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How Place and Audience Matter: Perspectives on Mathematics Plural Identities from Late 1950s French and English Middle School Textbooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2017

Catherine Radtka
Catherine Radtka*
Affiliation:
Centre national d'études spatiales. Institut des sciences de la communication CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne, UPMC, France E-mail: [email protected]
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Argument

In this paper, I argue that studying school textbooks is a fruitful way to investigate mathematical conceptions in different national contexts. These sources give access to the written production of an extended mathematical milieu whose members write for various audiences. By studying the case of late 1950s French and English textbooks issued for a growing audience of 11- to 15-year-old pupils, I show that a plurality of conceptions was projected at the time onto pupils and their teachers in both national contexts. I link this diversity to contemporaneous debates regarding mathematics teaching and argue that textbooks themselves have to be considered as active agents of such debates.

Type
Miscellaneous Articles
Information
Science in Context , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 473 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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