Social Representations of Mathematics

Revista de Educação Matemática

Starting with the question: “Mathematics, what is this tension?”, this article summarizes a study with the objective of unveiling the social representations of Mathematics and understand how a group of first year high school students at a Federal Institute in Minas Gerais relate to this discipline. We sought support in Serge Moscovici's Social Representations Theory, complemented by Denise Jodelet, and used a questionnaire and interviews to obtain information about their experiences, beliefs, intuitions and feelings with Mathematics throughout their school life. The results indicated that depending on the tensions experienced in this discipline, students represent it in different ways. We consider the importance of these representations as something that affects their way of thinking, feeling and acting. They can enjoy it or not, feel afraid or not in the face of this discipline, be more or less dedicated to studies, as a result of the social representations they have of Mathema...

International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2015

This paper reports a qualitative research that identifies Mexican high school students' social representations of mathematics. For this purpose, the social representations of 'mathematics', 'learning mathematics' and 'teaching mathematics' were identified in a group of 50 students. Focus group interviews were carried out in order to obtain the data. The constant comparative style was the strategy used for the data analysis because it allowed the categories to emerge from the data. The students' social representations are: (A) Mathematics is.. .(1) important for daily life, (2) important for careers and for life, (3) important because it is in everything that surrounds us, (4) a way to solve problems of daily life, (5) calculations and operations with numbers, (6) complex and difficult, (7) exact and (6) a subject that develops thinking skills; (B) To learn mathematics is.. .(1) to possess knowledge to solve problems, (2) to be able to solve everyday problems, (3) to be able to make calculations and operations, and (4) to think logically to be able to solve problems; and (C) To teach mathematics is.. .(1) to transmit knowledge, (2) to know to share it, (3) to transmit the reasoning ability, and (4) to show how to solve problems.

Aim of this study is identify how high school students see mathematicians by the pictures they visualized. In accordance with this purpose phenomenology pattern which is one of the qualitative patterns was used as a research pattern. The study was carried out with 150 volunteered high school students. The data collection tool to be used in this study consists of four parts. The first part includes questions to determine demographic characteristics of students, second part include drawing box prepared to define images of students towards mathematicians and open ended questions towards describing drawing, third part includes the presented options to define the image sources towards mathematicians and the fourth part includes open-ended questions to determine famous mathematicians and reasons. The images that students draw about mathematicians were analyzed by the content analyses method. It is believed that the results from at the end of the study will be helpful to training of mathematics teacher.

Creative Education, 2022

I explore and describe learners’ mathematical social identities and their implications for the learners’ achievements in mathematics learning. A qualitative research method was conducted with a purposeful sample of one school in Gauteng Province, South Africa; a total of ten mathematics learners and three mathematics teachers were interviewed, and the mathematics learners’ parents completed questionnaires. The data acquired were presented and critically discussed. It became evident that mathematics learners and others viewed learners’ attitudes and beliefs toward mathematics learning as natural. They are however socially constructed. Race and gender, as well as their capabilities, are not significant in the learners’ achievements in mathematics learning. The assumptions have been that most theorists’ writings on learners’ mathematical social identities and their achievements in mathematics learning are very ambiguous and confusing. This worsens the problem. Most theorists have used terminologies like mindsets, beliefs, attitudes, capability, interest, like, dislike, enjoyment, daunting and phobia. These terms make the learners, as well as others, believe that there might be something unique generating the attributes; it is what they are born with, as well as internal psychological phenomena that the mathematics learners either have or do not have. I offer conclusions and recommendations supported by the data discussed for effective mathematics learning and achievement in Gauteng Province, South Africa and beyond.

