Teaching math for social justice

I find Gustein’s article “So one question leads to another: using mathematics to develop a pedagogy of questioning”, and the ‘pedagogy of questioning’ itself very inspiring. Mr. Rico is a gifted teacher and not every teacher can teach the way he did/does. Using real-world project in which students use mathematics as a principle analytical tool to investigate social issues is fascinating. I also felt the same while I was reading Civil’s article “Building on community knowledge: an avenue to equity in mathematics education”. The Funds of Knowledge for Teaching (FKT) project, as Civil (2007) describes is grounded on the theory that every community has skills, knowledge, and capability to provide strategic resource for classroom practice. There are great deals of learning aspects in construction and gardening projects in second-grade classroom in elementary school. However, I believe the greatest ones are that parents contribute their expertise to classroom as resources, and that the children lead the curriculum.
While I was reading through these articles I thought of my own experience when I was teaching in a program in a college a few years ago. During the school program mapping /remapping, school decided that Global Citizenship and Equity (GC&E) must be mapped across the programs at the course level as the courses learning outcomes. I occasionally pointed out political, social, and/or economic issues in my classrooms, and with students spent a few minutes discussing such topics besides the subject matter. Nevertheless, I had no idea how to map GC&E in the mathematics and science courses. Eric Gustein’s work made me think about who and where I am as a teacher, and I realized as Civic (2007) states how limiting my teaching knowledge is. I have been sort of using ‘pedagogy of questioning’ and real-world problems and projects in my classrooms, but I should admit that not in the way Gustine did/ has been doing.
I am very impressed by the ideas of applying FKT and ‘pedagogy of questioning’ in which as Gustein (2007) argues “students would learn and use mathematics as a way to question, understand, challenge, and critique the world” (p.52) and as a way to ‘teach for social justice’. If I were a primary school or middle school teacher I would try to do the same in my classroom. Nonetheless, I am wondering if mathematics and science teachers in adult education system also should use such methods; for example, for the purpose of social justice in the college and university courses.