[Maths-Education] Socio-Mathematical Identity

Thu Apr 1 10:59:32 BST 2010

Dear colleagues

This is an interesting discussion about Socio-Mathematical Identity. I do not wish to add anything  except to let you know of an excellent recent and relevant doctoral thesis submitted successfully to University Exeter.

A SOCIOCULTURAL STUDY OF MATHEMATICAL AND OTHER IDENTITIES OF „STRUGGLING‟ TEENAGE BOYS
Submitted by Melinda Evelyn Browne, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for
the degree of Doctor of Education in Mathematics Education,
September, 2009.

This will be published in its entirety in PoME journal 26 (summer 2011) but if you would like to see it before then please contact Melinda either for a copy or for permission for me to send you a copy for your private use.

Melinda E. Browne  mb282 at exeter.ac.uk<mailto:mb282 at exeter.ac.uk>

To whet your appetite here is a passage I quoted from Melinda  in a paper (Ernest, 2010: 99) in a recent issue of Complicity.

A ‘tracing‘ is like a tree because it grows by reproducing the same pattern in its branches and leaves. On the other hand, a ‘map‘ is in a constant state of flux; a “map is open and connectable in all its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2007, p. 12). Whilst tracings represent structures that get reproduced by repetition like a genetic code, maps are rhizomes that increase their power by increasing their connections. According to Deleuze and Guattari (2007), mathematics resists tracing: Like a map, it is open-ended and teeming with connections. Gracefully put, the learner of school mathematics is immersed in an expansive language, which unfolds like a map beckoning towards new territories. Though it is true that every human language, mathematics included, is invented by people and is meaningless without the company of some lived activity, the experience of exploring the ‘map‘ is, to me, an aesthetic state of ‘becoming.‘ (Browne 2009: 11-12)

Browne, M. E. (2009), A Sociocultural Study of Mathematical and Other Identities of ‘Struggling’ Teenage Boys, Unpublished Ed.D. Thesis, Exeter: University of Exeter Graduate School of Education.

Ernest, P. (2010) ‘Mathematics and Metaphor, A Response to Mowat & Davis’, Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, Vol. 7 (2010), No. 1: pp. 98-104.

See http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/issueslist.htm

Best wishes

Paul
__________________
Paul Ernest
Emeritus Professor
Graduate School of Education
University of Exeter
St Lukes, Heavitree Road
Exeter  EX1 2LU, UK
+44-(0)1392-264796
http://www.people.ex.ac.uk/PErnest/

Visiting Professor, HiST-ALT College, Trondheim, Norway
Visiting Professor, University of Oslo, Norway
Adjunct Professor, Hope University, Liverpool

See http://www.people.ex.ac.uk/PErnest/  for Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal - No. 24 on theme 'Mathematics and Art' -- (out since December 2009)

Papers for No. 25 on theme Critical Mathematics Education -- now sought (intended for August 2010)
________________________________________
From: maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of ruth topol [learndirect007 at yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: 31 March 2010 15:12
To: j.h.mason at open.ac.uk; Mathematics Education discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Maths-Education] Socio-Mathematical Identity

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... and if becoming a member of a community of practice has to do with being an outsider wanting to belong (and become), then it's about who's in and who's out - and what one was and what one's becoming.
 Is it really so hard to research?
 Couldn't  the focus be about learning in 2 contexts ... where one was and where one's going - and how one gets there and how one crosses the borders and boundaries to get there? (All much more than dragging cognitive stuff from 1 context to another as 'transfer')??

--- On Wed, 31/3/10, John Mason <jhmason27 at googlemail.com> wrote:

From: John Mason <jhmason27 at googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [Maths-Education] Socio-Mathematical Identity
To: chronaki at uth.gr, "Mathematics Education discussion forum" <maths-education at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Date: Wednesday, 31 March, 2010, 12:33

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Coming from a phenomenological stance ... being interested in 'what it
is like to be ...', it seems to me that if identity has any substance as
a construct (I am doubtful) then it must be manifested as "I see myself
as ..." with overtones of "I feel as though I belong, don't belong, am
on the edge of things etc." The problem with researching the construct
is that asking a direct question may create the phenomenon being
investigated. Consequently indirect probes will be needed. I wonder if
people's sense of community is sharpest when they feel excluded (for
whatever reason, including a combination of their own insecurity and
misreading other peoples' behaviour); belonging is often 'felt' as a
sense of flow, of merging, of belonging which may not be articulated.

