The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased attention to the critical mathematical literacy of citizens in the United States and around the world. A statistically and mathematically literate society is crucial for ensuring that citizens are able to sift through political rhetoric to maintain life-saving procedures such as social distancing and other infection dampening efforts. Additionally, recent civil unrest due to the disproportionate killings of Black men by police provokes investigation into the public’s mathematical literacy. In this paper, we investigate adolescent students’ critical mathematics consciousness and mathematics literacy as they reason through two interview tasks on the coronavirus and police shooting data. Drawing on Frankenstein’s program of Critical Mathematics Education, we introduce an analytic framework for documenting the critical mathematics consciousness of adolescent students. We interviewed fifteen 14- to 16-year-old students as they solved five tasks designed to elicit their critical and ethical mathematical awareness. Our findings indicate that students exhibit very little critical mathematics consciousness in the context of the police problem but show awareness that data can be presented in ways that manipulate the public’s emotions in the coronavirus problem. We conclude the paper with a discussion of implications for designing future instruction to support students’ growth in critical mathematics consciousness.

COVID-19 大流行的出现使人们越来越关注美国和世界各地公民的关键数学素养。一个具有统计和数学素养的社会对于确保公民能够筛选政治言论以维持挽救生命的程序（例如保持社交距离和其他抑制感染的努力）至关重要。此外，最近因警察不成比例地杀害黑人而引起的内乱引发了对公众数学素养的调查。在本文中，我们通过关于冠状病毒和警察枪击数据的两项采访任务来调查青少年学生在推理过程中的批判性数学意识和数学素养。借鉴科学怪人的批判性数学教育计划，我们引入了一个分析框架来记录青少年学生的批判性数学意识。我们采访了 15 名 14 至 16 岁的学生，他们解决了五项旨在激发他们批判性和道德数学意识的任务。我们的研究结果表明，学生在警察问题的背景下表现出很少的批判性数学意识，但他们意识到数据可以以操纵公众在冠状病毒问题中的情绪的方式呈现。最后，我们讨论了设计未来教学以支持学生在批判性数学意识中成长的意义。我们采访了 15 名 14 至 16 岁的学生，他们解决了五项旨在激发他们批判性和道德数学意识的任务。我们的研究结果表明，学生在警察问题的背景下表现出很少的批判性数学意识，但他们意识到数据可以以操纵公众在冠状病毒问题中的情绪的方式呈现。最后，我们讨论了设计未来教学以支持学生在批判性数学意识中成长的意义。我们采访了 15 名 14 至 16 岁的学生，他们解决了五项旨在激发他们批判性和道德数学意识的任务。我们的研究结果表明，学生在警察问题的背景下表现出很少的批判性数学意识，但他们意识到数据可以以操纵公众在冠状病毒问题中的情绪的方式呈现。最后，我们讨论了设计未来教学以支持学生在批判性数学意识中成长的意义。