“The most vitally characteristic fact about mathematics is, in my opinion, its quite peculiar relationship to the natural sciences, or, more generally, to any science which interprets experience on a higher than purely descriptive level.”.
(von Neumann, 1947).
Abstract
In this article, an analysis of six fisheries biology assignments involving mathematical models is conducted, focusing on the type of participation that they offer. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the characteristics of the mathematical discourse of the assignments and to expose their relationship with the biological context with the purpose of understanding the role of mathematics discourse in other academic discourses. The theoretical orientation of the study is informed by commognitive theory which views learning of an academic discourse as the process of becoming a participant in that discourse. Data analysis revealed various aspects of mathematics wordings, tools and routines essential in the expected solution trajectories of the assignments and two types of required transitions, intrinsic and extrinsic, between mathematics and biology narratives. The article offers analytical and theoretical explanations for why this is the case as well as directions for future research.
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Notes
A program package developed for conducting various analyses using fisheries data, see: http://www.fao.org/fishery/topic/16072/en
Similar to FiSAT, see: https://www.hi.no/hi/forskning/forskningsgrupper/havforskning-i-utviklingsland
The authors acknowledge not being specialists in fisheries biology and apologize in advance for any misinterpretation or naïve descriptions of the assignments.
The term ‘assignment’ refers to each file-document provided by the professor to the students (home-assignment means students work on it outside classroom, after lecture sessions). An assignment may include several questions and a question may contain more than one task situation, in the sense of Lavie et al. (2018).
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support from MatRIC, Centre for research, innovation, and coordination of mathematics teaching, and bioCEED, Centre for excellence in biology education. We wish to thank the biology professor of the EFAM course for his kind cooperation in this research and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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Floridona Tetaj was the main contributor to all aspects of the paper and wrote the original draft. Olov Viirman contributed to theoretical framework, data analysis and discussion, and to preparing the final draft.
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Tetaj, F., Viirman, O. Analysing the Mathematical Discourse of Biology Assignments: The Case of a Graduate Fisheries Management Course. Int. J. Res. Undergrad. Math. Ed. 9, 375–397 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-022-00205-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-022-00205-9