New Directions for Situated Cognition in Mathematics Education

by Watson, Anne; Winbourne, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780387715773
• ISBN10: 0387715770
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

This book will draw together a range of papers by experienced writers in mathematics education who have used the concept of situated cognition in their research within recent years. Thus it provides an up-to-date overview of developments and applications to which other researchers can refer and which will inspire future research. It is appropriate to review the field now and collect a range of papers which all relate to situated cognition and show how its application to mathematics education has matured and become usefully embedded in our approach to central issues about learning mathematics.

Author Biography

Anne Watson is Reader in Mathematics Education at the University of Oxford. Before that she taught for many years in maintained secondary schools which served socially diverse areas. She now works in teacher education, and her work with students, and in local schools, and her research is characterised by a concern for social justice through education. In particular, the nature of mathematics classrooms and adolescents' relationships within them are a central concern. She has published numerous books, articles and papers for both professional and academic audiences and is often asked to talk to national and international audiences of researchers and practitioners.Peter Winbourne currently lectures in mathematics education at the London South Bank University. After a long career teaching mathematics in inner city multicultural maintained schools, his passion for mathematics and social equity took him into teacher education, preparing people to work in similar schools. His interests developed from specific focus on the uses of new technologies to support learning to answering difficult questions such as why people should bother to learn at all. In answering these questions he has developed his understanding and ideas of theories of situated cognition, seeing these as illuminating the experiences of individuals as they become the people they are going to be.

Table of Contents

Contributing Authors	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
School Mathematics As A Developmental Activity	p. 13
Participating In What? Using Situated Cognition Theory To Illuminate Differences In Classroom Practices	p. 31
Social Identities As Learners And Teachers Of Mathematics	p. 59
Looking For Learning In Practice: How Can This Inform Teaching	p. 79
Are Mathematical Abstractions Situated?	p. 103
'We Do It A Different Way At My School'	p. 129
Situated Intuition And Activity Theory Fill The Gap	p. 153
The Role Of Artefacts In Mathematical Thinking: A Situated Learning Perspective	p. 179
Exploring Connections Between Tacit Knowing And Situated Learning Perspectives In The Context Of Mathematics Education	p. 205
Cognition And Institutional Setting	p. 233
School Practices With The Mathematical Notion Of Tangent Line	p. 261
Learning Mathematically As Social Practice In A Workplace Setting	p. 287
Analysing Concepts Of Community Of Practice	p. 303
'No Way Is Can't': A Situated Account Of One Woman's Uses And Experiences Of Mathematics	p. 329
Acknowledgements	p. 353
Index of Authors	p. 355
Index	p. 359
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