Thinking About Relations Between Adults Learning Mathematics and Reality

Abstract

Mathematics education for adults (and youth) takes place in our world. Whatever is going on in our world, in the “reality”, might have influence on our courses, our students and on us ourselves. My thinking about relations between adults learning mathematics and reality start with a simple question: What is reality? Simple questions often open doors to other questions and looking through one of the doors we see that social reality has a main influence on adults learning mathematics. Why? Hoping for a (better) job or fearing to lose a job is a strong extrinsic motivation to learn mathematics for adults even if they have bad experience with learning mathematics at school. This implies several needs for course construction, pedagogical behavior of teachers and the relations of the institution that offers the course, the teachers, and the learners. One very important aspect of the social reality of our area of research and teaching called “adults learning mathematics” is the difference between adults and younger students learning mathematics. Life and job experience causes many differences. An other important aspect is the didactical intention to teach mathematics with the aim to show its practical use in reality. But if you teach adults this is different from teaching mathematics with the same idea in school because adults know—sometimes much better than their teachers—the real job situation. The last but not the least aspect of the many relations I am thinking about is the impact of our work in reality. Researching, teaching and modelling might change the world. This implies ethical questions about our responsibility.