MATHEMATICS AS AN IM/PURE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM: SYMBIOSIS, (W)HOLISM AND SYNERGY IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

Abstract

The problem of culturally decontextualised mathematics education faced by Nepali students, teachers and teacher educators has often been oriented by the view of the nature of mathematics as a body of pure knowledge, which gives rise to an exclusive emphasis on an ideology of singularity, epistemology of objectivism, language of universality and logic of certainty whilst developing curriculum, conceiving pedagogies and implementing assessment strategies in school mathematics education and mathematics teacher education programmes. With epistemic referents of dialectical logics and performative imagination, an alternative view of the nature of mathematics as an impure knowledge is discussed with its possible disempowering features, such as essentialism, hegemony and dualisms. Finally, an inclusive view of the nature of mathematics as im/pure knowledge system is articulated with the help of various forms of dialectics.