Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: Semiotic and Activity-Theoretic Perspectives / Edition 1

by W.M. Roth

Overview

During the summer of 1990, while taking my holidays to teach a university course of physics for elementary teachers, I also tutored one of the tenth-grade students at my school in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In return for working with him for free, I had requested permission to audiotape our sessions; I wanted to use the transcripts as data sources for a chapter that I had been in­ vited to write. It so happened that I discovered and read Jean Lave's Cognition in Practice that very summer, which inspired me to read other books on mathe­ matics in everyday situations. Two years later, while conducting a study with my teacher colleague G. Michael Bowen on eighth-grade students' learning during an open-inquiry ecology unit, I discovered these students' tremendous data analysis skills that appeared to be a function of the deep familiarity with the objects and events that they had studied and mathematized earlier in the unit. I reported my findings in two articles, 'Mathematization of experience in a grade 8 open-inquiry environment: An introduction to the representational practices of science' and 'Where is the context in contextual word problems?: Mathematical practices and products in Grade 8 students' answers to story problems'. I Begin­ ning with that study, I developed a research agenda that focused on mathemati­ cal knowing in science and science-related professions. During the early 1990s, I was also interested in the notion of authentic practice as a metaphor for planning school science curriculum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402013744
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	07/31/2003
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

1 Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: An Introduction.- 1.1 Graphing is Pervasive.- 1.2 Nature of Practice.- 1.3 Reading Graphs as Semiotic Practice.- 1.4 Graphs as Sign Objects.- 1.5 Graphing as Rhetorical Practice.- 1.6 Graphs as Conscription Devices.- 1.7 Conclusion and Outlook.- One: Graphing in Captivity.- 2 From ‘Expertise’ to Situated Reason: The Role of Experience, Familiarity, and Usefulness.- 3 Unfolding Interpretations: Graph Interpretation as Abduction.- 4 Problematic Readings: Case Studies of Scientists Struggling with Graph Interpretation.- 5 Articulating Background: Scientists Explain Graphs of their Own Making.- Two: Graphing in the Wild.- 6 Reading Graphs: Transparent Use of Graphs in Everyday Activity.- 7 From Writhing Lizards to Graphs: The Development of Embodied Graphing Competence.- 8 Fusion of Sign and Referent: From Interpreting to Reading of Graphs.- Appendix: The Tasks.- A.1 Plant Distributions.- A.2 Population Dynamics.- A.3 Isoclines.- A.4 Scientists’ Graphs.- Notes.- References.