Developing Human Rights Values in Mathematics Teacher Education: Education with and by Youth (ViMTE)

The United Nations SDGs (2021) call for actions to address global human and non-human challenges, peace and justice. Founded on this call for action, Udir (2020) calls for the interdisciplinary Values of ethical awareness, human dignity, and democratic participation to be included in all school subjects.

The explicit incorporation of values (specifically: ethical awareness, human dignity and democratic participation) is a requirement of the Norwegian curriculum (Udir, 2020). These values have not previously been addressed in mathematics teacher education programmes in Norway.

In the ViMTE project, we develop insight to incorporate Human Rights values of ethical awareness, human dignity and democratic participation in mathematics teaching and learning. At the heart of our project is the expertise and advice of the youth.

We aim to raise awareness, practices and activities to empower learners to contribute to the building and defence of a universal culture of human rights in society

We will create the following knowledge

• Knowledge (About): Identifying awareness and understanding and the relevance of the Values to their contexts and experiences.
• Attitude/environment (Through): Identifying current experiences and practices in mathematics classrooms. Identifying teachers’ reflection on youths’ voices.
• Action/agency (For): Developing adaptation of  practice in response to youth’s voices.

ViMTE main objective is to develop new insights to strengthen the competencies of youth, teacher educators and pre-service teachers to incorporate these values in mathematics teaching and learning. Achieving this objective will involve theoretical and methodological innovation drawing on concepts from mathematics education and human rights education.

In a participatory research approach, we will invite youth in grades 5-10 to collaborate with researchers, teacher educators and pre-service teachers in two universities to understand how existing practices support and hinder the incorporation of the Values in mathematics teacher education programmes and to develop new practices.

Within a broader social agenda, ViMTE will highlight the interplay between the learning of mathematics and the overarching Values-based knowledge that transcends subject boundaries and is necessary to contribute to a more socially sustainable society and working life.

We will invite youth in grades 5-10 to collaborate with the researchers to tell us what they know about these values and what suggestions and ideas they for incorporating these values in the activities of mathematics classrooms. We ask the youth to create an artifact, based on their ideas and suggestions

We will share the youths’ artifacts with teacher educators. We collaborated with the teacher educators to reflect on the youths’ artifacts and creating a mathematical activity for their preservice teachers to do.

We will share the youths’ artifacts with preservice teachers. We collaborated with preservice teachers to reflect on the youths’ artifacts and creating a mathematical activity for their future pupils.

Abtahi, Y. (2024): What if I was harmful? Reflecting on the ethical tensions associated with teaching the dominant mathematics | Educational Studies in Mathematics (springer.com)