Elevers matematikksamtaler : Læring i og mellom praksiser

Abstract

The aim of this study “Students´mathematical conversations – Learning in and beween practices” is to examine students’ mathematical conversations and the students learning in and between practices. I study what characterizes mathematical conversations, and explore what potential the participation in such conversations in and outside school, have towards critical learning of mathematics. It is an expressed political goal that the subject of mathematics should be more practical in school. The government’s strategic document “Realfag for framtida, [MST for the future] 2010–2014”, describes company as an arena for concretization of school mathematics. This study aims to give teachers and teacher educators research-based insight into the conversations students initiate and are invited into as they move between different objectives for mathematics. It has also been an aim to provide curriculum developers and politicians research-based knowledge about how students learn mathematics through participation in a school-/business collaboration. The study is based on empirical data from an 8th grade class that collaborated with a construction firm to learn geometry. This collaboration was in the form of a school project where the students made physical models of a fisherman’s cabin. Concrete and abstract boundary objects, e.g., construction drawings, physical models and concepts such as scale, were important for the communication, both among the participants at school and between the students and a carpenter....