Associate Professor Kate le Roux

I am an Associate Professor in Language Development for Science and Engineering in the Academic Development Programme in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I have academic qualifications in pure mathematics, English language and literature, teaching, and mathematics education research. My research, teaching, education development, and leadership are located in the interplay of languages, literacies, and mathematics in STEM knowledge making, in transitions from school into and through university. Attending to notions of equity, access, power, justice, (re)design, relations, and place in multilingual contexts, I ask questions of: What mathematics knowledges and ways of knowing may be relevant (for students, society, the Earth) at a contemporary university in a globally connected world? And using what education practices, languages, and literacies? I draw theoretically and methodologically on: critical scholarship in mathematics education within the socio-political and socio-ecological, and in languages and literacies; and a Southern knowledges approach to decolonial thought.

I was awarded my PhD in Mathematics Education by the University of the Witwatersrand in 2011. At UCT I have served as director of the Centre for Research in Engineering and Science Education at the University of Cape Town, and Chair of the CHED Faculty Research Committee. Internationally, I was a Mandela Mellon Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & American Research at Harvard University in 2014, and am a long-standing member of the International Committee on Mathematics Education and Society. Recently, I co-chaired the Topic Study Group: ‘Social and Political Dimensions of Mathematics Education’ for the 14th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME14), and the Worldwide Universities Network funded project: ‘Innovating the mathematics curriculum in times of change: Towards local and global relevance’. I currently co-chair the five-year long International Commission on Mathematics Instruction (ICMI) Study 27, ‘Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological’ (https://icmistudy27.sciencesconf.org/). 

More information about my research publications can be found at: http://www.ldg.uct.ac.za/node/1195951 ;

http://uct.academia.edu/KateLeRoux ;

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kate_Le_Roux

Email: Kate.leroux@uct.ac.za