Mathematics Education and Democracy: An Open Landscape of Tensions, Uncertainties, and Challenges

In their classic study assuming the perspective of analytical philosophy, Benn and Peters (1959) relate democracy to notions such as justice, equality, freedom, and responsibility. A further investigation of justice is provided by Rawls (1971/1999), who begins his inquiry in analytic philosophy but expands his investigations beyond this tradition. Ideas about deliberative democracy, as for instance presented by Bohman and Rehg (1997), relate the notion of democracy to participation, negotiation, and dialogue. Democracy can also be related to citizenship, autonomy, human rights, and inclusion. Together all such notions belong to an extended family of open concepts.