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Constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and learners' narratives: a study of mathematical and non-mathematical subjectivities

  • Marie-Pierre Moreau
    ,
  • Heather Mendick
    ,
  • Debbie Epstein
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle‐class men, yet also construct them as ‘other’ through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners’ views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the clichéd nature of popular cultural images.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 25-38

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Cambridge Journal of Education (Volume 40, Issue 1)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 22/10/2009
  • Published - 15/03/2010

Publication status

Published - 15/03/2010

ISSN

0305-764X

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/224299
  • Scopus: 77949529499

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