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Choosing mathematics: the narrative of the self as a site of agency

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Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and methodological issues in exploring identity and agency within a narrative of choosing mathematics. Taking as our starting point Bakhtin’s emphasis on the dialogic space between interlocutors, we explore how an awareness of the addressivity and otherness of utterances, and of the role of genre and heteroglossia in self-authoring, can be used in the analysis of an interview to gain insight into one student’s narrative of choosing mathematics despite the fear that it held for her. We consider how our own research preoccupations with the role of gender and family discourses in learners’ relationships with mathematics played a part in the interview, and how the interviewee’s appropriation of, and resistance to, these and other genres can be understood as an assertion of agency within her particular narrative of choice.

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Notes

  1. H: It was always the battle [kjempinga], that I had in a way wanted to do it [i.e. math] … it [the mathematics] was always in me, I always wanted to do it… to make it…. To get it [the fear] out of me because it [the mathematics] was in me in a way….

  2. We use this spelling of didaktical to denote a meaning of the word which is different to its understanding in British English. This spelling indicates the German/Nordic usage which emphasises the holistic study of education including its ideological underpinnings.

  3. It is appropriate to say here that the subject of gender and mathematics had recently been discussed in the master in mathematics education class.

  4. H: Yes I put myself under pressure [by doing mathematics], I do that … but I don’t know the reasons for why it [the angst, struggle] became this way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Postboks 4, St. Olavs Plass, 0130, Oslo, Norway

    Hans Jørgen Braathe

  2. Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6GX, UK

    Yvette Solomon

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  1. Hans Jørgen Braathe
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  2. Yvette Solomon
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Correspondence to Yvette Solomon.

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Braathe, H.J., Solomon, Y. Choosing mathematics: the narrative of the self as a site of agency. Educ Stud Math 89, 151–166 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-014-9585-8

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