mathematics education research during the last two decades involving what has been called the "social turn" (Lerman, 2000). Researchers concerned with a wide variety of issues within mathematics education have come increasingly to see the inseparability of culture, context and cognition. Even within research that focuses primarily on cognitive aspects of learning and knowledge, notions of situated learning and distributed knowledge (Lave & Wenger, 1991) are widely used, as well as other theoretical perspectives that emphasise social aspects of learning, drawing in particular on Vygotskian psychology (Vygotsky, 1978). Moving beyond seeing mathematics learning solely as the endeavour of individual students and teachers has been reflected in a broader conceptualization of the subject matter of the field of mathematics education research. Valero (2010) has drawn our attention to the complexity of the networks of communities, interest groups and practices relevant to mathematics education and to the need for research to address this multiplicity of social practices and the connections between them. We are thus aware of the importance of studying the various communities and practices in which students and teachers participate, both within the classroom and beyond. We recognise the influence of policy and institutional structures and constraints at local, national and international levels. We appreciate the impact of the various discourses available inside and outside the school-discourses in the sense written with a capital D by Gee (1996) and defined as incorporating "theories" about what is normal and right and structuring the kinds of identities available to participants. This increasing attention to social aspects of learning has been accompanied by a growth in research foregrounding issues of social justice. Differing levels of achievement in mathematics in particular as well as in education as a whole have been associated with membership of various social groups and the effects of such factors as gender, ethnicity, class and linguistic background on the achievement of students in school mathematics have long been a focus of study. However, our ways of understanding the phenomenon of school failure have developed. In particular, there has been a move from locating the reasons for failure in the characteristics of the individuals concerned or of their communities towards seeking to understand how the

Research in Mathematics Education, 2000

This paper reports initial findings of a survey that aims to explore the range of public images of mathematics. Over 500 adults aged 16+ from all walks of life responded the short questionnaire given. Initial findings show that public images of mathematics and learning mathematics were given in the forms of propositions expressing opinions and views or in the form of metaphors. Five main categories of responses emerged from the analysis. They are (a) attitudes towards mathematics and its learning; (b) beliefs about respondents' own mathematical abilities; (c) descriptions of the process of learning mathematics; (d) epistemology and views of the nature (?f mathematics; and (e) values and goals in mathematics education. Some methodological issues and examples of each category are given and discussed in the paper.

Science & Education, 1992

Two dichotomies in the philosophy of mathematics are discussed: the prescriptive--descriptive distinction, and the process-product distinction. By focusing on prescriptive matters, and on mathematics as a product, standard philosophy of mathematics has overlooked legitimate and pedagogically rewarding questions that highlight mathematics as a process of knowing which has social dimensions. In contrast the social-constructivist view introduced here can affect the aims, content, teaching approaches, implicit values, and assessment of the mathematics curriculum, and above all else, the beliefs and practices of the mathematics teacher.

In this paper we try to characterize a successful mathematical communication. In this regard, we utilize the notions of “Parent”, “Child”, “Adult” introduced by T. Harris to recognize different internal mathematical personifications in students and teachers [1]. We introduce “Emotion” and “Reason” as two external personifications, which represent social mathematical interactions. We analyze these educational personifications in two educational systems. The first educational system is a system which is oriented towards problem solving. Then we try to give a model for mathematical creativity and implement the above personifications in that model. As a result a few educational perspectives are introduced. Then we try to analyze these personifications in an educational system which is oriented towards developing mathematical maturity rather than emphasizing on problem solving. We give another model for mathematical creativity with this new perspective and end up with a few different educational perspectives. Along the path, we try to give a model for group thinking and introduce the notion of “atlas of history of concepts”.

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, 1993

2013

The paper is an attempt to understand the historical processes by which mathematics and its publics have come to imagine each other in our society, by looking into two different instances from the past. Introducing the kaṇakkatikāram tradition of engaging with mathematics in the Tamil speaking region, we argue how it framed mathematics as both skill and useful knowledge while inviting its public to make themselves clever and prudent. It also claimed for itself a sense of virtuosity through systematic exposition of a theory of its own computational practice. In the second instance discussed, we argue how the institutional components of this tradition became part of a pedagogic apparatus in Europe as well as part of colonial education, while becoming part of a Christian value system of emulation and perseverance while contending with the emergent liberal ethos of education in early nineteenth century Britain.