TY - JOUR
T1 - Reading Stances in Mathematics
T2 - Positioning Students and Texts
AU - Wallace, Faith H.
AU - Clark, Karen K.
N1 - Funding Information:
frequently seen in their textbooks" (Moyer, 2000, p. 248). Recommended titles for adolescents and young adults include The Math Wiz (Duffey, 1990), The Phantom Toubooth (Juster, 1961), Jayden's Rescue (Tumanov, 2002), and Flatland (Abbott, 1952). In addition, Borasi and Brown (1985) advocate that teachers write original dialogue and stories where mathematical content is explored naturally. Additionally, reform-oriented textbook series, such as Mathematics in Context (MiC), provide copies of text from real-world contexts to explore mathematics. MiC is a comprehensive curriculum for Grades 5-8 developed with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help make the NCTM Standards a reality. One critical feature of the curriculum is that mathematics is situated in real-world contexts connected to students' lives and interests. Three key elements of the curriculum that are integral to the development of mathematical power are the multiple ways that problems can be solved, informal reinvention of significant mathematics, and posing reasonable solutions based on relevant context. One illustrative example from the MiC curriculum asks students to think about the basic patterns they see in brick buildings from accompanying photographs and make predictions about the number of bricks used and how to extend the pattern (Burrill, Cole, & Pligge, 2003, p. 17-18). Not surprisingly, reading mathematics is strongly undergirded by the social-constructivist theory of learning (Bruner, 1961; Driscoll, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978), a theory also embraced by reading researchers and theorists who value multiple constructions of meaning, as well as the process of construction, spotlighting the unique experiences the reader brings to the text in or-der to create meaning (Braunger & Lewis, 1998; Gambrel1 & Mazzoni, 1999; Smith, 1994). This social-constructivist approach to mathematics instruction advocates comprehension-based in-struction in which the reader plays an active role in the construction of meaning, and factors related to the reader, text, and context are taken into consideration when solving mathema-tical problems (Siegel, Borasi, & Smith, 1989).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2005, Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2005/7/1
Y1 - 2005/7/1
N2 - This review of recent literature, focusing on the integration of mathematics and reading, highlights three reading stances within mathematics classrooms. The first stance, reading problems, highlights the scope-and-sequence, transmission approach to learning mathematics, where the purpose of reading is to figure out how to solve an immediate mathematical problem. The second stance, reading mathematics, focuses on understanding the language of mathematics and often includes diverse texts. In the third stance, reading life, students extend their mathematical understanding to sociopolitical issues, particularly issues that affect students' daily lives. This review concludes by suggesting a source of text for reading life: Environmental print.
AB - This review of recent literature, focusing on the integration of mathematics and reading, highlights three reading stances within mathematics classrooms. The first stance, reading problems, highlights the scope-and-sequence, transmission approach to learning mathematics, where the purpose of reading is to figure out how to solve an immediate mathematical problem. The second stance, reading mathematics, focuses on understanding the language of mathematics and often includes diverse texts. In the third stance, reading life, students extend their mathematical understanding to sociopolitical issues, particularly issues that affect students' daily lives. This review concludes by suggesting a source of text for reading life: Environmental print.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85009598796&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85009598796&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01626620.2005.10463384
DO - 10.1080/01626620.2005.10463384
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85009598796
SN - 0162-6620
VL - 27
SP - 68
EP - 79
JO - Action in Teacher Education
JF - Action in Teacher Education
IS - 2
ER -