JohnM

On 31/3/10 10:26, Anna Chronaki wrote:
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> Dear Ng,
> I think you are raising a very important not only epistemological, but also
> ontological, issue concerning how we go about researching 'identity' and
> especially 'learning identity' in mathematics education practices. It is
> something that I have also puzzled with in my research, partly because I
> have been involved in doing research with young children (I work in an early
> childhood department) and partly because I work with individuals/communities
> of the so-called marginalized groups and specifically with a Roma (or Gypsy
> or Chicano) community where people are not literate in terms of 'formal'
> mathematical genres and thus the stories they narrate about their personal
> trajectories demand that the researcher gets deeper from what the 'words'
> might seem to say. Attending only the narrative seems certainly not enough
> as you say, but in a way and sometimes seems to complement the
> 'performative' -what actually people try to do (or try to say) as they try
> to 'become' something. However, I have noticed that the
> narrative/performative dialectic also comes in when we try to account on
> gendered dimensions of 'identity'. But still the whole lot, although there
> are many attempts to construct terms - and define them well so that to
> operationalise their use with data, seems an unfinished process. A process
> that definitely demands to approach the 'research' itself as an unfinished
> text - a text that requires a different interpretation of our analysed data
> and of our relation to our data.
> I include here references for a few published articles. [I am not sure that
> the system allows me to attach pdfs -so, if you cannot find them easily get
> in touch with me directly].
>
> 1. Anna Chronaki. 2004.“Learning about 'learning identities" in the school
> arithmetic practice: The experience of two young minority Gypsy girls in the
> Greek context of education". In the European Journal of Psychology of
> Education: Special Issue on “The Social Mediation of Learning in Multiethnic
> Classrooms” Guest Editors: Guida de Abreu and Ed Elbers. Vol. XX, no 1,
> 61-74.
>
> 2. Anna Chronaki. (2008). An Entry to Dialogicality in the Maths Classroom:
> Encouraging Hybrid Learning Identities In M. César and K. Kumpulainen (eds.)
> Social Interactions in Multicultural Settings. Sense Publishers press (pp.
> 117-144).
>
> 3.Anna Chronaki. (in press). Troubling Essentialist identities: Performative
> mathematics and the politics of possibility. In M. Kontopodis, Ch. Wulf and
> B. Fichtner (eds). Children, Culture, Education: Cultural, Historical and
> Anthropological perspectives. New York: Springer Series: International
> Perspectives on Early Childhood Education.
>
> All the best for your research!
> Regards,
> Anna.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> [mailto:maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ng Foo
> Keong
> Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 6:00 PM
> To: maths-education at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> Subject: [Maths-Education] Socio-Mathematical Identity
>
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> hi everybody,
>
> thanks to everybody for your inputs.
>
> another big problem i have is my data and methodology.  i
> conducted over 10 interviews for each of my four cases (all
> adult pre-service teachers) over a year.  i also tried to take
> pictures of their artifacts, and some of their lesson plans to
> "corroborate" some of what they say, however, each person
> could/would volunteer different sets of things.  the only
> thing i have in common across all my four cases are the
> interview data  -- the volunteers' self-accounts.
>
> i do not have a hold over my volunteers.  for obvious reasons
> i cannot put a gun at them and say "give me all your artifacts".
> even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to give me things
> like their mathematical workbooks from primary school etc
> as these would have been thrown away.  all these make my
> research extremely difficult.
>
> can i still adopt a "narrative approach" (a la Sfard) to identity?
> are there non-narrative approaches?  can i make any claims
> based only on volunteers' stories about their (formal and
> informal) mathematical learning experiences?
>
> there are many nuggets in the data, i believe, that can
> contribute to a theory of identity (especially from non-mathematical
> daily life activities and other fields).  the problem is whether
> oral accounts alone are acceptable.  if not, is there a way out of
> this conundrum i myself in?
>
> thanks and regards,
> Ng, F.K.
> PhD student, Singapore
>
>
>