Discourses
Stories about the world but…
“Fictions functioning in truth’ (Valerie Walkerdine)
'Practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.' (Michel Foucault 1972, p.49) e.g. ‘homosexual’
MATHS IS HARD!
Independent research shows that Mathematics is the most challenging subject at A-level. Nationally, last year's AS results in maths were far worse than any other subject.
If you don't really enjoy Maths and if you're not genuinely good at it, don't do it! Two years of struggling and constantly being 'stuck' is not an experience we would wish on anyone.
Success at A-level Mathematics usually depends on:
Positive attitudes. Do you enjoy solving problems? Do you like Maths?
Persistence. Do you give up easily and ask for help? Or do you prefer to get the answer for yourself?
Independence. Do you need spoon-feeding every step of the way? Can you learn it by yourself?
Maths is hard:
relies on the discourse of hard vs. easy subjects…
relies on the discourse that knowledge is separable into different subjects that have stable identities and that can be arranged in a hierarchy, links to value and to ideas of what knowledge is hardest, best, purest, most rational…
relies on discourses of hardness, slippage into discourses around masculinity and sexuality, hard has unspoken opposites, the obvious one is easy but there’s also soft and yielding…
What makes...
examinations / setting by ability / specialist schools / gifted and talented / compulsory maths / tiered assessment / the A* grade
...possible?
How do discourses of maths play within these relations?
What positions are possible for learners and teachers to take up within these discourses?
Discourse and identity
'Why do people engage in specific practices?' becomes 'How do specific practices do people?' (Flax 2002) and both are held simultaneously…
Power is "not something that is acquired, seized, or shared. Something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations". Power is in relationships that exist in work places, families and schools, and "major dominations are the hegemonic effects that are sustained by all these confrontations" (Michel Foucault 1976, p.94).
I have always found this idea of Foucault's very important because…it presupposes not an ideology foisted upon but separate from subjects, but practices of disciplining and regulation which are, at the same time, practices for the formation of subjects. (Valerie Walkerdine 1997, p.15)
If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression.(Michel Foucault 1980, p.119)
Yasser is referred to by his teacher as 'naturally able' and is clearly marked out as different. He is sometimes given different work to do and on one occasion is asked to teach the class his method for tackling quadratic inequalities. At first he tries to explain his solution verbally, but this proves difficult so he suggests, 'shall I write it?' Mrs Sawyer responds, 'please do.' When Yasser writes up his solution there are many looks from students that combine amusement and bemusement. Imran declares 'that is so complicated, I've never seen that in my life!' Next to him AJ has his hand up, while Saeed says to his teacher 'he's clever isn't he?' then adding 'he should do further maths.' She agrees with him, 'he should but he's busy doing other things.' Saeed asks her 'why don't you encourage him to do further maths?' She responds, 'I've tried, it's his choice.' Yasser has now completed writing up not just his original solution but also the graph that Mrs Sawyer asked him to do when his first approach appeared obscure. AJ asks, 'What is that?' and then repeats the question. Sanjay has a furrowed brow and his hand up. Then Mrs Sawyer steps in and goes up to the board and explains the graphical method while leaving up Yasser's work because 'it is worthy of honour.' She further suggests that you could make sense of his diagram by putting numbers in 'but you've done it theoretically like a good pure mathematician.'
References
Theory trading cards can be found at:
Data taken from: Mendick, H. (2006) Masculinities in mathematics. Maidenhead: Open University Press (McGraw-Hill Education).
Flax, J. (2002) 'Concern for the self': rethinking subjectivity and ethics. Paper presented to the Centre for Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, London, England, 3 July.
Foucault, M. (1972) The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1976) The history of sexuality (volume 1): the will to knowledge. London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980) in C. Gordon (ed. Power/knowledge. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Walkerdine, V. (1997) Daddy's girl. Hampshire: Macmillan.