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Data visualizations have proliferated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to communicate information about the crisis and influence policy development and individual decision-making. In invoking exponential growth, mathematical modelling, statistical analysis, and the like, these data visualizations invite opportunities for mathematics teaching and learning. Yet data visualizations are social texts, authored from specific points of view, that narrate particular, and often consequential, stories. Their fundamental reliance on quantification and mathematics cements their social positioning as supposedly objective, reliable, and neutral. The reading of any data visualization demands unpacking the role of mathematics, including how data and variables have been formatted and how relationships are framed to narrate stories from particular points of view. We present an approach to a critical reading of data visualizations for the context of mathematics education that draws on three interrelated concepts: mathematical formatting (what gets quantified, measured, and how), framing (how variables are related and through what kind of data visualization), and narrating (which stories the data visualization tells, its potential impacts and limits). This approach to reading data visualisations includes a process of reimagining through reformatting, reframing and renarrating. We illustrate this approach and these three concepts using data visualizations published in the "New York Times" in 2020 about COVID-19. We offer a set of possible questions to guide a critical reading of data visualizations, beyond this set of examples.

We come together, five mathematics teacher educators from varied cultural backgrounds and diverse academic pathways, interested in teacher professional learning, and interested in exploring our understanding of colonial practices in mathematics education specifically and in education more generally. In this paper, we share our stories, drawing upon our own experiences in conversation with each other and in dialogue with academic readings. Our paper studies tensions encountered as we explore decolonizing educational practices within colonial structures, paying close attention to place/land-based pedagogies. In recognizing education as a colonial act, we examine some of the literature in decolonizing education and research before introducing arguments for the role of mathematics education in colonizing educational practices. As a collaborative research group, we met regularly over a period of 3 months, collecting audio recordings of our meetings, transcriptions, shared individual writings, and written responses to each other's writing and academic readings. We draw on narrative inquiry to structure our experiences of decolonizing mathematics teacher professional learning through living and telling stories and then through re-telling and re-living stories. We argue that this process is rewarding and challenging, and requires individual and collective ongoing dialogue. With our stories, we challenge the places where mathematics is performed, for example from classrooms to learning gardens, and what counts as mathematics. We conclude with questions to frame future directions and dialogues with an invitation to others to respond through critical dialogue and practice.

Place-based education has traditionally had a limited focus on mathematics, and critical mathematics education often lacks explicit attention to place and space. We explore integrating theories of place, spatial justice, and critical mathematics education. To begin, we consider various frameworks of place--including Indigenous, urban, and critical perspectives--to situate a discussion on how place acts as a shaping force on social relations like race, gender, and sexuality, and, conversely, how social relations shape place. We include mathematics as a category of social relations in that guiding framework. We next summarize and build on various notions of place and spatial justice, toward their integration with critical mathematics education. In so doing, we present teaching mathematics for spatial justice, or using mathematics 1) to identify power relations in and through place and 2) to transform the world by re-imagining and remaking place. We sidestep a false urban-rural divide and instead, illustrate the potential of teaching mathematics for spatial justice using rich examples organized around four thematic categories: geographies of opportunity, mapping, human mobility, and land relations and obligations.

Issues of global and local importance such as climate change and homelessness require critical perspectives across multiple disciplines including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Our paper brings critical mathematics education and social justice alongside STEM education to explore experiences of learning to teach. We focus specifically on learning to teach through creating mathematics problems in/for STEM and social justice. As a collaborative research group we are from five countries with varied cultural backgrounds, teaching experiences, and academic pathways. Dialogue as method is used to examine experiences of creating problems through which students can interpret and transform the world. Data collected included 46 h of audio-recorded dialogue meetings, 26 developed problems, and 7 interviews with 12 students. Results indicate creating mathematics problems in/for STEM involved navigating between mathematics, social justice, and STEM across all education levels and is supported with critical dialogue across cultural perspectives, diverse experiences, and expertise. Challenges lived include questioning the content of mathematics and STEM, deepening our own expertise to draw upon local and global problem contexts, and interrogating who benefits from such problems. Our study highlights the need for continued collaborative dialogue that not only gathers educators across disciplines but also includes students as co-creators of mathematics problems that could change their relationship with the world.

Our study examines pre-service teachers' (PSTs) lived experiences designing lessons and preparing for teaching while participating in Learning Study with Variation Theory. Using a phenomenological approach, we examine the experiences of seven elementary PSTs enrolled in a mathematics education course. Data collected include transcripts of in-depth participant interviews, reflective journals, and course assignments. Our phenomenological analysis offers a general structure of participants' experiences and discusses five structural constituents particularly related to Variation Theory. Results indicate that PSTs found collaborative aspects of Learning Study challenging, and learning to theorize with Variation Theory difficult and unfamiliar. However, PSTs also found the experience valuable in helping them discern critical aspects of a complex concept, thereby helping them understand and teach mathematics in different ways. This study highlighting PSTs' lived experiences extends the limited research on using Learning Study with Variation Theory in the context of a teacher education course.

