Critical mathematics education in Thai secondary classrooms: Barriers, opportunities, and implications for urban context-based instruction
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Nattakarn Poomkornsan 1 2 * , Pisith Nasee 1 , Omsin Jatuporn 1 , Jensamut Saengpun 1
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1 Chiang Mai University, THAILAND2 Nareerat School Phrae, THAILAND* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Critical mathematics education (CME) emerged in Western contexts that assume students will voice dissent and openly challenge mathematics as political. This qualitative phase 1 study examines how Thai secondary mathematics educators understand and enact CME in a hierarchical, examination-driven setting where those assumptions do not necessarily hold. Through semistructured interviews with five scholars and seven teachers, alongside observations of project-based instruction, thematic analysis produced three constructs. Depoliticization is the institutional process that removes political content from critical frameworks while retaining the language of critical thinking. Suppressed silence, inferred from teacher accounts and classroom observations rather than direct student data, describes critical awareness that students may hold but have learned not to voice. Gentle criticality describes critiques expressed through quiet questioning and community-oriented inquiry rather than open confrontation. As provisional constructs, they offer a vocabulary for theorizing CME in collectivist contexts not fully addressed by Western frameworks, grounding subsequent model development.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

PEDAGOGICAL RES, Volume 11, Issue 3, July 2026, Article No: em0280

https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/19018

Publication date: 26 Jul 2026

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