Sense Publishers).
The book is based upon Gale’s doctoral dissertation in which a methodological collage of auto/ethnography, Gadamerian hermeneutics, and grounded theory was used to analyze a diverse collection of data related to mathematics and the teaching and learning of mathematics. Data consider in the book includes the author’s evolving relationship with mathematics; the philosophies of mathematics; the “math wars”; the achievement gap for Indigenous students in mathematics; some of the lessons learned from ethnomathematics; and risk education (as an emerging topic within mathematics curricula).
Foundational to this analysis is a new theoretical framework proposed and implemented by Gale that encompasses an Indigenous worldview and the Traditional Western worldview, acting as a pair of voices (and lenses) that speak to the points of tension, conflict, and possibility found throughout the data. The analysis of the data sets results in the emergence of a new theory, the “Transreform Approach” to the teaching and learning of mathematics, as well as the transreform radical humanistic philosophy of mathematics and teaching.
Within the book mathematics, the teaching and learning of mathematics, hegemony, and the valuing of different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing collide, sometimes merge, and most frequently become transformed in ways that hold promise for students, teachers, society, and even mathematics itself. Throughout, the incommensurability of the two worldviews is challenged, and new possibilities emerge. It is hoped that readers will not just read this work, but engage with it, exploring the kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing that they value within mathematics and the teaching and learning of mathematics and why.
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