Parallel Session: 4.3

L 4.3

Session: L

Parallel Session: 4.3

Research Domain: Learning and Teaching in Post-Compulsory and Higher Education

Pauline Davis, Laura Black, Paul Hernandez-Martinez, Maria Pampaka, Geoff Wake, Julian Williams

University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Students’ mathematical identity and its relation to classroom mathematics pedagogic practice.

In this paper we address the following questions:

(i) How do various students talk about their experiences of different pedagogies/teaching & learning cultures in relation to mathematics?

(ii) How can different pedagogic mathematics cultures mediate mathematical identity, especially for those at risk of marginalisation from mathematics?

In particularly, we provide comparison of data from Use of Mathematics AS (with its emphasis on modeling, use of technology and coursework) and AS Mathematics students/classrooms.The paper draws on case studies of nine AS and Use of Maths classrooms in five 6fFE courses, selected for diversity e.g. in socioeconomic background and mathematics GCSE entry grade requirements. It draws on analysis of repeated interviews with more than fifty students, teacher interviews and of videos of the numerous lessons we observed.

We draw on socio-cultural theory, particularly Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, to provide a view of identity as in dialectical relation to practice. This relation we refer to as identity/practice. With regard to capturing students’ mathematical identity/practice, we draw on both interview and observational data, including artefacts of students mathematical work. We analyse these for their self-identity and their identity-in-practice (Holland et.al.) in relation to the cultural models (Gee, 1999), especially cultural models (i.e. beliefs which inform action) about learning maths, which they use as discursive tools for self-authoring during the interview event or when in situ during maths classes.

However, as anticipated we found that Use of Mathematics and MathematicsAS courses are not implemented in distinctly simple ‘didactic’ versus ‘inquiry-based, sociable’ ways, and that the classroom culture is influenced by a complex of factors. For instance, in one college, we see a macro-discourse of academic performativity mediating mathematics classroom pedagogic practice and mathematics learner identity. We see this discourse at work in the talk of many students (as well as in the talk of the teachers) and examine how it mediates their mathematical identities. Comparison of AS Mathematics and Use of Maths classrooms, however, shows the influence of curriculum design captured in local practice and some differences in how students negotiate their cultural models about mathematics. We present a discourse analysis of students’ identity/practice that is contextualised within the cases concerned, and draw comparisons across studies.

In another case study classroom, we see a sociable mathematics at work and we examine the possibility that ‘sociability’ in mathematics pedagogy can afford the acquisition of maths as a practice (hence influencing their mathematical identities) by students who otherwise may be on the margins. Here we see connections with others, especially with the work of Boaler & Greeno, Solomon, Morais and many others.

The case studies provide evidence, in artefacts of students’ work and in the ways they describe learning mathematics to suggest that Use of Maths AS can mediate a qualitatively different classroom mathematics pedagogies and ways of identifying with learning mathematics.

References

Gee, J. P. (1999) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method London: Routledge

Holland, D., Lachicotte, J., Skinner, D. and Cain, C.(1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, Mass: HarvardUniversity Press