Authorship in Mathematics in an Environment Marked Between Delinquency and Inclusion

Abstract

When it becomes a curricular discipline, mathematics must be taught and learned in the school context. But amidst relations of power and in the political-ideological functioning of mathematics as a curricular discipline, there is a social division of reading which lies in the (im)possibility of learning for all. The present chapter was drawn from the analysis of written records of oneself and from the textualization of problem situations which were elaborated by students who had been committed to a socio-educational unit. We have inquired how an adolescent in conflict with the law can be the author of a mathematical text, taking into account institutionalized rules, social aspects, and classroom work. We have sought an understanding of how this subject identifies (or not) mathematics as something that can be learned. This chapter aims to analyze discursively the textualization of mathematical knowledge and possible displacements of this knowledge in the school context. The analysis material was composed of problem situations written by adolescents during mathematics classes related to the experienced conditions of production until the adolescents textualized their mathematical ideas in narratives similar to “life stories”. We have adopted the theoretical principles and analytical procedures of Materialist Discourse Analysis. We have also taken into account the didactic transposition between the scientifically produced knowledge and school knowledge. In view of the specific conditions in which the narratives were produced, the mathematical text was related with other discourse, including the broken ties of the adolescents, described in their life narratives. We understand that authorship in mathematics takes place when the process of textualization of mathematics makes sense for both the subject who writes and the one who reads it.