Spoken Mathematical Classroom Culture: Artifice and Artificiality

Abstract

One major component of an educational researcher’s task is to document and understand the world of schools, teaching and learning: in the case of mathematics education researchers, that of mathematics classrooms. Using metaphors is one way of undertaking this complex task. For instance, at the most general level, when looking at discourse generated about teaching, both academically and popularly, a number of such metaphors can be seen at work, each with its own imagery and accompanying rhetoric. Examples include seeing teaching as gardening (kindergarten, growth, nurturing, but what about weeds?), as doctoring (remediation, diagnosis, prescription, but misconception as illness?), as coaching (basic skills, exercises, repetition, competition and performance) and as acting (classroom roles, stage-managing events, teacher as director or actor, pupils as actors or ‘audience’).

“I’ll offer a trade”, said Nellie.

“A trade?” Kate had reached, she realized, the moment in certain conversations when she found herself merely echoing the words of her interlocutor. It was evidence of unhappiness. (Cross, 1991, p. 134)