adults’ mathematics, popular culture, and lifelong learning jeff evans middlesex university london...
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Adults’ Mathematics, Popular Culture, and Lifelong Learning
Jeff Evans Middlesex University
EMMA Clustering ConferenceFlorence, 6-8 September 2007
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Issues related to mathematics and numeracy on educational policy agenda
• need for more people trained in maths / science for productivity and national competitiveness
• need for more people ‘literate’ in maths / science
YET• declining numbers of students studying maths / science to higher levels
• performance levels low on adult maths (surveys, e.g. NRDC in UK) and innumeracy (anecdotal, J. Paulos)
• still socially acceptable in many societies to proclaim one’s incompetence with numbers, mathematics
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Issues re. emotions / motivation firmly on educational policy agenda
• generally: ‘emotional literacy’, ‘EQ’ (cf. IQ)
• motivation – including adults (Skills for Life)– especially for mathematics: ‘gatekeeper’
Public images of mathematics (FitzSimons, 2002) concern with beliefs, values, attitudes, cognitive and affective
public images of mathematics and of school maths difficult to disentangle
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Where do emotions, attitudes, beliefs come from?
Experiences at school, college (one-off or repeated) as interpreted by the learner
Interactions with ‘significant others’: TeachersParents / eldersSiblings / peers
(Fennema & Sherman, 1976)
Cultural representations: films, advertisements(Evans, Tsatsaroni & Staub, 2007)
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Images of mathematics in popular culture
focus on advertisements & films: powerful media forms discussions relatively accessible
Phase I small ‘opportunistic’ samples of each (most before
2001)
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Letts Advert for Study Aids (Observer, 1987)
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Enigma (2001)
Theme song in the background, they are sitting on a sofa.She: Why are you a mathematician? Do you like sums?
He, holding a rose: Because I like numbers – because, with numbers, truth and beauty are the same thing … you know you’re getting somewhere, when the equations start looking … beautiful. (He looks at her slightly appraisingly / appreciatively.)
Then you know the numbers are taking you closer to the secret of how things are. A rose is just plain text…
He hands her the rose; she takes it, but, as he passes it over, a thorn punctures his thumb and makes it bleed. She kisses his thumb; they embrace.
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Images of mathematics in popular culture
Conclusions / Conjectures from Phase I
Adverts: mathematics to be disliked, feared, mistrusted
Films (e.g. Good Will Hunting (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Enigma ( 2001) ─ ambivalent message:
Mathematics powerful form of thought quest for truth and beauty
BUT ALSO dangerous: perhaps triggers ‘madness’
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Current work in progress
Phase II: production of larger samples of both adverts and films
Adverts: Systematic sampling of daily newspapers from 1994-2003
Films: 40 ‘promising’ titles found from archive
General Research Question: Whether popular representations of maths reinforce / challenge public images, and how?
Phase III: focus on advertisements
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Theoretical Considerations
• cultural representations (films, adverts) reflect dominant social discourses – but also construct /maintain them
put individuals into positionings (power) in social / educational contexts – i.e. not completely free
person’s ‘identity’ constructed in the process
• central feature is the linking of cognitive and affective, and the place of emotion in cognitive-affective chains of meaning.
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Identity
•includes more ‘durable’ affect: attitudes, beliefs
• comes from repetitions of positionings, and the related emotional experiences
• in context of a personal history of positionings in different practices / activities
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Psychoanalytic Insights
• Emotions maybe unconscious, thus
everyday life mediated by unconscious images, thoughts and fantasies (Hunt, 1989)
• Emotions connected with desires and fantasies - many unconscious- social: connected with social imagery, `
e.g. advertising and films, shared at the group, professional, national
level--- scene from Enigma
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Pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 2000)
• Cultural productions, e.g. teacher talk, textbooks, syllabuses, adverts, films etc.,
translate a given distribution of power, etc. into forms of ‘pedagogic’ communication
• But media representations contain a range of discourses that are segmentally / cumulatively organized unlike pedagogic discourses: hierarchical, ‘logical’
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Research questions
• To what extent do advertisements use maths as a resource to construct their messages?
• What kinds of discourse(s) on mathematics, mathematicians, learners of maths, etc. can be identified in a sample of media productions?
• Changes in these discourses over time?
• Which discourses drawn on by adverts to construct the public/reader as a person who is knowledgeable, or otherwise, in mathematics?
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Methodology
(1) Categorising an advert as instance of ‘representation’ of mathematics / mathematicians: • keywords: mathematics; mathematician; math/s;
geometry / geometrician; algebra; equation(s); number(s); science / scientist; calculation(s);
• graph, a formula or equation;
• name, or picture, of a prominent mathematician, e.g. … Einstein.
• NOT prices, discounts, interest rates
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Methodology(2) Optimistically seeking adverts …
• National Newspaper Library (cf. agency)
• sampling scheme based on readership profiles3 ‘quality’ newspapers (Times, Telegraph, FT), 1 mid-market paper (Daily Mail), 2 ‘popular’ papers (Sun, Daily Mirror)
• systematically selected two periods (10-15 days)for 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, plus: 2001
i.e. light sampling
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Results
(A) Basic characteristics of the advertisements550 editions of daily newspapers: only 9 adverts
Newspaper No. editions examined
No. of Ads
“Success rate”
Times 105 4 4/105 = 4% Financial Times
124 0 0
Daily Telegraph
76 1 1/76 = 1.3%
All Qualities 305 5 5/305 = 1.64% Daily Mail 97 4 4/97 = 4% Sun 53 0 0 Daily Mirror 88 0 0 All Papers 543 9 9/543 = 1.66%
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Product category of all* adverts (n = 15)
Product category Number Automobiles 4 Business Services 3 Study Aids 2 Food 2 (1 campaign) Consumer ‘Phone Services 1 Bank 1 (job advert) Rail Transport 1 Men’s Cosmetics 1 Total 15
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Advertisements
Advert Product Newspaper Year XJ(CO2xOTR)=low B1K
Automobiles (Jaguar) Daily Mail 2003
“I hereby scientifically declare; Wednesdays stink”
Food (Quorn) Daily Mail 2003
π: BEYOND INFINITY Men’s Cosmetics (Givenchy)
Corporate website
2002 ca.
