Nadja Maria Acioly-Régnier

Beyond Deficit Models of Learning Mathematics: Socio-cultural Directions for Change and Research

Major paradigmatic changes in mathematics education research are drawing attention to new perspectives on learning. Whereas deficit models were previously in the foreground of research designs, these have been replaced by a wide variety of theoretical directions for studying diverse approaches to learning mathematics. There is now an acceptance of the need for richness and variety in research practices so that approaches can be studied, compared and mutually applied and improved. Psychological and quantitative approaches and methods are now increasingly complemented, or even replaced, by new directions that rely on social and anthropological theories and methods. Rather than reviving ideas about deficit research in mathematics education, the aim of this chapter is to present some socio-cultural perspectives of mathematics learning, and to show how these perspectives go beyond the deficit model of learning. Framing the main traditional markers of discrimination in school mathematics—gender, social class and ethnicity—in a perspective of social justice, the chapter concludes with a reflection on equality in terms of the democratic principle of meritocracy in mathematics education.

Identifying didactic and sociocultural obstacles to conceptualization through Statistical Implicative Analysis

The aim of the research work presented here is to understand the relationship between culture and cognition. Historically the development of this field has essentially relied on work carried out with children as subjects(Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann 1985) or adults (Lave, 1977 ; Greenfield et Childs, 1977) who have had little or no schooling and belong to cultural spheres often characterised by their distance from the reference point of a dominant Western culture, that of the well-educated. Traditionally centred on knowledge developed outside of the school system, the importance of school-based variables must not be completely ruled out from the process of conceptualization. We thus focussed our interest on both the roles of written culture and the teaching and learning strategies involved, in the sense that these can generate specific obstacles to conceptualization. The originality here is that we are interested in well-read adults as subjects, the majority of whom have a level of at least three years of university education, and some of whom some are already professionals. With regard to the field work data, these were gathered through short clinical-style interviews as well as a questionnaire based survey taken from an observational sample. Since we were interested in finding regularities linked with conceptual strength, we used SIA (Statistical Implicative Analysis) which enabled us to determine the implicative rules between the responses and thus the pre-ordered structures revealing the associated responses. Our results showed that specific symbolic representations linked with specific aspects of the concept constitute didactical and/or socio-cultural obstacles.

Dossiê especial: Equidade e coesão social na educação superior: problemáticas e perspectivas

O presente dossie especial da revista POIESIS-RPPGE, organizado pela Professora Dra. Nadja Maria Acioly-Regnier1 e pelo Professor Dr. Jean-Claude Regnier2 resulta de um percurso enriquecedor que mobilizou os esforcos de diversos pesquisadores envolvidos no projeto geral ALFA3-RIAIPE3, como por exemplo, o assistente de pesquisa da equipe da UFBA, Doutorando Paulo Cesar Marques de Andrade Santos alem da equipe editorial da revista POIESIS-RPPGE representada pelo seu editor Dr. Christian Muleka Mwewa. De certa forma, o dossie e uma das materializacoes das estrategias de confrontacao e de divulgacao dos resultados parciais do projeto como um todo. Alem dos participantes precedentamente citados, vale salientar que, entre os autores que assinaram os artigos, constam membros das tres equipes parceiras ALFA3-RIAIPE3, ou seja, pela Universidade de Lyon2: Gimena Perez Caraballo, Maria Nubia Medeiros de Araujo Frutuoso, Isabelle Guinamard e Stephanie Colin, pela UFBA Rosilda Arruda Ferreira e Robinson Moreira Tenorio e pela UNISUL Maria Da Graca Nobrega Bollmann. Os demais autores sao colaboradores que, apesar de nao serem membros, se envolveram nas pesquisas associadas a tematica do programa com orientacao dos coordenadores.