The Interplay of Identity, Context, and Purpose in a Study of Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Abstract

In this chapter, Roser Gine connects her experiences as a mathematics student and educator to the research process she engaged in during her doctoral dissertation. Specifically, she shows how her identity and her beliefs about teaching and learning, influenced in part by her peripheral participation in the mathematics community as a young child, guided her research choices, from the formation of researchable questions, through the theoretical lenses appropriated, to the data collection and analysis processes. Her work attempts to reveal how students make sense of mathematics in the setting where their learning occurs, through interactions with their teacher and peers, through the enactment of curriculum, and in their development of disciplinary tools. Her views on the humanistic nature of the development of mathematical thinking leads to her use of a bricolage of socio-cultural theories, including Activity Theory, Structure Theory, and socio-semiotics. The chapter details the interplay between the author’s identity, the context in which she conducts her work, and her purpose as an educator and a mathematics education researcher.