‘This is so’: a text on texts

The structures of German mathematics textbooks

“…Whereas it is possible to change the sequence, or to skip parts, in a spatial arrangement. For example, Hacker (1980) as well as Love and Pimm (1996) describe, that students are often impatient with the introductory tasks or the exposition and skip to the kernels. As a consequence the flow of the lessons is changed and the lessons in textbooks might not be used as intended by the authors.…”

“…In this table similar elements appear in the same column and the order of the elements within the microstructure is maintained in the lines. 1 The characteristics of this element correspond to the notion of 'exposition' as described by Love and Pimm (1996). Therefore the term was adopted.…”

Textual Construction of Middle School Math Students as “Thinkers”

“…The traditional textbook format is perpetuated in part because it seeks to help the individual student who may lack outside support in engaging with the ideas in the text (i.e. the text itself must act as teacher) (Love & Pimm, 1996). However, when a textbook designed for classroom use privileges its own authority to the point where students are no longer expected to draw on their own resources -or, more bluntly, think about what they are doing-then the text is ultimately working against the process of learning.…”

“…For students, "knowing" mathematics is often to be aware only of the rules and theories themselves, and not the history and discussion, the human element, behind them and, as a result, mathematics becomes "a cultural form suffused with mystery and power" (Povey et al, 1999, p. 235). Textbooks, ever present in the classroom, take on the authority to wield that power, shaping student notions of mathematics in the process (Love & Pimm, 1996). Povey et al (1999) use the term author/ity to play with the concept of authoritythe traditional view of mathematical knowledge as external, fixed and absolute -splitting up the word to foreground the author behind the scenes, the one who negotiates and creates this knowledge.…”

What is so special about mathematical texts? Analyses of common claims in research literature and of properties of textbooks

“…Some claim that mathematical texts are especially difficult and differ from texts in other subjects to such an extent that students need to develop a particular kind of reading ability for them. However, through the years, several researchers have pointed out that empirical research on mathematical texts is scarce (e.g., Burton & Morgan, 2000;Love & Pimm, 1996) and a recent literature review shows that research on mathematical discourse seldom focuses on textbooks (Ryve, 2011). More generally, another recent literature review shows that there is a lack of empirical research focusing on issues of "academic language," which includes all subject areas and all modalities, in particular both written and oral language (Anstrom et al, 2010).…”