Forging Mathematical Identities: Teenage Newcomers and Their Integration Into a New Educational System

• In Event: Venturing the Terrains of Mathematical Identities: Theoretical Perspectives on Participation and Inclusion in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Objective
Learners’ mathematical identity has been recognized as a determining factor in learning school mathematics (e.g., Sfard & Prusak, 2005). However, there is a paucity of empirical research among K-12 students (Areepattamannil, 2012). Although identity is conceptualized as dynamic and fluid across the board, it has been featured mostly through static and observable characteristics such as race and gender thus creating a discrepancy between how identity is conceptualized theoretically and how it is explored empirically (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). This paper focuses on teenage mathematical identity in times of transition and explores the construct through the concept of bricolaging (Levi-Strauss (1962) and Ivanič’s (1998) four co-constitutive and co-emergent identity facets.

Methods
This study employs a research design that consists of twenty-three, 90-minute interviews (family, individual, and focus groups) and an analytical framework that is compatible with the conceptualization of identity as fluid and malleable. Situated within qualitative research, I will explore the concept of identity through Ivanič’s (1998) multifarious perspective of four multi-directional and mutually constitutive aspects of identity.

Data sources
The three-part research design and Ivanič’s (1998) framework allow us to explore the dynamic nature of learners’ mathematical identity and see how the present, the past, and the future are intertwined through identity work that changes the past and is directed by it. Recruitment of participants was done through an open invitation for newcomers from Israel to Canada. With respect to gaining richer descriptions of experiences of mathematics education and in order to ensure a design that will generate enough data, both parents and their children were invited to participate in the research separately, as a family, and as age-specific groups.

Results
An analysis of the rich data yielded a deeper understanding of identity work that pertains not only to individual, seemingly idiosyncratic, biographies. It has also engendered a strong association with cultural historical background of the teenage newcomers that goes as far back as a few generations. In addition, identities were not only constructed and put forth by sporadic reference to past collective events. In fact, they cut across participants’ autobiographies, authorial identity, discoursal identity, and socio-culturally available identities of the participants thus buttressing the notion of the simultaneous and co-constitutive aspects of identity work within mathematics education.

Scholarly significance
The contributions of this research relate to several areas. First, it focuses on learners’ mathematical identities thus contributing to filling the gap identified in the literature review in regard to K-12 learners’ mathematical identity. Second, it addresses the discrepancy between how identity is conceptualized and how it has been mostly explored (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Finally, it adds to existing knowledge about the relationship between cultures and learning school mathematics thus widening the spectrum of mathematics teaching and learning.

Author

• Osnat Fellus, University of Ottawa