Engagement with perspectives and concepts that are used in the discipline specific inquiry in mathematics education help in analyzing varied situations seen in day-to-day practice of mathematics teaching and learning and drafting of policies and curricula. This is likely to help MA Education students develop their own perspectives, judgments and opinions, who may decide to work with mathematics students or teachers or curriculum and material development in mathematics. It may also deepen their philosophical, sociological and psychological understanding, by applying them to the analysis of teaching and learning of a subject like mathematics.

The course Knowledge in Mathematics is intended to help students think about mathematics and think mathematically. The Curriculum and Pedagogy of Mathematics course aims to complement the other course by engaging students with perspectives which could guide us in creating classrooms where students and teachers may be successful in learning and teaching mathematics respectively. The course would begin with the exploration of the ways in which we make decisions about the purpose of teaching mathematics and how it then manifests in the curriculum of mathematics at school level. Subsequently, the course would provide perspectives on children’s learning of mathematics meaningfully and thereby what is required for teaching it. This is likely to provide an imagination of the classroom as well as possible ways of organizing teaching and learning. Discussions on assessment are crucial to sustain meaningful teaching and learning of mathematics. Though discussions on issues of equity will cut through all the units in the ways curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment will be framed, the course would specifically address issues of equity and access for particular sections of population in mathematics classrooms in the last unit substantively. The course would attempt throughout to make use of the perspectives by applying them in relevant contexts.