Mathematical tasks for living together: using difference as a starting point

Abstract

One of today's great challenges in education is to create conditions for everyone to live together, to recognize differences and to understand them. In this paper we present part of an ongoing study that aims at answering the following research question: Can mathematical tasks based on differences contribute to learning to live together? Two tasks and the comments from 4 pre-service teachers about those tasks are presented. Preliminary results indicate that pre-service teachers recognize the potential of such tasks for learning to live together.