Abstract
Designers in out-of-school spaces often negotiate the meaning of mathematics as part of the design process, determining what to include in classes and exhibits both implicitly and explicitly. This analysis suggests that instead of keeping these conversations behind the scenes, we should foreground them for participants. In doing so, we may actually be helping to expand their sense of what counts as mathematics as they participate in legitimate communal activity. The focal analysis examines the case of one participant in a knitting summer camp as she encounters the mathematics that the facilitator deemed necessary to move the knitting project forward. Together they negotiate whether their work counts as knitting or as mathematics, and what the consequences for that designation are for how they make sense of the activity. I argue that this kind of encounter has the potential to build bridges between everyday and school mathematics and thus to broaden participation.
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Notes
As described by Harris, “traditional liberal mathematics education […] teaches people not to believe in their own capability but to rely on authority and […] to disdain the work of their hands so that they do not recognize the mathematics they are using in their daily work, and do not accept that their daily work can be mathematical” (Harris, 1997, p. 196).
It bears mentioning that failing to so specify the source of a definition is not a neutral act, but tends to reinforce existing social structures.
Transcription note: I use all capitals to indicate strong emphasis, in this case a very teacherly emphasis on the second part of the number.
Transcription note: This is an almost cartoonish sound.
Transcription note: I use standard contractions (e.g., “sorta” for sort of; “wanna” for “want to”; and “gonna” for “going to”) to indicate the casual tone of the conversation, particularly on the part of the facilitator. By these I intend to convey that she is intentionally trying to put Amy at ease, even as she introduces what turn out to be difficult mathematics concepts.
This section of the transcript edited for clarity.
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This project was funded by the National Science Foundation to Melissa Gresalfi (DRL-1420488).
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Chapman, K. “Wait—it’s a math problem, right?”: negotiating school frames in out-of-school places. Educ Stud Math 109, 661–676 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-021-10099-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-021-10099-0