Being a Girl Mathematician: Diversity of Positive Mathematical Identities in a Secondary Classroom (original) (raw)
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Being a Girl Mathematician: Diversity of Positive Mathematical Identities in a Secondary
The construction of positive mathematical identities (MIs) is a complex and central issue in school mathematics, where girls are usually “counted out” of the field. This study explores positive MIs (high achiever and positive relationship with mathematics) of 3 girls. We employed a nested model of identity based on a case study approach (i.e., female mathematics students nested within a cluster of students nested within a mathematics classroom). The results highlight diversity in how these girls experienced mathematics: They valued different forms of doing mathematics (independent and collaborative; wider and complex; and straightforward, procedure-oriented mathematics), showed different forms of engagement (detachment, protagonist and challenging, and compliant and support-seeker), and narrated different MIs (efficient, different, and responsible). The study also explores and discusses the roles of mathematical practice and belonging to different peer clusters in these different forms of identification.
Identity Construction in Mathematics Learning: A Phenomenological Study of Girl Students
Interdisciplinary Research in Education, 2019
This phenomenological study examined how girl students struggle in constructing their identity in mathematics learning. The concept given by Cobb and Hodge (2003) was used as a theoretical basis to explain the identity construction of girls. In addition, the process of identity construction is critically examined through a feminist perspective. Three girl students studying mathematics in Master’s level were involved in in-depth interview. The data collected through interview were first transcribed, which was followed by thematic network analysis to make meaning from the information. The key finding was that students faced difficulties and struggle due to patriarchal system of society, false beliefs about mathematics and mathematics learning, and traditional and meritocratic system of teaching learning system.
Finding a voice? Narrating the female self in mathematics
Educational Studies in Mathematics, 2012
If mathematics is a male domain, where does this leave women who do mathematics? In a world where there is little or no discursive space in which to be female, women who enter in must do identity work in order to achieve what is often an uneasy presence. This paper builds on recent research which suggests that some undergraduate women are however finding new spaces for belonging in the world of mathematics through critical reflection and collective challenge to dominant discourses. Focussing on an analysis of two women's narratives of their success in mathematics, it explores their multi-voiced accounts of self through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogism. It discusses the scope of reflexivity in creating new identity spaces in refigured worlds. Women, university mathematics, identities, refiguring, heteroglossia Introduction: mathematics as a masculine domain Since Walkerdine's argument in Counting girls out (1989) that girls' underachievement in mathematics during the 1980's was constructed rather than real, much research has focussed on understanding the ways in which women are positioned as "successful but not succeeding" in mathematics. In recent years, although girls have begun to equal or outperform boys at school level in the UK, for example, they are under-represented in postcompulsory mathematics pre-university (see Mendick, 2005b) and in undergraduate and postgraduate study, where participation in mathematical sciences subjects falls to 41% and 27% respectively (HESA, 2011, table 7). This pattern is an international one, as Forgasz, Becker, Lee and Steinthorsdottir's (2010) book demonstrates, and it demands an understanding of women's own self-positioning as "not belonging" in the world of mathematics, even when they are successful in it at both undergraduate (Solomon, 2007a) and postgraduate (Herzig, 2004) levels. Theorising this situation, Mendick (2006) argues that "doing mathematics is doing masculinity": choosing mathematics and being good at it compromises femininity, requiring "identity work". One manifestation of this uneasy existence is invisibility: for Walls (2008), girls and women in mathematics "are required to don a cloak of invisibility that affords them temporary status as honorary males in a male domain" (p.4), and like Walkerdine before her, she notes the heavy psycho-social burden of this position. Similarly, Rodd and Bartholomew (2006) argue that the lack of a discursive space for women who do mathematics creates problems for those who choose it at degree level: since the available identities and cultural norms are masculine, young women can only position themselves as good at mathematics by stepping out of the available