1.1 To Apply: Acting by Being Dedicated to the Critical Means to Care about Justice

To understand what it means to use mathematics critically in different situations students must learn how to “walk the walk and talk the talk.” But they must also learn how to be critical of how the walk operates: what mathematics does or does not influence and in what way it is influential. And they must learn to be critical of what the talk lets you know or not know or experience in different situations. This can mean giving underprivileged groups of students access to successful participation in dominant mathematics and mathematics education practices. Access to dominant mathematics is a prerequisite for understanding how mathematics is used in the argumentation of dominant societal structures. Hence, access to dominant mathematics is needed to develop critical awareness (Barwell & Hauge, this volume).

However, mere access to dominant mathematics does not necessarily foster critical awareness (Ryan, Andersson & Chronaki, this volume; Steffensen, Herheim & Rangnes, this volume). It is, therefore, urgent to act by facilitating opportunities for students to challenge how dominant mathematics operates in their lives, in their communities and in society in general. Such challenges are not only about the facts of, for example, the unjust distribution of resources or of climate change, but also involve critically recognising and problematising personal affective and embodied experiences with mathematics (Lunney Borden, this volume; le Roux & Rughubar-Reddy, this volume).

1.2 To Apply: Acting by Being Dedicated to the Relational Means for Dealing with Dominant Eurocentric Mathematics Values

A culturally situated mathematics education has the potential to decolonise education and transform researchers’ approaches. For instance, learning about and with community knowledge can result in displacements in pedagogical approaches from Eurocentric values and beliefs towards more culturally situated approaches (Lunney Borden, this volume). Furthermore, a decolonising stand is not a matter of either/or knowledge and values, but encompasses both/and views that shape conceptual interconnections (Ryan & Parra, 2019). Adopting such educational approaches involves “a complex interplay of the categories inside/outside (of Indigenous social, cultural and political spaces), that are not conceived of as mutually excluding but as nested and in implicated in a continuous, mutual reshaping” (Parra & Valero, this volume). Decolonising pedagogical stances need not be a matter of replacing one hegemony with another. Instead, by adopting educational approaches that strengthen cultural identity and authority over education, and that value both community and dominant mathematics, universalised de-rooted subjectification may be escaped. Adopting such an approach addresses concerns that go beyond Indigenous contexts, as, for example, Le Roux and Rughubar-Reddy (this volume) have demonstrated.

2.1 To Apply: Acting by Addressing Relevant Issues Means Emotional Labour

Climate change, as well as obesity, can create feelings in students and teachers, such as confusion, resignation, or motivation to act (see Abtahi, Gøtze, Steffensen, Hauge, & Barwell, 2017; Steffensen & Hansen, 2019). In terms of climate change, Thunberg (2018) articulated her feelings in her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She used words like “hope,” “panic,” “fear,” “act,” and “crisis” to push for urgent action on a broad personal and societal scale, rather than for us to put our hope in experts or technological solutions. She clearly stated that she does not want hope, but rather wishes for people to panic and experience fear, as shown by her statement “I want you to act.” That is, she is not calling for a retreat from the problem or for passive despair. In the same vein, obesity is a complex problem that often includes despair, retreat and an attempt to assign blame (Finegood, Merth, & Rutter, 2010). Thus, we identify similar feelings of fear in issues concerning obesity to those expressed by Thunberg.

Discourses on climate change and obesity are highly mathematical. Mathematics is involved in describing, predicting and communicating climate change, and references to statistical findings, measures and trends are also connected to obesity (Barwell & Hauge, this volume; Steffensen et al., this volume; Hall and Barwell, this volume). The highly mathematical discourses that are used to articulate these problems mean that mathematics education needs to be involved. Introducing such challenges in the classroom can lead teachers to question whether such topics are too complex, too contro-versial, or cause negative feelings such as fear and despair (Abtahi et al., 2017; Steffensen & Hansen, 2019). However, complex problems need not be an all-or-nothing matter. In empirical research by Steffensen (e.g., 2021; Steffensen, Herheim, & Rangnes, 2018; Steffensen & Rangnes, 2019), two teachers emphasised that they wanted to communicate to students that even small changes mattered, which we interpreted as meaning that teachers provide hope for students’ actions. We argue that although complex problems can involve controversies or cause emotional labour, citizens and society need to address them, and mathematics education has a responsibility to enable students to deal with such problems.

