The status and context of change in mathematics education in Malawi

This article analyses the context and status of mathematics education reform in Malawi. It describes four interrelated developments in the reform of secondary education in general, and mathematics education in particular, in Malawi. These developments are concerned with attempts to increase access to secondary education for a majority of Malawians and to provide a mathematical education that is relevant to the needs of the current society. Although these are promising developments in line with the political context of Malawi, and although they aim at developing a more suitable curriculum for Malawi, I suggest that they are limited in two ways. First, participation in these reform processes has involved only a few individuals and neglected teachers and students from distance education centres who comprise the majority of participants in secondary education in Malawi. Secondly, the reform processes have proceeded with little empirical justification and qualitative understanding of the realities of schooling in general, and mathematics education in particular, in Malawi. The analysis in this article suggests that these limitations in the reform process are a function of an inadequate understanding of the social-contextual aspects of mathematics learning and what it means to provide an education that more broadly recognizes its democratic nature. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.