Abstract
Although many scholars in the field of mathematics education are aware that identity discourses are highly political, research in the field usually lacks a framework theoretically and methodologically to address the political dimension of identity research. Based on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and the case of a female secondary school student at a German public school, the present paper analyses identity as a socio-political process of identity work articulated around the discourse of ‘refusing school mathematics’ in our contemporary times. Her refusal of mathematics is constituted around issues related to a series of noted classroom practices such as collective work, being together and having fun, relevance of mathematics in society and life, respect of one’s own dignity instead of becoming humiliated, and bodily activity instead of seated work. We illustrate how discourse theory allows us to see the identity work of refusing mathematics as a contingent process in a discursive field of socio-political struggle. In this process the subject moves beyond an essentialist ‘refusal’ of mathematics learning towards articulating her refusal of a particular mathematics education socio-materiality that needs to become subverted and reworked into more affirmative terms.
Highlights
Over the last decades, mathematics education research has developed a growing interest in employing the construct of ‘identity’ as a matter of studying how learners and teachers narrate their knowing ‘self’ through lived experiences in mathematics education
Just as discourse theory assumes that no particular discourse is ‘truer’ than another and that ‘truth’ is merely the arrogation of a discourse that has obtained a hegemonic status as a political project, we argue that we as scholars in mathematics education do not entirely ‘know’ or ‘seek to know’ the ‘truth’ of mathematics education in students’ lives
Discourse theory provided us with a framework of thinking about identity work in the context of discourse as an ongoing configuration of self and other
Summary
Mathematics education research has developed a growing interest in employing the construct of ‘identity’ as a matter of studying how learners and teachers narrate their knowing ‘self’ through lived experiences in mathematics education Such an explosive interest has attracted the attention of researchers, and of educators, curriculum designers and policymakers who rely on certain identity markers of the mathematical subject (e.g., the rational problem solver, the reasoning individual, the intuitive learner), or identity categories such as gender, race or talent, to produce claims for changing or Feldkirch, Austria reforming curricular guidelines, materials, educational policies and learning practices.
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