This book seeks to address the question of how the task of teaching mathematics to young children might be better understood. But rather than starting out with a conception of mathematics derived from the many histories mathematics might claim as its own we centre the analysis instead within the social practices that surround the teaching of the subject to children aged four to eleven in English primary schools today. That is, we do not commence with an a priori conception of mathematics and see what people are saying about it. Rather, we start from what people are saying and see where this points. We probe how the desires of society have manifested themselves in a societal decision to teach mathematics and how this decision now shapes that which is called "mathematics". We focus on the operation of the noun "mathematics" and verb "mathematical" and consider how the meanings of these terms derive from the social domain in which they are being used. This extends and develops a conception of how language intervenes in the task of mathematics education presented elsewhere (Brown, 2001). In this present book however, we have a particular focus on trainee and newly qualified teachers, with a view to pinpointing how this conception of mathematics manifests itself in their evolving practices. We question how such teachers with many years of experience as a pupil in school might now re-orient themselves towards the demands of teaching mathematics in schools.
This book offers a unique theoretical perspective deploying contemporary psychoanalytical and post-structuralist theory in an easy accessible style. It links issues in education research, with a particular emphasis on mathematics, to broader social concerns and theorising.
This volume documents in real time the implementation of a major government numeracy programme and its receipt by trainee and new teachers. It shows how such managerialist policies cast teachers as civil servants through de-professionalising the conception of their role. The book provides an easy and accessible commentary utilising contemporary theory to describe how such teachers reconcile their personal aspirations with the external demands they encounter in negotiating their identities as professional teachers. It shows how recent advances in psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory enable a fresh approach to analysing teacher experience of and response to policy implementation. And more broadly, by situating education in a wider social framework, it shows how we can better formulate solutions to new problems in conceptualising education policy.
The twentieth century has left a legacy of techno-scientific control governed by the ideology of "real" social forces. As we begin to experience a new century where such rationalistic aspirations have been re-routed in so many areas of theory the book asks how education research might move on from these earlier instrumentalist tendencies.
This volume will be of interest to researchers in mathematics education, teacher education, policy implementation, contemporary theory and psychoanalysis in education as well as to student teachers, teacher educators, teachers carrying out in-service training and postgraduate students in education.
