Connecting the Dots: Toward a Multidimensional Conceptualization and Operationalization of Identity in Mathematics Education

• In Event: 63.026 - Teaching and Learning Mathematics: How Identity Keeps Count as a System Premised on Multidirectional Dimensions

Abstract

Theoretical Framework
Given the positioning of identity in mathematics as an “emerging line of research” (Barwell et al. 2017) and its perception as essential in the learning of mathematics, scholars have repeatedly called attention to the incompatibility between how the concept of identity is theorized as dynamic, negotiated, and in constant flux and how it is operationalized as static, prescribed, and flat (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Against this backdrop, research on identity as a dynamic construct among K-12 learners of mathematics remains under-theorized and under-researched. The purpose of this paper is to address both issues by building on, inter alia, Ricoeur’s (1992) distinction between idem and ipse identity and on Bruner’s (1986) perception of identity as an act of bricolaging. Operationally, I have imported Ivanič’s (1998) four-part model to suggest an inter-animated, multi-directional framework that simultaneously includes autobiographical identity (see Di Martino & Zan, 2010), authorial identity (see Langer-Osuna, 2017), discoursal identity (see McFeetors & Mason, 2005), and socioculturally available identities (see Epstein, Mendick & Moreau, 2010). While these dimensions were traditionally treated separately, this paper foregrounds them as a necessarily unified identity-related system.

Purposes/Research Questions
In the context of teenage newcomers, the purpose of this study is to explore the interanimated nature of the four identity-related dimensions as they integrate into a new educational system. The overarching research question is thus: How does each of the above-mentioned identity-related dimensions simultaneously contribute to a teenage newcomer’s identity as a learner of mathematics? More specifically, how do teenage newcomers construct their mathematical autobiographical identities, how do they build their authorial identities and their discoursal identity in mathematics, and what mathematics-related socioculturally available identities do they align themselves with?

Modes of Inquiry
Using a multidimensional model to understanding identity, data were collected in a three-part research design that included six family interviews, 16 one-to-one interviews with parents and teenagers, and four all-parent and all-teenager focus groups.

Results
Analyzing the data, it was demonstrated that while teenage newcomers have a variety of autobiographical identities of themselves as learners of mathematics, these shape and are shaped by the teenagers’ discoursal identity and by their authorial identity, both of which function as venues for positioning and for self-expression and appropriation of ideas and statements about mathematics. This goes hand in hand with the socioculturally available selfhoods the teenagers affiliate themselves with.

Scholarly Significance
Making the shift in exploring identity from idem to ipse identity is compelling now more than ever before in light of the crisis narrative in mathematics education. This study shows how the four identity-related dimensions, while closely related, are not subsets of each other. Rather, they are distinct but inseparable. As such, each necessitates a definition both conceptual and operational. Through this form of investigation that pulls the four identity-related dimensions together, at once, I widen the lens and increase the pixels of the image of identity work to sharpen what we see when we talk about identity and to unblur the lines of distinction between the different inseparable entities.

Author

• Olga Fellus, University of Ottawa