Susan Gerofsky Boeken

Word problems, or story problems, have been a part of mathematical education for the past 4,000 years. This book considers mathematical word problems as a genre, drawing on analytic theory from linguistics, literary criticism, and mathematics education. Raising the question, what are word problems? , this book addresses it by taking a walk around the genre to see it from many points of view, including the linguistic, the historical, and the pedagogical. A Man Left Albuquerque Heading East sheds light on the nature of genre in education and inspires teachers to use word problems in new ways, with different intentions.

This book takes a fresh approach to using educational tools to solve profound problems in societies. The authors bring perspectives from curriculum studies, mathematics education, environmental education, and Indigenous epistemologies to a new consideration of “geometries to think with”. These tools reveal the wealth of resources and interrelationships in our world that have the potential to reconfigure and revitalize education. The transdisciplinary nature of the chapters and authors emphasizes the need for thinking beyond boundaries, while respecting the wisdom inherent in intellectual disciplines and traditions.