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Smith, Cathy
(2020).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2019.1697206
Abstract
This paper examines how young people account for choosing mathematical subjects, and how these processes sustain, or not, their continued participation. It draws on a 2-year qualitative study of 24 young peoples’ accounts of following advanced mathematical pathways within a widening participation programme. Working within a poststructural framework, I combine two arguments: firstly, that local discourses of time, age and maturity position contemporary adolescence as a time of ‘becoming’ that aligns personal aspirations with mathematical progress, and secondly that students’ accounts of choice and aspiration require multiple imaginings of present and future selves. I identify distinct discourses –moving/improving and getting ahead - that structure the intelligibility of participation in mathematics and further mathematics respectively. I argue that tracing the alignments between students’ accounts of themselves and/in mathematics offers potential to understand emergent practices in mathematics participation but also how exclusions are re-inscribed along classed and gendered lines.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
