2020 Conference in Honolulu, HI
We are pleased to announce that the 2020 Creating Balance in an Unjust World Conference on Math Education and Social Justice will be held in at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education in Honolulu, HI January 17th-19th, 2020. Mark your calendars, book your travel, and we will see you at the conference!
Conference Theme:
Akeakamai: Critical Re-envisioning of STEM Education Through the Lens of Culture and Place
STEM has a rich history in education with multiple iterations and the addition or subtraction of letters from the acronym. Each letter represents a particular way of empowering or disempowering systems of knowledge, peoples, and places. At the United States federal level, STEM education is driven primarily by industry and military needs, and content is framed in an exclusively western lens. However, as states and local communities seek ever increasing needs to address issues of climate change, poverty, housing and other issues of equity and access, the question of “whose knowledge matters” has been brought to question and spun the inclusion of “A” in STEM where the “A” represents “art”, “‘āina”, “ancestral” or perhaps “agriculture” (STEAM). An extra “M” has been added for “making” (STEAMM). An S2 has been added for “Social Sciences and Sense of Place” (STEMS2). The mathematics of STEM has been replaced with ethnomathematics. All of these variations challenge the normative STEM narrative and provide grounds for the exploration of the roles place, culture, and indigeneity play in real world problem solving.