Abstract
Zoltan Paul Dienes was a mathematician who developed a theory and practice on how to promote children’s mathematical thinking. In my psychobiographical investigation I review the most salient cultural contexts he met, applying the Developmental Niche Framework by Super and Harkness. As a child, Dienes was exposed to subsequent contextual changes in terms of countries (Hungary, Austria, France, England), languages (Hungarian, German, French, English), lifestyles (family, progressive and religious schools, communal life) and worldviews (atheism, “Duncanism”, Protestantism, Catholicism). I aim at understanding how the cultural contexts contributed to Dienes’ adult life and to the conceptualization of his theory. I conclude that as an adult he was particularly tolerant of other’s worldviews, cultures, and lifestyles. As a theorist he was convinced that abstract and concrete structures can be transformed back and forth without loss of identity, parallelly to his childhood experience that one can preserve one’s identity despite fundamental contextual changes.
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Bálint, Á. (2021). Variables of a Life’s Equation. Contribution to Zoltan Paul Dienes’ Psychobiography. In: Mayer, CH., Fouché, P.J., Van Niekerk, R. (eds) Psychobiographical Illustrations on Meaning and Identity in Sociocultural Contexts . Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81238-6_7
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