Critiquing Bourdieu: Implications for doing critical pedagogy in the mathematics classroom

Bourdieu’s ideas are highly influential amongst critical mathematics education theorists, and yet there is little consensus on how they might be applied to classroom practice. This paper develops a critique of Bourdieu’s theoretical tools that offers greater insight for practitioners. We argue that a greater understanding of the dialectic between the use value and exchange value of school mathematics can help in exposing and challenging exploitative practices. Through applying our critique to the ‘Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice’ research project, we generate further insight that will inform others committed to doing critical pedagogy in the mathematics classroom