BalChandra Luitel
 | To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. --- Joseph Chilton Pearce I have been a mathematics teacher educator in Nepal since 1998 after the completion of my first Master’s degree in mathematics education. From 1998 to 2001, I was involved in an innovative in-service teacher education program that could be an example how a university and local communities can work together to improve the quality of education in schools. In 2002, I came to Perth to pursue further studies in mathematics education. I completed a postgraduate diploma and MSc in mathematics education by the end of 2003 under an AusAid Scholarship. After my return in 2004, I took initiatives for developing and launching two mathematics teacher education programs in my university. And, my research team received a funding support from the UNESCO for an innovative research project that aimed at developing curriculum resource materials by using people’s everyday cultural practices. My Master’s research project (completed in 2003) examined the culturally decontextualised nature of mathematics that I experienced as a student, mathematics teacher and teacher educator. By using an autoethnographic methodology, I have performed narrative envisioning of an inclusive mathematics education. This research project has also helped recognise my creative potentials that is useful for transforming my own pedagogical practices from a didactic teacher to a teacher whose pedagogies are guided by emancipatory interests. My nearly completed doctoral dissertation has continued to address the protracted problem of the decontextualised nature of mathematics education, which un/wittingly prevents many school students from gaining full access to powerful mathematical ideas. With an emphasis on envisioning, I have developed a mathematics curriculum model with which to implement creative and innovative pedagogies that help students gain access to much needed mathematical skills and knowledge required for critical and active citizenship. More so, my inquiry has investigated a number of pedagogical approaches that offer innovative ways of constructing pedagogical knowledge that can harness students’ creative understanding of mathematics. My epistemology of research and professional practice is informed by multiple paradigms of educational research and philosophy, such as interpretivism, pragmatism, criticalism, post/modernism and integralism, to name a few. Unsurprisingly, I draw from self-study, Wisdom and Cultural Traditions (mainly from Vedic and Buddhist Traditions--The Gita, Vedanta, Shamkhya, Madhyamika, Zen, Crazy Wisdom, Integralism... ), transformative thinking, various forms of imagination and inclusive logics to address otherwise unaddressed research issues, problems and agendas of mathematics education through conventional philosophies and research paradigms. Apart from this I have been an active member of Transformative Education Research Group (TERG), founded in 2006 under the leadership of Peter Taylor. In 2008, I have organised 12+ TERG seminars that include cutting edge research agendas, such as dilemma methods of science teaching, transformational governance, culturally situated design tools, ethnomathematics and alternative research logics in science and mathematics education, to name a few. Best Wishes and Namaste Bal Chandra
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