thesis
Navigating mathematics : making sense of purpose and activity in contemporary English mathematics education
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Abstract
Mathematics education serves a number of purposes within contemporary English
society. Many of these concern the learning of knowledge and skills which an
individual may need in their everyday life or in a future occupation. Other purposes are
predicated instead on the merit afforded to mathematics by society, such that
mathematics is used as a benchmark of intelligence or as a gatekeeper to future
opportunities in education or employment.
This thesis describes a research project which explores how a variety of learners
recognise, navigate and make sense of this range of intents, and how the learners’
subsequent understanding informs both their decisions and their personal sense of
mathematical purpose. It uses a critical grounded theory methodology to research and
report the experiences of four groups of learners: adults returning to the formal study of
mathematics after leaving school; undergraduates choosing to leave mathematics behind
after completing their degrees; and GCSE students on and beneath the borderline of a
watershed C grade.
The results first support specific observations concerning each group then go on to
reveal a number of resonances and commonalities which establish how purpose is
inferred by, and how purpose influences, learners within contemporary mathematics
education. Together the findings demonstrate that the place of mathematics as cultural
capital plays a dominant role in steering mathematical trajectories. They go on to
illustrate how this role and others impact on mathematical identities, and describe how
many learners respond defensively to the current layering of discourses surrounding the
purposes of mathematics education. In particular this thesis observes the deployment of
minimisation and ego defence strategies, including partitioning mathematical learning,
deferring its import and critiquing systems within mathematics education, each of which
is advantaged by certain aspects of prevailing practice.
In conclusion this thesis considers critically how these findings might inform both
contemporary debates in mathematics education and current trends in pedagogy. It
argues in turn for renewed attention regarding how the purposes of mathematics
education are considered, balanced and communicated