Full Description
The crisis around teaching and learning of mathematics and its use in everyday life and work relate to a number of issues. These include: The doubtful transferability of school maths to real life contexts, the declining participation in A level and higher education maths courses, the apparent exclusion of some groups, such as women and the aversion of many people to maths. This book addresses these issues by considering a number of key problems in maths education and numeracy:
*differences among social groups, especially those related to gender and social class
*the inseparability of cognition and emotion in mathematical activity
*the understanding of maths anxiety in traditional psychological, psychoanalytical and feminist theories
*how adults' numerate thinking and performance must be understood in context.
The author's findings have practical applications in education and training, such as clarifying problems of the transfer of learning, and of countering maths anxiety.
Contents
1.Introduction: mathematics, the difficult subject 2.Mathematical thinking in context among adults 3.mathematics performance and social difference 4.Affect and mathematics anxiety 5.Reflections on the study so far 6.Rethinking the context of mathematical thinking 7.Rethinking mathematical affect as emotion 8.Developing a complementary qualitative methodology 9.Reconsidering mathematical thinking and emotion in practice 10.The learners' stories 11.Conclusions and contributions