In this article, the authors present an approach to developing open-ended problems through capturing contextualised mathematics in photographs. They draw upon their research with the Problem Posing Research Project, a collaborative venture between an Australian and a Canadian university to broaden pre-service teachers pedagogical practices in the development of problem posing (see Bragg & Nicol, 2008; Nicol & Bragg, 2009). Based on their research findings and their personal engagement with open-ended problem photos, the authors argue that while the process of developing open-ended problem photos is not without its challenges, it can ultimately enhance an educator's ability to connect with mathematics in ways that open possibilities for seeing mathematics differently. They contend that through creating open-ended problem photos, teachers and students will see mathematics through a new lens. (Contains 4 figures.)

Students studying abroad are faced with challenges that impact their cultural, social, and economic identities, and this varies greatly depending on their home country and study destination. The transition and inter-cultural learning experiences of international tertiary students from African countries are currently under-examined. Afrocentric theory was employed to interpret the data derived from this qualitative study, which drew upon participatory action research and Photovoice methods to explore how African students navigate transitions to studying in Canada and the strategies they use for creating supportive social resources. As authors, co-researchers, and participants, we identified unique insights on how students build and maintain senses of connections, familiarity, and comfort when away from home, and how they conceptualize, create, and sustain community. These accounts provide insight for mentors, faculty, and policymakers in North American institutions on how they can offer opportunities for holistic learning, cultural integration, and access to valuable mentorship to help students navigate the complex journey of transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a collaborative, participatory self-study designed to examine the practices and experiences of a teacher educator (Janice) and her students with the support of critical dialogue partners (Cynthia and Feda). We explore the tensions and possibilities that arise as a teacher educator attempts to foster both a pedagogy of care and a pedagogy of inquiry in a mathematics methods course. We share these tensions and possibilities from the perspective of the teacher educator and her students during the course, following seven students into the practicum field experience and one student (Sarah) into her first year of teaching.

This paper reports a study of preservice teachers who investigated their own teaching during a field-based component of a mathematics education methods course. The course was designed to engage the preservice teachers in both mathematical and pedagogical inquiry. Analysis of video recordings of course discussions, audiotaped interviews with preservice teachers, audiotaped discussions of instructor's planning meetings, and copies of the instructor's and preservice teachers' journals identified two critical incidents that depict students' resistance to the course directions. Analysis of these critical incidents suggests that prospective teachers' interactions with their students can become the mirror through which we can investigate their interactions with us, as teacher educators, and with our course activities. In this way we might reframe the problem of resistance to one of listening--listening to the students, to each other, and to ourselves.

Preservice elementary school teachers' fragmented understanding of mathematics is widely documented in the research literature. Their understanding of division by 0 is no exception. This article reports on two teacher education tasks and experiences designed to challenge and extend preservice teachers' understanding of division by 0. These tasks asked preservice teachers to investigate division by 0 in the context of responding to students' erroneous mathematical ideas and were respectively structured so that the question was investigated through discussion with peers and through independent investigation. Results revealed that preservice teachers gained new mathematical (what the answer is and why it is so) and pedagogical (how they might explain it to students) insights through both experiences. However, the quality of these insights were related to the participants' disposition to justly their thinking and (or) to investigate mathematics they did not understand. The study's results highlight the value of using teacher learning "tasks that situate mathematical inquiry in teaching practice but also highlight the challenge for teacher educators to design experiences that help preservice teachers see the importance of, and develop the tools" and inclination for, mathematical inquiry that is needed for teaching mathematics with understanding. Today we showed our elementary preservice teachers a video where an interviewer was asking young students what the answer to 5 / 0 was. The students in the video consistently responded that the answer was 0, and when asked how they knew this, many responded: "my teacher taught me." (Contains 3 tables.)

This paper explores what happens when students engage with mathematical tasks that make no attempt to be connected with students' everyday life experiences. The investigation draws on the work of educators who call for a broader view of what might count as real and relevant contexts for studying mathematics. It investigates students' experiences with two imaginative tasks and reports on the students' intellectual and emotional engagement. This engagement is examined and described in terms of the character and quality of the class and group discussions generated. Findings suggest that students can indeed engage productively with mathematics when it is explored in imaginative settings and that such contexts can help students support and sustain their engagement with the mathematics in the task.

This article examines the authors' experiences living action research through an art therapy activity known as YaYa that involved creating and sharing visual representations of themselves as beginning researchers. This activity was part of a graduate course on education action research and students in the course found the activity transformative. The article first explores how four students in the course created and presented their YaYas. It goes on to discuss how the activity provided opportunities for students to imagine and re-imagine authored identities in the figured worlds of teaching and research. The role that visual arts play in transforming consciousness is also used to help understand the powerful impact of the YaYa activity. The YaYa as a visual artistic process opened students up to meaning-making and reconstructing identities that involved not only the mind, but also the emotions, body and spirit. The authors claim that learning action research can itself be a process of action research, and that living such practice is about involving and imagining the whole self in multiple figured worlds.

Provides five short commentaries from attendees of the 9th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME) held in Japan, July 30-August 6, 2000. (ASK)

Explores prospective teachers' learning to teach mathematics in the complex context of a university-based curriculum and instruction course. Concludes that the difficulties and tensions prospective teachers face in turn pose challenges and tensions for teacher educators. Contains 29 references. (Author/ASK)

Effective assessment of mathematical problem solving requires more than an examination of student answers. Students tend to make calculations without explanations. Teachers need to analyze their processes and get students to communicate their thinking. This article suggests ways to understand students' thinking, their conceptions, their weaknesses, and their strengths. (six references) (MLH)