Adult numeracy and the totally pedagogised society: PIAAC and other international surveys in the context of global educational policy on lifelong learning

This paper aims to discuss the emergence, form and likely effects of international surveys of adults’ skills by locating them in the global context of policies on education and Life Long Learning (LLL). It focuses on adults’ numeracy and discusses its conceptualisation and assessment in PIAAC (Project for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which is the most recent survey. Drawing on critical theoretical resources about new forms of governance in education and transformations in the pedagogic discourse, the paper further substantiates existing critiques of global policy trends, namely that they are motivated by human capital approaches to education and LLL. In particular, we show that the apparently commonsensical appeal of evaluative instruments like PISA and PIAAC is based on a competency model of knowledge, which embodies an exceedingly narrow notion of competence. Relatedly, the notional curricula promoted by such surveys potentially articulate a more radical idea of LLL, captured by Bernstein’s conception of trainability as the mode of socialisation into a Totally Pedagogised Society. The paper presents a dual approach to understanding international adult performance surveys in general – in that, besides deploying the theoretical resources already indicated, it also raises a number of methodological issues relevant to the valid interpretation of these studies’ results. Ultimately, it argues for the importance of mobilising resources from critical educational perspectives to support the development of potentially powerful knowledge like numeracy and to prevent its being reduced to a narrow competency

Mathematical images in advertising: constructing difference and shaping identity, in global consumer culture

Mathematics educators have long emphasised the importance of attitudes and feelings towards mathematics, as crucial in motivating (or not) its learning and use, and as influenced in turn by its social images. This paper is about images of mathematics. Our search for advertisements containing such images of in UK daily newspapers, during 2006-2008, found that 4.7% of editions included a ‘mathematical’ advert, compared with 1.7% in pilot work for 1994-2003. The incidence varied across type of newspaper, being correlated with class and gender profiles of the readership. Three-quarters of advertisements were classified as containing only very simple mathematics. ‘Semiotic-discursive’ analysis of selected advertisements suggests that they draw on mathematics not to inform, but to connote qualities like precision, certainty and authority. We discuss the discourse on mathematics in advertising as ‘quasi-pedagogic’ discourse, and argue that its oversimplified forms, being empty of mathematical content, become powerful means for regulating and ‘pedagogising’ today’s global consumers

Discursive positioning and emotion in school mathematics practices

Our approach to emotion in school mathematics draws on social semiotics, pedagogic discourse theory and psychoanalysis. Emotions are considered as socially organised and shaped by power relations; we portray emotion as a charge (of energy) attached to ideas or signifiers. We analyse transcripts from a small group solving problems in mathematics class, and from an individual student. The structural phase of analysis identifies positions available to subjects in the specific setting, using Bernstein's sociological approach to pedagogic discourse. The textual phase examines the use of language and other signs in interaction and describes the positionings taken up by particular pupils. We then focus on indicators of emotion, and find indications of excitement and anxiety, linked to participants' positionings. Finally we consider implications of our approach

Equations in a consumer culture: mathematical images in advertising

Affect energises the learning and use of mathematics; a key influence comes from the images of mathematics available in society. We sought advertisements containing such ‘images’ (e.g. mathematical expressions, equations or graphs) in 1600 editions of UK newspapers, over two recent three-month periods. We found that 4.7% of editions included a ‘mathematical’ advert, compared with 1.7% found in the pilot for 1994-2003. This supports the idea that mathematical images are being used more in advertising, paralleling the increase observed anecdotally in films. The incidence varied from 8.2% among the ‘quality’ papers, to 2.3% in mid-market, to 0.6% among the ‘populars’, suggesting a correlation with the social class of the readershi

Inequality in learning outcomes: Unveiling educational deprivation through complex network analysis

Understanding which factors are determinant to guarantee the human right to education entails the study of a large number of non-linear relationships among multiple agents and their impact on the properties of the entire system. Complex network analysis of large-scale assessment results provides a set of unique advantages over classical tools for facing the challenge of measuring inequality gaps in learning outcomes and recognizing those factors associated with educational deprivation, combining the richness of qualitative analysis with quantitative inferences. This study establishes two milestones in educational research using a census high-quality data from a Latin American country. The first one is to provide a direct method to recognize the structure of inequality and the relationship between social determinants as ethnicity, socioeconomic status of students, rurality of the area and type of school funding and educational deprivation. The second one focus in unveil and hierarchize educational and non-educational factors associated with the conditional distribution of learning outcomes. This contribution provides new tools to current theoretical framework for discovering non-trivial relationships in educational phenomena, helping policymakers to address the challenge of ensuring inclusive and equitable education for those historically marginalized population groups.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Mathematical images in advertising: constructing difference and shaping identity, in global consumer culture

