Charoula Stathopoulou

Expanding Contexts for Teaching Upper Secondary School Geometry

This chapter describes how the theatrical performance based on the history of mathematics—‘An Amazing Story: The Measurement of the Earth by Eratosthenes’—created the opportunity of a ‘third,’ expanding learning space, which allowed for new practices and tools to emerge. It also permitted students to approach mathematical concepts in an experiential way and (re)negotiate their own learning processes, their conceptions of mathematical Discourse, and the nature of mathematics. We analyze a one semester-long, interdisciplinary, didactical intervention for 10th grade students in a public school in Athens, where different funds of knowledge and Discourses expanded the boundaries of the official school Discourse. Our aim is to show how an experiential way of integrating the history of mathematics—a theatrical performance based on history—can create a ‘third,’ expanded learning space, where new tools and new Discourses are applied.

ICT and Liminal Performative Space for Hyperbolic Geometry’s Teaching

The use of technology tools creates new situations and new dynamics in Geometry’s teaching in the classroom, enhancing the ways of its understanding. In this chapter, the experience of using ICT together with ‘Drama in Education’ (DiE) in a teaching experiment, regarding the axiomatic definition of Hyperbolic Geometry through Poincare’s Disk, in a class of 11th grade students is described. The use of ‘Drama in Education’ techniques created a space appropriate to transform traditional classroom practices. In this space, a liminal space, students became more active and involved in (re)negotiating different discourses, their own learning processes and conceptions of Hyperbolic Geometry while interactive Java software allowed them to explore a non Euclidean Space. The use of ethnographic research techniques (i.e. participant observation and interviewing) helped us to gather empirical evidence concerning students’ experiences. Moreover, our research revealed considerable evidence that it was Drama techniques which motivated students and offered them fuller participation in the teaching process, while ICT helped them visualize the Poincare’s Disk and through it understand key elements of Hyperbolic Geometry.

Once Upon a Time… The Gypsy Boy Turned 15 While Still in the First Grade

The need to develop a bottom up curriculum for Roma students (preschool education) in order to support their learning at school—language and mathematics—and with a view to contribute to their social inclusion through an ethnomathematical perspective led us to conduct fieldwork on the Roma students’ community of origin. The ethnomathematical perspective supported the combination of a critical ethnographical fieldwork using critical communicative methodology (CCM) for exploring students’ funds of knowledge as well as the parameters that affect Roma children’s education . Poststructural ideas such as power/power relations contributed to understanding how inequalities are constructed through discursive practices, making the inclusion of Roma (and other marginalized groups) merely rhetorical. The pragmatological material, discourse, discursive practices, practices, representations etc.; derived from the community informed both our practices/our interventions in the kindergarten, and our future actions in the community aiming to respond in social justice issues, important for both Roma and non Roma communities.

Using Drama Techniques for Facilitating Democratic Access to Mathematical Ideas for All Learners

This chapter explores the dynamics of Geometry teaching in a classroom which uses “Drama in Education” techniques as a process that contributes to democratic access to mathematical ideas by all pupils. We describe a teaching experiment which aimed to motivate and actively engage through drama all 26 pupils of an 11th grade class and to encourage them to develop a critical attitude towards mathematical knowledge as being absolute, objective and irrefutable. The teaching experiment entitled “Is our world Euclidean?” was a drama-based teaching of the process of axiomatic definition of Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries interrelated to the history of Euclid’s 5th postulate. Our research reveals considerable evidence for the effectiveness of drama techniques as an alternative approach to creating appropriate learning conditions, activating all students as evidenced by their participation, and contributing to their development as critical citizens.

Criticizing Public Discourse and Mathematics Education: A Commentary

The commentary on the chapters of Chassapis and Giannakopoulou and of Albarracin and Gorgorio points to the mutually constitutive relationship between in-school and out-of-school contexts. It reflects on the ways in which the two chapters integrate mathematics education with socio-political realities and social justice.

Considering the Classroom Space: Towards a Multimodal Analysis of the Pedagogical Discourse

In an attempt to contribute to the discussion about the semantic potential of classroom space design in the teaching and learning of mathematics, this chapter reconstructs relationships and meanings from the use of space by teachers in two primary mathematical classes. Adopting a social semiotic perspective, our study reveals that semantic spatial configurations are functioning as the material forces, which are subject to and reflective of teacher’s pedagogical conceptions, and are actively involved in constructing students’ social experience in the specific teaching and learning environment.

The activities of counting and measuring in a Romany Community and in school context

Abstract Interdisciplinary approaches of the last decades that are based upon anthropology and cognitive psychology, have contributed to the growing awareness of the interrelation between culture, cognition and context. This paper examines the way a Romany community conceives the mathematical activities of counting and measuring, through pragmatological material that is product of anthropological research in the spot. Romany students acquire cognition within the parameters of their cultural context that could contribute in their efforts to work up (school) mathematics learning, improving thus not only their role in school context but also in the broader society, as mathematics constitute a course directly connected with professional expectations.