In this PhD study I aimed fill some of the research gaps around the relationships between individual students’ engagement in mathematics, and different contexts in and outside the classrooms, that impact on what occurs in the mathematics education practice. The discursive concept of identity narrative, defined as the stories the students tell about themselves, provided a way to understand the complexity of individual students’ decision making about engaging in classroom activities at certain points in time.
This is a study in two layers. The bottom layer concerns an introduction of different teaching discourses in a specific Mathematics A course in a Swedish upper secondary school. This “disturbance” of the teaching needed to be realized, for me to be able to study students’ narratives in a different mathematics education than they expected or imagined. The mathematics teaching became an intervention not to be evaluated as such, but to make possible the flourishing of other types of identity narratives, than the ones I had listened to as a teacher in traditional teaching environments. The second layer, the main study layer, concerns the students and their identities, experiences and emerging relationships with mathematics during this particular mathematics course where we had changed the teaching. This theme is the focus of the thesis.
A collaborative process was established with Elin Johansson (pseudonym), the mathematics teacher at Ericaskolan, in order to introduce elements of a critical pedagogical discourse. Within the mandated mathematical topics of the curriculum, the new pedagogy introduced project blocks that changed some key elements in the activities and the relationships between participants. With this pedagogical approach, Elin and I intended to bridge the gap between students’ experiences in society and the mathematics classroom. To change a social practice such as mathematics education, and thus move between discourses was a multifaceted process and required support from different parts of the mathematics education network at different points in time. Relationships were re-established in order to proceed with changing the teaching organisation. Locating the experiences in the socio-cultural context of the school gave an understanding of the complex situations and processes. Elin’s identity narratives and learning suggests that researchers need to reconsider the use of terms such as sustained change and success, and if sustained development is an actual possibility. On the other hand, Elin’s continuous learning could be considered a success in itself, even if this was not the learning which we originally had anticipated from this collaboration.
The students who are the participants in this study chose the social science study program for their three years of upper secondary schooling. The students’ narrated identities during their first compulsory mathematics course, Mathematics A, provided a way to understand their shifts in participation at particular times. These students’ reasons for (dis)engagement with learning were brought to life in the stories they told and expressions they used in their relationships with Elin, the other students and myself in the mathematics classrooms. These students’ experiences, of disliking mathematics or finding it boring, are not unique, but are representative of the large number of young people whose well-being might diminish when they are asked to engage in mathematics education.
The results presented in previous research suggest that students’ dislike of mathematics is a permanent feature of some types of students, and as a consequence their (dis)engagement in mathematics education is also seen as a constant characteristic. However, I argue that contextual changes to the way that mathematics is presented can alter the way students talk about their relationship with mathematics and mathematics education. To illustrate these changes, I analysed the stories that students told about themselves and their relationship with mathematics. Task contexts, situation contexts, school contexts and societal contexts intermesh as referents and groundings for the discursive practices in classrooms, through which students construct identity narratives. The students’ narratives showed that different levels of contexts affected students’ decision-making on whether to engage in mathematics learning activities at specific points in time. The analysis showed that students’ identity narratives, such as that of being a “math hater” or having “math anxiety”, also are intertwined with the learning opportunities that they are offered.
The findings point at problematic issues when research outcomes generalise students’ learning of mathematics and conclude that specific groups of students act or behave in certain ways, or that certain pedagogies are to be preferred. The explored connections between identity narratives and contexts resulted in a re-evaluation of the usefulness of how students are categorised, or labelled in mathematics education research, and hence the impact that these reified labels has on individual students’ agency and decisions to engage and learn mathematics. The ways in which I was able to connect students’ identity narratives to contexts was a methodological research outcome from this study. The choices we researchers make about methodology, and the ways we interpret and communicate our findings, can, and often do, reinforce certain characteristics on students as being the only parts of them to which attention should be paid. Labels allow researchers to generalise principles, but it becomes problematic when the principles are applied to specific cases. The principle as such is not wrong, but when they are applied in this way then the labels can impede learning rather than support it. I argue that labels might reinforce the identification of a student by particular characteristics. These reflections reinforce questions such as: What stories do we want students to tell about their relationship with mathematics and their experiences in mathematics education? What is to be learnt in mathematics classrooms?
Indsamlet i Sverige på et gymnasium