Mathematical Relationships in Education: Identities and Participation

This book brings together scholars working in the field of mathematics education to examine the ways in which learners form particular relationships with mathematics in the context of formal schooling. While demand for the mathematically literate citizen increases, many learners continue to reject mathematics and experience it as excluding and exclusive, even when they succeed at it. In exploring this phenomenon, this volume focuses on learners' developing sense of self and their understanding of the part played by mathematics in it. It recognizes the part played by emotional responses, the functioning of classroom communities of practice, and by discourses of mathematics education in this process. It thus blends perspectives from psychoanalysis, socio-cultural theory and discursive approaches in a focus on the classic issues of selection and assessment, pedagogy, curriculum, choice, and teacher development.

Laura Black is a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Her research interests focus on pedagogic processes in the classroom and the construction of learner identities particularly in relation to mathematics. She is currently working on several projects on widening participation in mathematically demanding programmes within post compulsory education.

Heather Mendick is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University, and lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. In her research, she works across education, gender studies, sociology and cultural studies and is particularly interested in influences of popular culture on identities and aspirations. She used to be a mathematics teacher.

Yvette Solomon is Professor of Education at the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on the nature of relationships between language, learning and mathematical knowledge, and between identity, participation and community experience. She is the author of The Practice of Mathematics, and of Mathematical Literacy, both published by Routledge.