A man left albuquerque heading east: word problems as genre in mathematics education

Abstract

Gerofsky presents mathematics word problems as a specific genre, discussing and critiquing their traditional components (i.e., “set-up”, “information,” and “question”; p. 27) and their uses throughout the history of education. She further recommends strategies for analyzing and altering this genre in order to enrich the word problems developed in curriculum materials and implemented in classrooms. As a condensed version of the researcher’s doctoral thesis, the book is structured accordingly. Chapter 1 provides an introduction; chapters 2 and 3 deal with the theoretical background of genre, drawing heavily upon literary and linguistics sources and ideas; chapter 4 provides a rationale for, and description of, the methodological decisions made in the research; chapters 5 and 6 analyze the interview data from the various levels of participants; and chapter 8 explains the researcher’s own creative recommendations for educators and curriculum writers. Chapter 7, dealing with the elaborate history of the word problem genre, could have possibly been positioned directly following chapter 3, in terms of its theoretical nature. However, Gerofsky’s choice of penultimate positioning of this chapter does provide the reader with a necessary context for her major conjecture (i.e., the evolution of word problem utility), and also sets the stage for her recommendations regarding teacher practice in chapter 8.