female identities. They are more likely to choose invisibility as a means of self-protection from the difficulties of "being a mathematical girl". Alternatively, they may play down their achievements, "tapping into discourses about mathematics learning which place 'real understanding' in opposition to 'memorization', and generally associate 'flair' with boys" (44). A parallel distinction is noted by Mendick et al. (2008), who report that undergraduates tend to divide mathematics sub-areas into "masculine" and "feminine", masculine areas being perceived as more "intellectual". Undergraduate women are correspondingly more likely to berate themselves for "not understanding" (Solomon, 2007a). These studies underline Walls' (2009) claim that "boys and girls engage in their learning of mathematics at school as distinctly gendered social beings ... the subject of mathematics is itself constructive of children as gendered subjects" (p. 231). However, recent work (Solomon, Lawson, & Croft, 2011) has suggested that some undergraduate women are establishing new discursive spaces which enable them to take up an identity of mathematician which does not exclude being female. Crucial elements in this shift have been the availability of physical spaces in some universities which have fostered collaborative learning practices, together with critical comment on, and challenge to, dominant discourses about mathematics which position men as more able. This paper explores further how two women's narratives of self as both mathematician and female are constructed, as
Gender and Education (2011) 23(5) pp565-583
Many learners may be successful in mathematics but nevertheless see themselves as existing only on the margins of the practice, or as lacking stability in it -in this sense, they have what can be called a fragile identity. Although this kind of relationship with mathematics is not limited to girls and women, they do appear to express such fragile identities more often or more readily. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from undergraduates in three English universities, this paper presents an analysis of the way in which university mathematics is differentially experienced by men and women, and of the part this may play in women's ongoing narratives of self as mathematicians. It is suggested that some women resist traditional positionings in the mathematics world, drawing on local resources which enable a sense of agency as successful students and a refiguring of their relationships with mathematics.
A common theme in accounts of choosing mathematics is that of persistence in the face of troubles or difficulties which are often associated with the structuring effects of gender, class, culture and ethnicity. Centring on an analysis of one woman's account of becoming a mathematician, we build on our understanding of multiple and developing identities with the aim of capturing the nature of individual challenge to structuring discourses, and its implications for choice and participation in mathematics more generally. Inspecting how she talks about events in past, present and future, we expand on notion of leading activity to explore how we organise and prioritise activities (and their related identities) within the context of Holland et al.'s (1998) theory of identity in practice, hybridity and worldmaking. We interrogate the part played by contradiction in creating space for individual agency through its resolution in hybrid practices and its relation to social change, exploring how our informant narrates taking up mathematics 'against the odds' as part of an ongoing process of 're-writing' herself into new imagined worlds. In providing an insight into how one individual envisages and enacts a different mathematics culture in which she can have a place, our analysis suggests ways forward in creating new, more inclusive, mathematics education.
Dealing with ‘fragile identities’: resistance and refiguring in women mathematics students
Gender and Education, 2011
Dealing with "fragile identities": resistance and refiguring in women mathematics students Many learners may be successful in mathematics but nevertheless see themselves as existing only on the margins of the practice, or as lacking stability in it-in this sense, they have what can be called a fragile identity. Although this kind of relationship with mathematics is not limited to girls and women, they do appear to express such fragile identities more often or more readily. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from undergraduates in three English universities, this paper presents an analysis of the way in which university mathematics is differentially experienced by men and women, and of the part this may play in women's ongoing narratives of self as mathematicians. It is suggested that some women resist traditional positionings in the mathematics world, drawing on local resources which enable a sense of agency as successful students and a refiguring of their relationships with mathematics.