Mathematics educators have long emphasised the importance of attitudes and feelings towards mathematics, as crucial in motivating (or not) its learning and use, and as influenced in turn by its social images. This paper is about images of mathematics. Our search for advertisements containing such images of in UK daily newspapers, during 2006-2008, found that 4.7% of editions included a ‘mathematical’ advert, compared with 1.7% in pilot work for 1994-2003. The incidence varied across type of newspaper, being correlated with class and gender profiles of the readership. Three-quarters of advertisements were classified as containing only very simple mathematics. ‘Semiotic-discursive’ analysis of selected advertisements suggests that they draw on mathematics not to inform, but to connote qualities like precision, certainty and authority. We discuss the discourse on mathematics in advertising as ‘quasi-pedagogic’ discourse, and argue that its oversimplified forms, being empty of mathematical content, become powerful means for regulating and ‘pedagogising’ today’s global consumers

Symbolising the real of mathematics education

This text, occasioned by a critical reading of Tony Brown’s new book Mathematics Education and Subjectivity, aims at contributing to the building of a sociopolitical approach to mathematics education based on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy. Brown has been bringing into the field of mathematics education the work of these two scholars, and his work has been important in understanding the cultural dynamics of school mathematics. This article highlights the limitations of Brown’s use of Lacanian theory and outlines a framework to understand students’ learning not in terms of the inherent properties of mathematics but in terms of the role this school subject plays within political economy

Methodologies of research into gender and other social differences within a multi-faceted conception of social justice

Our discussion of social justice begins by embracing both distribution and recognition aspects of social relations (Vincent, 2003). The first aspect considers the way that goods, knowledge, skills, rights, etc. are distributed among social groups; the second aspect focuses on aspects of society structuring social encounters and relations – modes of communication, 'treatment', respect. Our approach to social justice focuses not only on the dimension of gender, but also on social class and ethnicity: we consider that concern with these latter forms is crucial for a full appreciation of the structural and the interactional aspects conveyed by the concept (Arnot, 2002; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000). In methodological terms we argue that researching the questions posed by a social justice agenda, will require both 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' methods – within any substantial research programme, and even within individual studies. Our emphasis on the theoretical aspects of formulating a research problem points to the importance of a third facet of social justice, to do with representation and power. We discuss several examples of fruitfully combining different aspects of social justice and multiple methods of research. In particular, we argue that considerations of social justice, and a related „hybrid‟ methodology, will play a crucial role in our ongoing study of the (re)production of images of mathematics in popular culture, and in particular advertising

Mathematics and its publics: texts, contexts and users

This paper argues that mathematics education curricular policy has slowly effected a reversal in the relationship between mathematics and its publics : from mathematics assuming its users to mathematics defined by its (supposed) users. Mathematics education research itself , its contribution to challenging the former notwithstanding, has often unwittingly supported this shift. While in the mid 1980s the mathematics educators propagating the teaching of mathematics by applications represented a small and unique group, by the mid 1990s those advocating teaching mathematics this way had grown appreciably. A characteristic of this change in conviction is the emphasis on the importance of the context of mathematical thinking and problem-solving. Paradoxically, the consequences of the coupling of mathematics ,both with utilitarianism,as other have argued, and with essentialism,as we argue in this paper, have been to narrow its scope (e.g. to a narrow version of ` numeracy’ ) and to distance mathematics from its publics. In the paper we argue that action is needed to counter these trends , and to develop the area of the public understanding of mathematics. Otherwise policies aiming simply to ` popularize` mathematics might exacerbate these consequences. In particular , research is necessary along the lines followed by the social studies of science. For such research by posing as pertinent the question of describing and accounting for differences between practices of knowledge production, dissemination and use can help to avoid the assumption of a unique essence of some unitary culture called ` mathematics’ and therefore a public (or publics) separated from it