Mathematics beyond and across the curriculum

In this chapter, we address the issue of cross-curricular teaching and learning in mathematics education from different viewpoints and base our discussion on both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence. A pivotal question is why school mathematics is frequently conceived as difficult to integrate with other subjects, sometimes even consciously left out when teachers plan for cross-curricular activities. We argue that the marginal position of mathematics within cross-curricular teaching and learning can be explained by the dominance of an instrumental view on mathematics and its learning. If mathematics education is instead viewed from a complementary perspective, from a relational view, we argue that a cross-curricular educational context could provide a meaningful, realistic setting in which to engage in doing mathematics and making learners’ mathematical knowledge less inert.