2015
With amendments made to the Title IX legislation in 2006, public schools in the United States were permitted to establish single-sex classes as an option for students to enroll voluntarily. Yet, our understanding of how single-sex mathematics classes affect female and male adolescent students in the United States is sparse. The purpose of this study is to contribute to this limited body of scholarship by gaining insights into the similarities and differences in how middle grade female and male students' narrate their mathematics identity within a single-sex and coeducational mathematics classrooms, as well as how class type may be shaping these adolescents' mathematics identity. Grounded in the theoretical work of Gilligan (1982), Bakhtin (1981, 1986) and Evans (2008), students' mathematics identities were understood as being composed of an interplay of "voices," voices vying for audibility (Evans, 2008), and moving in and out of one another while simultaneously shaping each participant's mathematics identity, similar to that viewed at the opening end of a kaleidoscope. Results support the notion that mathematics identity is a complex and individualistic construct. Yet, in considering participants' voices as distinct entities, it appears as though they are more similar than different. But participants in this study must make sense of their multiple voices, their mathematics identity, within the broader context of society and the classroom setting, external influences shaping how they perceive and narrate themselves as mathematics students. One such factor is the class type (single-sex or coeducational), which appears to be shaping some of the participants' mathematics identity in this study. iii DEDICATION To women and men, girls and boys, who feel "voiceless" in respects to their education and suppressed in expressing who they are as learners of mathematics. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Some may argue that one's dissertation is a lonely process. I would argue otherwise. I have lived and formed relationships with my participants through my data. I have additionally lived with the insights and living words of my committee members
If mathematics is a male domain, where does this leave women who do mathematics? In a world where there is little or no discursive space in which to be female, women who enter in must do identity work in order to achieve what is often an uneasy presence. This paper builds on recent research which suggests that some undergraduate women are however finding new spaces for belonging in the world of mathematics through critical reflection and collective challenge to dominant discourses. Focussing on an analysis of two women's narratives of their success in mathematics, it explores their multi-voiced accounts of self through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogism. It discusses the scope of reflexivity in creating new identity spaces in refigured worlds.
Mathematics Identities of Non-STEM Major Female Students
2015
The mathematics education literature has documented gender differences in the learning of mathematics, interventions that promote female and minority students to pursue STEM majors, and the persistence of the gender, achievement, and opportunity gaps. However, there is a significantly lower number of studies that address the mathematics identities of students not majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Even more elusive or non-existent are studies that focus on the factors that shaped the mathematics identities of female students not pursuing STEM majors (non-STEM female students). Because the literature has shown the importance of understanding students' mathematics identities given its correlation with student achievement, motivation, engagement, and attitudes toward mathematics, it is vital to understand the factors that influence the construction of mathematics identities in particular of those students that have been historically marginalized. To address this issue, I explored the mathematics identities held by 12 non-STEM major students (six taking a remedial mathematics course and six others taking a non-remedial mathematics course) in one urban business college in a metropolitan area of the Northeastern United States. This study used Martin's (2000) definition of mathematics identity as the framework to explore the factors that have influenced the mathematics identities of non-STEM female students. The data for this qualitative study were drawn from mathematics autobiographies, one questionnaire, two interviews, and three class observations. I found that the mathematics identities of non-STEM major female students' in remedial and non-remedial mathematics courses were influenced by the same factors but in different ways. Significant differences indicated how successful and non-successful students perceive, interpret, and react to those factors. One of those factors was non-successful students believe some people are born with the ability to do mathematics; consequently, they attributed their lack of success to not having this natural ability. Most of the successful students in remedial mathematics attribute their success to effort and most successful students in non-remedial mathematics attribute their success to having a natural ability to do mathematics. Another factor was successful students expressed having an emotional connection to mathematics. This was evident in cases where mathematics was an emotional bond between father and daughter and those in which mathematics was a family trait. Moreover, the mathematics activities in both classrooms were scripted and orchestrated with limited room for improvisation. However, the non-remedial students experienced moments in which their academic curiosity contributed to opportunities to exercise conceptual agency and author some of their mathematics knowledge. Further, successful students in remedial mathematics did not have the ability to continue the development of positive mathematics identities given rigid classroom activities that contributed to a limited sense of community to support mathematics learning.
The construction of identity in secondary mathematics education
2000
Drawing on data from 120 interviews with secondary schools students of mathematics aged from 14 to 18 in England and the United States, this paper argues that young people's developing identities are an important and neglected factor in success at secondary school mathematics. Students in both countries believe mathematics to be rigid and inflexible, and in particular, that it is a subject that leaves no room for negotiation of meaning. However, while the lack of opportunity for understanding mathematics was important, a much more salient factor in determining students' attitudes towards mathematics was that they did not see success at mathematics as in any way relevant to their developing identities, except insofar as success at mathematics allowed access to future education and careers. (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.