Those Who Can: The Significance of Math Policymakers for Math Policy and Practice
Date
2020-09-23
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Abstract
This study addresses the effects that policymakers’ mindsets have upon equity in the policy and practice of math education. It looks beyond math education culture to the general culture, examining the way mindset is constructed and sustained through its discursive expressions in written and spoken language and identifying the positioning it entails and its consequences for learners, educators and policymakers. I explore the notion that due to their similar experience as learners, Israeli math education policymakers hold similar beliefs about math ability. Mapping the mindset behind these shared perceptions, I trace its existence within policy (where it gains authority), as well as its positioning of learners in ways that strengthen and support cultural perceptions while hindering equity. My research addresses complex issues at the personal, social, and political levels. Discourse provides the underlying methodological cornerstone for this study. Discourse analysis serves both for excavation and interpretation of dispositions and mindsets embedded in policy, as well as for the negotiation and re-conceptualization of identities, positions, and policy. Looking at policymakers’ commitment and passion for math education and its promotion, alongside the difficulty in addressing learners whose experience of math is very different from their own, there may be a need for special support in the process of policy and curriculum creation. There may be need for a greater variety of voices in the math education committees, voices that are as passionate about math education and the possibility of promoting it among learners of different dispositions, voices that should echo the position and outlook of different learners.
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math education policy, mindset, math education, positioning, equity, discourse, identity
Citation
Telem, L. (2020). Those Who Can: The Significance of Math Policymakers for Math Policy and Practice (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.