(Re)Constructing the Heart of Mathematics Education: Ethics as First Philosophy in Research and Praxis

Despite many decades of lip service toward equity and social justice, Mathematics Education as a field still tends to reify and reconstitute old violences in new form rather than actually eschewing those violences. In this chapter, we argue that genuine growth for our research and pedagogical community necessitates a re-envisioning of the fundamental axio-onto-epistemic hierarchies we tend to take for granted, beginning with a recentering of Axiology and especially ethics as existing prior to (and in conjunction with) onto-epistemology. We begin with a theoretical exploration how foregrounding Axiology and the Ethics of the Encounter can help clarify the ongoing disconnect between our field’s emancipatory goals and its reality which we then complement with a more localized analysis of how these broad ideological trends can play out in the lived experiences of Marginalized researchers, concluding with a call to action: If we desire a more just world in substance and not just superficial esthetic, we must fundamentally build our community on a foundation of Radical (root-grasping) Love, and we must embody that spirit of Radical Love in both thought and action.