Humanizing Mathematics as Boundary Blurring

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Evidence · no claims cited

Description

The author's conceptualization of humanizing mathematics, contrasted with approaches that bring cultural knowledge into school mathematics. Instead, she frames it as "a process that blurs the boundary" between school mathematics and other practices, so that mathematics learning is seen as ordinary human activity rather than special work. She states that "Humanized mathematics consists of an accessible curriculum and culturally relevant pedagogy", and analyses it through boundary crossing between mathematics education and informal education.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• Crossing between mathematics in school and other practices, such as informal education, so that the boundary between them is blurred.
• An accessible curriculum and culturally relevant pedagogy, as the article states humanized mathematics consists of.

Constraints

• The article notes there are no agreed-upon descriptions of what mathematics is humanized and how to humanize mathematics.

Target Learners

• Teachers, informal educators and students in and out of school mathematics

Target Learning Objectives

• Seeing mathematics learning as ordinary human activity rather than special work

Claims

Related Theories

• Boundary Crossing Learning
• Informal Learning

Examples

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Key Sources

• Lili Zhou. (2023). Humanizing Mathematics through Boundary Crossing Collaboration. Proceedings of the forty-fifth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 2). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED658339

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	theory
title	Humanizing Mathematics as Boundary Blurring
description	The author's conceptualization of humanizing mathematics, contrasted with approaches that bring cultural knowledge into school mathematics.
status	review
canonical	True
generated	by claude/unspecified on 2026-09-24
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — lili-zhou-2023

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