Applying mathematical modelling to the Anthropocene should give students tools to under-stand and reflect on their own role in causes and effects related to the Anthropocene. Three Anthropocene-related phenomena discussed in the media are, for example, transportation, food supply and mass extinction of species. This paper formulates mathematical modelling tasks for these three phenomena. It discusses them with respect to four key features of mathematical modelling, namely understanding, description, abstraction, and negotiation, and finds that each task includes several of these key features. An example of ‘describe’ is to translate extinction of species into a net change equation between formation and extinc-tion of species. An example of ‘abstraction’ is to calculate and find the maybe surprising re-sult that for producing the same amount of protein, cheese requires more land than tomato. The key feature of ‘negotiation’ is that when going by car, time for physical activity must be added corresponding to that of cycling the same distance. This promotes ‘understand’ in the sense of identifying factors that are crucial in explaining the dynamics of the phenome-non.

In this study we discuss the possible controversies faced by both a teacher and student-teachers when Critical Mathematics Education (CME) and climate change are being brought into a specific teaching setting, part of a teacher education program at a large university in Sweden. Driven by core ideas of CME, mathematics has been conceived as a formatting power for articulating issues of climate change (Coles et al. 2013). Mathematics can, potentially, change how such socio-ecological problems are perceived and formatted as solvable, predictable and so forth. In the particular case of teaching statistics, the teacher has to make certain choices concerning what data to look at since the particular data might suggest certain description or, solutions at the expense of others. In parallel, the teacher wonders how all these might influence the student-teachers who come into the statistics course with diverse needs and expectations. It is with these thoughts in mind (i.e., dilemmas that can lead to irresolvable problems) that the course teacher (and the first writer of this paper) enters this study (i.e., course plan and its enactment). Latour (2005) discards an abstract definition of the social and in his well-known book “Reassembling the Social” focuses on its material understanding as relationships between actants. The notion of ‘actant’ is grounded in Active Network Theory and signifies both human and non-human participants in a complex network as being capable of producing a particular effect and, thus, having agency (Smelser & Baltes, 2001). The relationship that we as a collective iterate over time, in assemblages, is a way of thinking of how things are done and, thus, a way to map the ‘social’ as a highly controversial terrain. Taking this theory into account along with the teacher’s dilemmas (as described above), we here perform an inquiry that aims to map potential actants and their relationships, as they are core in a teacher’s experience to plan and enact a statistics course that engages the theme of climate change through CME. For this inquiry, both the teacher’s logbook (or course diary notes) and student-teachers’ interviews are analyzed. The analysis so far, locates instances where the teacher connects to different actants such as the climate change phenomenon, the curricula, the course plan, and student-teachers. In some instances, these actants suggest ways of doing, decisions to make or choices that contradict each other and hint toward controversial issues. These all become evident in signs of hesitation by the teacher at moments of planning or enactment. They, moreover, reserve to create different narratives about what mathematics should be utilized and demands reflexive choices by the teacher over which narrative to follow. Such hesitations might also be traced back to how the arguments for choosing one narrative over the other are being constructed. In short, the analysis shows that since diverse arguments can be narrated, one might be left with the feeling of missing something in just following one. It is a rather vulnerable situation the teacher is in; risking being hold accountable for not dealing with the mathematical content that has good arguments for it to be dealt with.

In this study we discuss the complexity faced by a teacher when Critical Mathematics Education (CME) and climate change are being brought into a specific teaching setting that is part of a teacher education program a large university in Sweden. The teacher in the course encountered climate change as a timely thematic context to discuss statistics in the social. Driven by core ideas of CME, mathematics has been conceived as a formatting power for articulating issues of climate change (Coles et al. 2013). Mathematics can, potentially, change how climate change is perceived and formatted as solvable, predictable, and so forth. In the case of teaching statistics, the teacher must make certain choices concerning what data to look at since the particular examples of data might suggest certain narratives at the expense of others, but soon, confronts the complexity of opening mathematics to the social. It is with these thoughts in mind that the course teacher set up the course. Latour (2005) discards an abstract definition of the social and in his well-known book “Reassembling the Social” focuses on its material understanding as relationships between actants. The notion of ‘actant’ is grounded in Active Network Theory and signifies both human and non-human participants in a complex network as being capable of producing a particular effect and, thus, having agency (Smelser & Baltes, 2001). The relationship that we as a collective iterate over time, is a way of thinking of how things are done and, thus, a way to map the ‘social’ as a highly controversial terrain. Taking this theory into account along with the teacher’s dilemmas, we here perform an inquiry that aims to map potential actants and their relationships, as they are core in a teacher’s experience to plan and enact a statistics course that engages the theme of climate change through CME. For this inquiry, the teacher’s log (or course diary notes) is analyzed. The analysis locates instances where the teacher connects to different actants such as the climate change phenomenon, the curricula, the course plan, and student-teachers. In some instances, these actants suggest ways of doing that contradict each other. These all become evident as signs of hesitation by the teacher at specific moments of planning or enactment. The actants, moreover, reserve to create different narratives about what mathematics should be utilized and demands reflexive choices by the teacher over which narrative to follow. Such hesitations might also be traced back to how the arguments for choosing one narrative over the other are being constructed. In short, the analysis shows that since diverse arguments can be narrated, one might be left with the feeling of missing something in just following one. It is a rather vulnerable situation the teacher is in; risking being hold accountable for not dealing with the mathematical content that has good arguments for it to be dealt with, but, yet, knowing that taking this risk allows mathematics to enter the social.

In this paper, we discuss how critical mathematics education (CME) and actor–networktheory (ANT) come together in a mathematics teacher education course that focuses on the thematiccontext of climate change to study statistics. Acknowledging the complexity that student teachersencounter when asked to move from a mainly instrumental treatment of statistics toward a criticalforeground of data in society, we turn to explore the actant networks, as theorized by ANT, utilized bystudent teachers when asked to imagine teaching from a CME perspective. For this, our study is basedon a series of interviews with student teachers who participated in a statistics course where pollutiondata graphs were discussed, inquiring about their role as future critical mathematics teachers. Thetranscribed interviews, analyzed through ANT, inform us as to how student teachers’ foregrounds arebeing shaped by actants such as the curriculum, social justice, democracy, and source critique, amongothers. Based on the above, we recommend that teacher education should invite active discussion ofthe complexity created when a CME perspective is required. This move would allow for a criticalapproach to critical mathematics education itself that could prepare student teachers to navigate,instead of ignoring or opposing, such complexity.

Dans cette étude, nous discutons de la complexité à laquelle sont confrontés les enseignantset les élèves-enseignants lorsque l'enseignement des mathématiques critiques et le changementclimatique sont intégrés dans un cadre d'enseignement spécifique faisant partie d'un programme deformation des enseignants d'une grande université en Suède.

The overall goal of the research project presented here is to investigate and produce knowledge about how students and teachers are learning mathematics when presented with mathematics in the context of climate change. In order to address this question, some ethical issues will be taken into account. First, there is a brief overview of different ethical issues concerning the questions, “Is there is an ethical responsibility to bring the concept of climate change into the mathematical learning situation?”. Secondly, I will present the school-based-research. A number of lessons will be created, and an overview of the content of those will be presented here. They will contain, ethical considerations but also mathematical models and different perspectives on climate change, for the students to discuss and engage in.