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Professional Publications & Contributions

• Marilyn Frankenstein (1998). "Goals for a Critical Mathematical Literacy Curriculum" in Lee, E., Menkart, D., & Okazawa-Rey, M (Eds.), Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide To K-12 Anti-Racist, Multcultural Education and Staff Development. Washington, D. C.: Network of Educators on the Americas.
• Arthur Powell & Marilyn Frankenstein (1997). Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education. Albany, N. Y: SUNY Press.
• Marilyn Frankenstein (1989). Relearning Mathematics. London: Free Association Books.

Additional Information

Professor Frankenstein combines her teaching with activism.  For example, she participated in an anti-Gulf War demonstration in San Francisco in January 1991, along with three friends and colleagues in mathematics education: Professor Marcelo Borba, University of Rio Claro, Brasil; Professor Arthur B. Powell, Rutgers University, Newark , NJ and co-author with her of various books and articles; and, Professor Marty Hoffman, Queens College, City University of New York.  They were in San Francisco that January to present a series of talks they had organized for the Mathematics Association Annual Meeting. Then, the United States started the Gulf War. Along with other mathematics educators in the Critical Mathematics Educators Group (founded by Arthur Powell, Prof. Frankenstein, and another colleague, Professor John Volmink, University of Durban, South Africa), they organized a group of mathematicians from the conference to participate in this anti-war march. They held signs, which read “Use Math against Poverty and Disease, Not for War.”

Using math for peace and justice is one of the central themes in the undergraduate courses in Quantitative Reasoning that Professor Frankenstein has been teaching at CPCS since 1978. She stresses how reasoning quantitatively about public and community issues is connected to using math to work for justice and to work against injustice. More details, including specific examples from her curriculum, are discussed in “Quantitative Reasoning in the CPCS Curriculum.”

To further develop this thread in mathematics education, Professor Frankenstein has been involved professionally with an international community of mathematics educators who are developing the emerging fields of Ethnomathematics. She has given seminars about her work at CPCS both nationally and internationally, including in Australia, Brasil, Canada, Denmark, EnglandMozambique, New Zealand, and South Africa.

At UMass, because of her interest in connecting education with peace and justice activities, Professor Frankenstein was a member of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG).  In the academic year (2003-2004), this group organized a meeting “Connecting the Dots” between globalization and the closing of access to public higher education.  They continued that theme in a workshop they presented at the Boston Social Forum, part of the World Social Forum movement in July, 2004, focusing on the struggle for free public higher education www.freehighered.org.  Prefessor Frankenstein strees the fact that her college education was free—the reason she had access to higher education—in the brief description of biographical notes.

In the field of Ethnomathematics, along with Arthur B. Powell,  Professor Frankensteiin co-edited Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997). In the field of critical mathematics, she has written numerous articles, summarized in “Goals for a Critical mathematical Literacy Curriculum,” Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development, edited by Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart, and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Washington, DC: Network of Educators on the Americas, 1998, pp.306-313. Arthur B. Powell and  Professor Frankenstein also completed an article on “Respecting Intellectual Diversity: An Ethnomathematical Perspective” and they worked on an ethnomathematics education book that focused on classroom applications. Also, Professor Frankenstien continues to revise her critical mathematics education textbook, Relearning Mathematics (London: Free Association Books, 1989).

Courses Taught:
•  Quantitative Reasoning
•  Understanding Arguments
•  Media Literacy