‘I’m not a “maths‐person”!’ Reconstituting mathematical subjectivities in aesthetic teaching practices

Abstract

In this study I have investigated how alternative ways of teaching mathematics influence and affect Early Childhood Education (ECE) students' attitudes towards maths and how they understand their own subjectivities as more or less mathematical during a 10-week alternative maths course. The investigated course adopts a feminist post-structural approach based on critical pedagogy and deconstructive theory and includes an interdisciplinary approach to investigative mathematics. The data used include the memory/narrative writings and processwritings of 75 female teacher-education students, collected from three different cohorts, in which the students describe their learning processes throughout the maths course. The study shows that, in the main, the students became much more positively inclined to the subject of mathematics after the maths course and agreed that this course had changed their understanding of their own mathematical subjectivity, albeit in different and varying ways.

The nature of the relation between pre-service teachers’ views of an ideal teacher and their positive memories of biology and geography teachers

“…PST connected their memories of their biology and geography teachers at school to a more general view of the ideal teacher. This suggests that, contrary to some studies of memories of mathematics at school (e.g., Palmer, 2009;Lutovac & Kaasila, 2011;Drake, Spillane & Hufferd-Ackles, 2001), biology and geography are quite neutral among the subjects. Therefore, memories connected to them bring up more general views of the ideal teacher.…”

“How many sums can I do”? Performative strategies and diffractive thinking as methodological tools for rethinking mathematical subjectivity

“…This girl compares herself to Mike -who is assigned the epithet "maths genius of the class" -and becomes everything he is not, namely, shy, not a genius or a mastermind and not a boy (cf. Palmer, 2009;Walkerdine, 1998). …”

“…The first includes a total of 150 narrative memory stories about mathematics written by 75 Early Childhood Teacher Education students in writing workshops that my colleagues and I arranged in Early Childhood Teacher Education maths courses during the years 2005-2007 (see also Palmer 2009, Lenz Taguchi, 2010. The writing workshops were designed with inspiration from the work of the Australian feminist poststructuralist Bronwyn Davies on "collective biography" (Davies, 2000;Davies & Gannon, 2006;Davies et al, 2001).…”

“…In other words, knowing exactly what to do and what is required of you (like the girl in the story), and at the same time feeling subordinated by powerful discourses (like the school maths discourse with its competitive components), produces feelings of ambivalence and sometimes anxiety. The subjectification process can be understood as discursive and performative and an active coproducer of ambivalent mathematical subjectivity (Palmer, 2009). Butler writes: "Subjection consists precisely in this fundamental dependency on discourses we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and sustains our agency.…”

“…And what happens to my understanding of data -and to me as researcher -when transiting from one theoretical and methodological arena to another? These are questions I have been engaged with in the writing of this article about the constitution of mathematical subjectivities in Early Childhood Teacher Education (see also Palmer 2009. The data collection that is explored for this study consist of a large number of narrative memory stories about mathematics, written by student teachers in Early Childhood Teacher Education maths courses.…”