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Mathematics Education Research Journal

, Volume 29, Issue 1, pp 113–130 | Cite as

Analysing the relationships between students and mathematics: a tale of two paradigms

  • Robyn Jorgensen
  • Kevin Larkin
Original Article
First Online:

Abstract

In this article, we argue the need to use inter-disciplinary paradigms to make sense of a range of findings from a research project. We developed a methodology using iPad diaries to uncover young students’ thinking—mathematical, social and affective—so as to better understand their experiences of mathematics. These students, predominantly from year 3 to year 6, were drawn from economically and socially distinct schools in Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. This article builds on previous research, where we outlined the unique methodology that we developed over three iterations to collect student attitudinal comments regarding mathematics. The comments we collected gave significant insights into the experiences of, and possibilities for, the mathematics education of young learners. Here, we use these findings to explore the value of two paradigms to explain student experiences towards mathematics among primary school students from different social backgrounds. In so doing, we develop an explanatory model for the socially differentiated outcomes in students’ responses and then use this explanatory model to analyse student responses from the two most socially disparate schools in our research.

Keywords

Theory Attitudes Video diary Method Qualitative 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This project was initially funded through a Griffith AEL research grant scheme. We also acknowledge the contribution of Associate Professor Peter Gates (Nottingham University) in earlier components of this project. Aspects of this article have been presented at earlier MERGA and PME conferences. However, this article is a substantive development of this earlier work.

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Copyright information

© Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Inc. 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of CanberraBruce ACTAustralia
  2. 2.Griffith UniversityNathan QLDAustralia

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