The current study aimed to reveal the changes to the identities of two tenth graders in mathematics learning at a Japanese high school during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of learning from home versus learning in the classroom. The following research questions are raised: How has the pandemic situation affected and changed Japanese students' triadic relationship between knowledge, practice, and identity? What overlooked equity issue in this triadic relationship is caused by the pandemic? Two male students participated in and completed semi-structured interviews that asked how they managed to study at home during the school shutdown. First, we extracted from the transcript the part concerning the interviewees' difficulties in studying mathematics at home, as well as the role of mathematics lessons and their classmates. Secondly, we classified their utterances into three categories (identity, practice, and knowledge sentences), based on their grammatical patterns. The study results delineated the dynamic and complicated relationships among the three elements. Students lost opportunities to (1) obtain positive social feedback on their mathematical behaviors and (2) learn the social aspects of mathematical problem-solving, such as what strategy was socially acceptable and authorized. We also pointed out an overlooked soft equity issue; rich learning resources are substantially unavailable to students owing to the lack of appropriation of necessary knowledge and positive self-identification, despite the assurance of accessibility to such resources. We should continue to tackle helping learners construct their identities during future unexpected events.
The objective of this case study was to identify the role of finger gestures in learning mathematics informally during play, especially in sociocultural settings. A mathematical activity involving addition was qualitatively analyzed at a Japanese preschool. We explored how the process of subjectification and objectification contributed to a mathematical activity at a Japanese preschool and how the role of preschoolers’ finger gestures changed during the process of learning mathematics. We utilized Radford’s theoretical construct of joint labor and analyzed Japanese preschool children’s mathematical behaviors from a sociocultural perspective. The subjects were 15 Japanese preschool children and their teacher. We relied on both Radford’s methodology and a microgenetic approach for the analysis. We found that subjectification and objectification proceeded in the scene of the conversations regarding addition; observing joint labor in a classroom activity offered valuable insights into these processes. In the activity, the children actively extended their practice of posing and answering quizzes, and learned how to resolve a conflict with the support of the teacher. Secondly, although the role of finger gestures was originally used to obtain correct answers to quizzes, it was reconstructed to solve the conflict between the children through the teacher’s mediation. This showed that, even in an environment where children implicitly learn mathematics, they learn from one another, including the teacher, and that gestures in mathematical communications function well for developing mathematical thinking and skills.
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