Change is a human as well as a cultural attribute. However, in order for change to be constructive, it must be accompanied by leadership qualities, inside and outside the classroom, to encourage honest and genuine debates. Adults inevitably play a significant role in the shaping of their society, its institutions and its future. These debates, in a mathematics classroom, will lead adults to develop higher levels of critical and reflective thinking, both essential for empowerment and the advancement of technology and education.

In his presentation, Dr. Khoury  will elaborate on the implications of teaching adults through dialogue (the Socratic Method) as a means of building confidence in their ability to learn and do mathematics. This method encourages students to reason rather than appeal to their teacher's authority; it allows members of the mathematics classroom the opportunity to know one another [all] as members of a community of intellectuals.

He will explain further how critical and reflective thinking evolve when we venture into other worlds - and, equally, into the worlds of others - with courage, hope, wisdom and the willingness to understand them with a deep sense of appreciation for others' culture and intellectual originality. It is through such excursions that thinking becomes both valuable and important.

The implications for such pedagogy are essential to both mathematics education and citizenship. This approach allows individuals to search for the underlying hypotheses and assumptions that contribute to the shaping of one's own understanding of both mathematics and society.