2.2 To Apply: Acting by Addressing Relevant Issues Means Dealing with Uncertainty and the Formatting Power of Mathematics

To deal with complex problems in the classroom is not a straightforward task. Teachers might need to reconsider how they look at problems when including climate change in the mathematics class. Normally when society encounters scientific problems, groups of experts are relied upon to solve the problem. They are expected to suggest the best solution so that decision-makers can take satisfactory measures. However, in complex problems, the experts may arrive from a range of scientific fields, and the decision-makers from multiple countries representing a variety of standpoints on what actions should be taken. Climate change also involves uncertainty, risks, values, and conflicts. At the same time, the urgency of the problem calls for action. When dealing with complex problems, one could involve students in decision-making where dialogue is an essential keyword. An applied critical mathematics education can emphasise teaching about these uncertainties and values (Hauge & Barwell, 2017). For instance, in this book, Steffensen et al. reflected on an example where the teachers had facilitated students to reflect on uncertainty: their own measurement differences and the uncertainties involved in calculating the global average temperature of the Earth. Mathematics can also format society, in connection, for instance, to obesity. Hall and Barwell (this volume) critically scrutinised the Body Mass Index (BMI) as an example of a mathematically based model that becomes a part of categorising and defining people as “normal” or “obese.” Mathematics is used for more than just describing the problem; it becomes prescriptive of (un)desired bodies.

3.1 To Apply: Empowering by Enhancing Political and Mathematical Understanding and Knowledge …

Enabling students to have agency and power to act on socio-political issues requires an environment of reflective knowing and critique (Barwell & Hauge, this volume; Steffensen et al., this volume), through, for example, fostering an understanding of the formatting power of mathematics. However, Steffensen et al. (this volume) showed that dealing with the formatting power of mathematics in classroom contexts is a multifaceted matter. On the one hand, education can support students to engage in critical scrutiny of mathematical models. On the other hand, from such scrutiny, the uncertainty captured in the models becomes apparent, a disclosure that may jeopardise students’ trust in science. Mathematics education must, therefore, necessarily include dealing with different levels of uncertainty.

Sustaining institutional structures in the light of resisting colonisation can be shaped both mathematically and politically. Mathematics education has the potential to provide interfaces where local community ways of knowing mathematics encounter Western academic mathematics in a mutually beneficial way (Andersson & Wagner; le Roux & Rughubar-Reddy; Lunney Borden; Parra, & Valero, this volume). To advance such interfaces means to interpret and situate mathematics education in each specific context. Such actions allow for moves that articulate local responses to homogenisation and globalisation, since it is a mathematics education from and for the people. Le Roux and Rughubar-Reddy (this volume) demonstrates how mathematics education scholars can act agentically in an intermediate space that need not dichotomise, for example, Western and non-Western approaches. Instead, by entangling theories and locality, concepts may be reworked and subsequently enrich the complexity of mathematics and mathematics education.

3.2 … Is Not Always an Easy Matter

Good intentions to sustain actions and structures that allow the underprivileged to speak sometimes fall short, as some of the chapters show (e.g., Hand et al., this volume; Ryan et al., this volume). That does not, of course, mean that we should not continue to struggle, but that we must humbly accept and remind our (privileged) selves of our own ignorance. To educate privileged ignorance can mean to get to know the knowledge and experiences of the Other in respectful ways that do not put an extra burden on the underprivileged. An extra burden may be put on the underprivileged when more privileged groups demand that the underprivileged explains or shares their experiences. To avoid this, Hand et al. (this volume) followed Patel (2015) when they suggested pausing in such situations. Pausing means to stop and make space to seek together to critically understand injustice in social and institutional relations and its origins, in order to find ways to undertake joint work under respectful and just circumstances.