Theoretical Positions

This chapter indicates some of the theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the ‘school and community numeracies’ team’s attempt to conduct ‘ethnographic-style’ research (Green and Bloome, 1997) in the area of numeracy at home and at school and in particular to conceptualise numeracy as a ‘social practice’ and with reference to literacy theory (Baker, 1996 and 1998; Street, 1984; 1995; Baker and Street; 1996, Brown et al 1998)). We begin by laying out our own assumptions regarding this field of inquiry. We take numeracy to be a powerful set of symbolic tools, concepts and representations, which can be used to serve a number of purposes. We also work with the assumption that numeration systems are as much subject to interpretative approaches concerning ideology, institutions, social relations and values as are other systems of meaning and communication that have been the subject of interpretative social science more generally. It is no more given that the study of numeracy demands a positivist epistemology or that its tools and concepts are ‘universal’ and ‘value free’, than it is for the study of literacy, from which we derive a number of our key concepts. This, then, is what is meant when we say that that in our research we viewed mathematics as social.