Anna Chronaki

Learning about `learning identities' in the school arithmetic practice: The experience of two young minority Gypsy girls in the Greek context of education

The present study explores the experience of two young Gypsy girls in solving school arithmetic tasks in interaction with an adult who supports their participation. Along with learning the use of arithmetic tools, a basic element concerning the experience of the two girls as they try to gain entry into the school practice is learning about developing relevant ‘learning identities’. Analysis of the girls’ interaction with an adult identifies that the type of ‘learning identities’ required involve at least two dimensions: (a) learning to value the use of formal arithmetic tools, and (b) learning about relevant ways of behaving in the school mathematics practice.RésuméL’étude explore l’expérience de deux jeunes gitanes lors de la résolution de tâches arithmétiques en interaction avec un adulte qui les soutient. En plus de l’apprentissage d’outils arithmétiques, éléments essentiels pour l’entrée des deux jeunes dans la pratique scolaire, il s’agit aussi pour elles de dévelloper des ‘identités d’apprenantes’. L’analyse des interactions des jeunes avec l’adulte montre que les types ‘d’identités d’apprenantes’ dont elles on besoin concernent au moins deux dimensions: (a) apprendre à valoriser l’utilisation d’outils arithmétiques formels, et (b) apprendre des façons d’agir pertinentes pour les pratiques mathématiques scolaires.

“Troubling” Essentialist Identities: Performative Mathematics and the Politics of Possibility

Oppressive learning experiences affect most school children, such as Tsiggano, who belong in marginalized groups due to the dominance of stereotypic identities concerning ethnicity, class or gender. At the same time, hegemonic discourses construct mathematics as an essentialist body of knowledge that tends to capture human learning development in linear and static terms. Taking into account that essentialist approaches to both Tsiggano learner-identity and mathematical knowledge-identity are still prevalent as part of curricula practices, the present study attempts to open up an alternative politics of possibility. Specifically, by means of discussing two ethnographic teaching experiments as performative acts, the aim is to explore the possibility of breaking dominant discursive narratives of learning identities in the mathematics classroom. The first teaching experiment involves the performing of school arithmetic based on selling–buying word problems by Maria, Giannoula, and Sofia, and the second performs the teaching of basics in school arithmetic in Romani -the mother tongue of Panagiotis.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Women and Computer Technology.

This paper explores certain possible reasons behind the uneasy relationship between women and technology. The cultural identification of technology with masculinity has been well documented through previous research. However, we feel it is useful to revisit this complex relationship through the scope of a more subtle distinction between ‘users’ and ‘connoisseurs’, and the struggle over power, which revolves around a specific form of hegemonic masculinity. We draw on interviews that examine students’ experiences, emotions, and statements about gender, technology, mathematics, and education, and we try to offer an understanding of the ways women negotiate their position within the dominant discourse about computing and mathematics. Our analysis employs post-structuralist discourse theory.

Disrupting ‘Development’ as the Quality/Equity Discourse: Cyborgs and Subalterns in School Technoscience

Discourses of ‘development’ as the achievement of rationality are still predominant in current curricula reforms in education. Specifically, in mathematics education, technology-mediated teaching is assumed a means for development towards progressive policies for inclusion in both metropolitan (e.g. NCTM in US, 2000), and peripheral localities (e.g. DEPPS in Greece, 2003). Such curricula reforms have been largely rooted in pedagogical agendas for quality/equity (mathematics) education that aim to foster simultaneously self and society development in the realm of a ‘new’ information age. Despite high expectations, technology and mathematics are still peripheral options for most females when they consider further studying or career up growth. The present paper discusses the potential for an alternative theorising of female relation to school technoscience such as technology and mathematics-related literacies. Based on a preliminary analysis of interview data the constructs of ‘cyborg’ and ‘subaltern’ are introduced as ways of disrupting stereotypic readings of a partial relation to technoscience as negative, passive or, even, dangerous.

Mathematics out in the wild: anthropological engagements with mathematics education

Book Review of Multimathemacy : anthropology and mathematics education, by Rik Pinxten, ISBN: 978-3-31926-253-6

Number words in ‘her’ language, dialogism and identity-work: the case of little Mariah

Abstract Based on an ethnographic study, we explore the potential of experimenting with multiple languages for number words as part of young children’s mathematical activity. Data from a preschool classroom activity on ‘number words in “other” languages’ exemplify a complex process of discursive identity-work and dialogism amongst children, parents, teacher, and researchers. The focus is on the case of little Mariah, a Pakistani immigrant girl in Greece, who experiences participation by sharing number knowledge in her mother tongue Urdu, and highlights how gendered, racial, or language-related discourses weave her learner identity in a multilingual preschool classroom.

‘Number in Cultures’ as a Playful Outdoor Activity: Making Space for Critical Mathematics Education in the Early Years

The chapter discusses an attempt to design and implement a playful outdoor activity for a culturally diverse group of young children that emphasizes a critical perspective on mathematical learning. Critical mathematics education is taken here to embrace identity and learning as interrelated processes that are not simply analytical categories but deeply rooted in collective action and human subjectivity. Based on this premise, “Number in Cultures” can be conceived as a counter event that constitutes an open space for young children and adults to play, explore and question issues concerning the cultural underpinnings of number and its relatedness to their lives. Specifically, it has aimed to create awareness around diversity in number-words and number-symbols rooted in the context of Greek, Arabic and Romany languages and cultures. Number in cultures has been implemented as part of a playground workshop where Roma children could potentially become active participants along with adults and children of a non-Roma background.