Possibilities/limits of Solidary Service-Learning

Abstract

From a Latin American perspective, Solidary Service-Learning (AySS) is understood as a pedagogical paradigm and a philosophy of education. In the involvement of an educational institution with the community, the “learning” dimension is fed back with the “service” dimension: the service given-received has to do with the quality of the learning and the knowledge involved. And “solidarity” is not a vertical phenomenon but a horizontal one, a “doing together with” with mutual benefit, and with the creation of community ties to address common needs.

As the nucleus of the field work of a doctoral research, an AySS experience was developed in an Institute of Secondary Education (IES), in Getafe (Madrid). It was a context of "middle class students / teachers", with "little diversity" ethnic-linguistic-etc. Not always object of interest from a Mathematics Education (ME) perspective "for social justice/democracy/equity/etc.", from Ethnomathematics initiatives, or similar. But mathematical schooling generates numerous stratifications in the school and the educational system, which are translated into systems of accreditation, hierarchy and symbolic power in modern capitalist societies. And the group of students, professors and researchers involved in this experience are part of such selection/accreditation/exclusion machinery.

The experience consisted of researching and proposing mathematical games and activities for residences for the elderly, which would be part, with the help of the nursing home therapists and the agreement of the directors, of the occupational therapy activities planned in the residences, for cognitive stimulation. Some results of this research are offered in this article. Results will be referred to as emerging senses-events from the bowels of AySS, analyzing the possibilities and limits that this paradigm offers us to address some research concerns from a socio-political perspective in ME.