Peter Appelbaum
is Professor of Mathematics Education, and Director of Education Studies and Art Education Programs at Arcadia University in suburban Philadelphia, USA. He has worked for over 40 years in the preparation and professional development of teachers and as a musician/composer. An innovator with new and unusual ways to use and learn mathematics as the art that creates communities characterized by joy, a can-do attitude, and the courage to act on their convictions, he is the author, among others, of Embracing Mathematics: On Becoming a Teacher and Changing with Mathematics (Routledge), and Popular Culture, Educational Discourse, and Mathematics (SUNY Press).
Appelbaum identifies his undergraduate major in ethnomusicology and world music as solidifying his culturally embedded orientation to education through local conceptions of time and space in our postcolonial world. His subsequent doctoral studies in mathematics and in the social and philosophical foundations of education helped him to think deeply about mathematical ways of being and to embrace the pursuit of equity and diversity in his work. Most recently he is involved with queer and indigenous conceptions of mathematics education, reforms of prison education world-wide, and the promotion of youth leadership for mathematics and environmental post-human education through the Youth Mathematician Laureate Project.