The Phenomenology of the Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

This chapter’s primary purpose is to offer some preliminary work in theoretising the individual learner’s perspective in mathematics lessons within a model derived from Schütz’s seminal work in social phenomenology (for example, 1962, 1967). Here, the mathematics classroom is seen as an environment of signs, comprising things and people, which impinge on the reality of the individual student (cf. Brown 1996 c). The chapter introduces a framework through which mathematical work is seen as taking place in the imagined world through the filter of the world in immediate perception. This provides an approach to structuring evolving mathematical understanding. It is suggested that mathematical ideas are contained and shaped by the student’s personal phenomenology, which evolves through time. Further, I argue that these ideas are never encountered directly but rather are always met through a circular hermeneutic process involving the reconciliation of expectation with experience.