Toward an Anthropology of Graphing

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Toward an Anthropology of Graphing

   1. Toward an Anthropology of Graphing

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 1-21

3. Graphing in Captivity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 23-23

      PDF

   2. From ‘Expertise’ to Situated Reason

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 25-67

   3. Unfolding Interpretations

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 69-101

   4. Problematic Readings

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 103-145

   5. Articulating Background

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 147-183

4. Graphing in the Wild

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185

      PDF

   2. Reading Graphs

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 187-220

   3. From Writhing Lizards to Graphs

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 221-266

   4. Fusion of Sign and Referent

      • Wolff-Michael Roth

      Pages 267-309

5. Back Matter

   Pages 311-342

   PDF

During the summer of 1990, while taking my holidays to teach a university course of physics for elementary teachers, I also tutored one of the tenth-grade students at my school in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In return for working with him for free, I had requested permission to audiotape our sessions; I wanted to use the transcripts as data sources for a chapter that I had been in­ vited to write. It so happened that I discovered and read Jean Lave's Cognition in Practice that very summer, which inspired me to read other books on mathe­ matics in everyday situations. Two years later, while conducting a study with my teacher colleague G. Michael Bowen on eighth-grade students' learning during an open-inquiry ecology unit, I discovered these students' tremendous data analysis skills that appeared to be a function of the deep familiarity with the objects and events that they had studied and mathematized earlier in the unit. I reported my findings in two articles, 'Mathematization of experience in a grade 8 open-inquiry environment: An introduction to the representational practices of science' and 'Where is the context in contextual word problems?: Mathematical practices and products in Grade 8 students' answers to story problems'. I Begin­ ning with that study, I developed a research agenda that focused on mathemati­ cal knowing in science and science-related professions. During the early 1990s, I was also interested in the notion of authentic practice as a metaphor for planning school science curriculum.

• Nation
• Transformation
• anthropology
• ecology
• nature

• University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

  Wolff-Michael Roth

Policies and ethics