How ethical areas of post-normal science can invigorate mathematics education

Abstract

Future experts, decision-makers, stakeholders and future citizens – they all go to school, which could be a place to prepare students to facing post-normal problems in their future roles. While the literature on mathematics and science education shows increased interest in post-normal science to critically understand contemporary problems, mathematics is still generally taught as a neutral subject with either correct or wrong answers. In this paper, I lean on post-normal science literature and the slowly growing literature on ethics and mathematics education to develop a framework for identifying how mathematics education can prepare students for ethical aspects of post-normal problems. Three areas of ethics associated with post-normal problems are explored through concepts from ethics and mathematics education: ethical perspectives of the problem, ethical perspectives embedded in knowledge, and ethics in interpersonal care in discussions and care for students’ self-esteem in participatory processes. This framework is used to analyse and discuss three classroom projects to provide examples of what these areas may contain. The projects partly align with post-normal science, and are about clothing and sustainability, traffic safety, and argumentation related to open an offshore area to oil exploitation. The ethical areas are discussed in terms of ethical awareness and democratic practices.