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Imagining the mathematician: young people talking about popular representations of maths

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

Abstract

This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and explores the ways in which young people deploy the discourses produced in these texts. We argue that there are particular (and sometimes contradictory) meanings and discourses about mathematics that circulate in popular culture, that young people use these as resources in identity making as (non-)mathematicians, negotiating their meaning in ways that are not always predictable, and that their influence on young people is diffuse and nevertheless important. The paper discusses the discourses that prevail in some of the popular cultural images of mathematics and mathematicians that came up in our research. We show how mathematics is represented as a secret language, while mathematicians are often mad, mostly male and almost invariably white. We then explore how young people negotiate these discourses, positioning themselves in relation to mathematics. Here we draw attention to the fact that both those who continue with mathematics after it ceases to be compulsory and those who do not, deploy similar images of mathematics and mathematicians. What is different is how they respond to and negotiate these images.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 45-60

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Discourse (Volume 31, Issue 1)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 17/05/2012

Publication status

Published - 17/05/2012

ISSN

0159-6306

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/224332
  • Scopus: 77949500846

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