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Book Review: Purifying the dialect of the tribe. Anna Sfard (2008). Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing

New York: Cambridge University Press. 324 pages, ISBN 978-0-521-86737-5 [hard cover], RRP Sept 2010: $99.00; ISBN 978-0-521-16154-1 [soft cover] RRP Sept 2010: $35.00

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References

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Correspondence to Tony Wing.

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Readers who remember Dick Tahta will also remember his oft repeated view that mathematics educators needed to “purify the dialect of the tribe”. Sfard’s book seems to me a genuine and serious attempt to do just this. The words are originally those of T. S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” (1942).

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Wing, T. Book Review: Purifying the dialect of the tribe. Anna Sfard (2008). Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing . Educ Stud Math 76, 363–369 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-010-9283-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-010-9283-0

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