Mathematics Education and Language: Interpreting Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism

✍ Scribed by Tony Brown

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 281
• Series: Mathematics Education Library 20
• Edition: 1s
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

`Contemporary thinking on philosophy and the social sciences has been dominated by analyses that emphasise the importance of language in understanding societies and individuals functioning within them; important developments which have been under-utilised by researchers in mathematics education. This book reaches out to contemporary work in these broader fields; drawing on original sources in key areas such as Gadamer and Ricoeur's development of hermeneutics, Habermas' work in critical social theory, Schutz's social phenomenology, Saussure's linguistics and the post-structuralist analysis of Derrida, Foucault and Barthes. Through examining the writings of these major thinkers it is shown how language is necessarily instrumental in developing mathematical understanding; but a language that is in a permanent state of becoming, resisting stable connections to the ideas it locates. The analysis offered extends from children doing mathematics to teachers inspecting and developing their own professional practices.'

✦ Table of Contents

Preliminaries......Page 1
CONTENTS......Page 6
INTRODUCTION......Page 12
CHAPTER 1. HERMENEUTICS AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION......Page 36
CHAPTER 2. THE PRODUCTION OF MATHEMATICAL MEANING: A POST-STRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVE......Page 66
CHAPTER 3. SHARING MATHEMATICAL PERSPECTIVES......Page 89
CHAPTER 4. SOME LESSONS......Page 114
CHAPTER 5. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM......Page 143
CHAPTER 6. TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTIONS......Page 170
CHAPTER 7. DEVELOPING TEACHER PRACTICE......Page 183
CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION......Page 225
REFERENCES......Page 255
NAME INDEX......Page 269
SUBJECT INDEX......Page 273