What's average?

This paper reports on the learning of a group of teachers engaged in an action research project to develop critical numeracy classrooms. The teachers initially explored how contexts in the media could be used as bases for activities to encourage student discernment and critical thinking about the appropriate use of the underlying mathematical concepts. As a result they found it is better to embed critical thinking in the design of whole units of study rather than just to treat it as an add-on to the mathematics curriculum. The following suggests a possible unit of study around the topic of average that aims to build students' capacities for critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]