Language and “Subjectivity” in the Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

The context for much — though not all¹ — learning and problem solving in mathematics is the mathematics classroom at school. To talk about the culture of the classroom is already a move away from “scientific” views which would see the important functions and activities of the classroom as able to be directed according to their criteria of rationality, of understanding, and of what is to count as knowledge. The questioning of these views has had diverse effects: sometimes, a complete rejection of them, unveiling in the process the power relations that such claims to scientificity (e.g, the claim of mathematics to universal applicability) support; at other times, the recognition that the condition of any tradition, including the scientific, is a more or less unified meaning which keeps getting heard anew and reformulated. In this second view, what supports and delimits the possibilities of teaching and learning is the culture of the classroom. This culture is what makes the activities and the tasks, e.g. problems to solve, meaningful — in one way or another.

We would like to acknowledge the crucial influences over the years of Valerie Walkerdine and John Hayes in our being able to formulate the problems discussed here in these terms. Of course we are responsible for the formulations in this aiticle.