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Hybrid content analysis /semiotic reading
• Overt aim of the advert
• ‘Appeal’: rational; worry / relief; sensual; testimonial (Leiss et al., 1990)
• Public images of mathematics
• Public images of school mathematics
• Public images of people doing mathematics
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Jaguar (Daily Mail, April 2003) • Aim: inform of low environmental tax payable, due
to low CO2 emissions, ‘unmatched’ car build• Appeal: ‘rational’ + ‘sensuous’
• Image of mathematics: “equations” confirm simple, straightforward statements about car’s uniqueness
• Science, mathematics as ‘referent system’ (Williamson, 1978) guarantees truth
• BUT … let’s look XJ = low BIK XJ (CO2 x OTR) = low BIK
Other themes: sensitivity to environment
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Quorn (Daily Mail, 2x, 5 days, Mar. 2003
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Quorn (Daily Mail, 2x, 5 days, Mar. 2003)Aims: ‘sympathise’ with readers re. Wednesdays’ alleged “mid-week blues”Appeal: worry: Weds. feeling low / under-perform
relief: product as a “solution”
Image of mathematics: simple data analysis BUT “scientific”, able to “certify”,
authoritativeHowever,…ultimately wrong-headed /unnecessary
differing subject-positions
Other issues: large corps. ‘speak to consumer’ BUT trivialise tools (maths) available to readers
OR ‘not needed anyway’ OR‘just a laugh’?
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π (Pi), Givenchy (2002)
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π (Pi), Givenchy (2002)
Aim: to announce a new men's perfume to associate positive (masculine) qualities with it
Appeal: sensual, heavily gendered (chain of meaning)
Image of mathematics: seems more open-ended: mathematical object, π, “evokes infinity”
Image of doing mathematics: “men …still in pursuit of the end of its innumerable string of decimals”
However, hero’s quest limited, and maths reduced to long (!) tedious calculation
Overall, maths very selectively invoked
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Conclusions
1. Maths figures in very few adverts, THO ‘light’ sampling
• concentrated in the quality / mid-market press • more likely in adverts for cars /business services
Mathematics: a cultural resource – or “silenced”?
2. Image of maths here: • much basic calculation (e.g. Pi)• simple data presentation: limited, or even
fabricated (e.g. Quorn)• simple equations: maybe trite (“A + B = C”),
erroneous, incomprehensible – or meaninglessMaths generally trivialised
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3. Complexity of ‘decoding’ processes for adverts a process of differentiation…
of diff. categories of readers (e.g. Quorn)of different levels of ‘media literacy’
parallels market-segmentation
4. Advertising communications aim to distribute forms of consciousness, identity, desire
Advertisers’ ‘educational’ strategies, related to policies on advertising e.g. UK
cigs
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5. Further issues of policy– issues of Corporate Social Responsibility?
– dilemmas for state & ‘science-based’ corporations
– Public Understanding of Mathematics,‘repositioning Maths’ e.g. Simon Singh
6. Schools / colleges: dual pedagogic strategy: – ‘critical’ AND constructive use of ads
– twin-track pedagogy: cognitive + affective
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Further research
1. Reading adverts: • Phase III: less ‘light’ sampling• Other types of adverts: job adverts • Other publications : e.g. youth magazines
2. Audience response (e.g. Heather Mendick)• children vs. adult differences
3. Institutional relations’ of advertising:• corporations / agencies / experts• the creative process
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Smiila’s Feeling for Snow (1997)
He: And you were never happy here?
She: The only thing that makes me truly happy is mathematics … snow … ice … numbers [She smiles.] To me the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers, the ones that are whole and positive, like the numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands and the child discovers longing. Do you know the mathematical expression for longing? [He shakes his head.] Negative numbers, the formalisation of the feeling that you're missing something. Then the child discovers the in-between spaces, between stones, between people, between numbers – and that produces fractions. But, it's, it's like a kind of madness, because it doesn't even stop there…. There are numbers that we can't even begin to comprehend. Mathematics is a vast open landscape: you head towards the horizon, it's always receding … like Greenland. And that's what I can't live without, that's why I can't be locked up….
He: Smylla, can I kiss you? [She moves away.]
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ReferencesAdvertisingLeiss, W., Kline, S., Jhally, S. & Botterill, J. (2005). Social communication in
advertising: Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace ( 3rd edn.). London: Routledge.
Williamson J. (1978). Decoding advertisements. London: Marion Boyars.
Theoretical perspectives Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory,
research, critique. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Evans J. (2000). Adults’ mathematical thinking and emotions: a study of
numerate practices. London: RoutledgeFalmer.Evans, J. (2006). Affect and emotion in mathematical thinking and learning –
the turn to the social: Sociocultural approaches; in J. Maasz & W. Schloeglmann (Eds.), New mathematics education research and practice (pp. 233-255). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Evans, J., Morgan, C. & Tsatsaroni, A. (2006). Discursive positioning and emotion in school mathematics practices, educational studies in mathematics: Affect in mathematics education: Exploring theoretical frameworks. Psychology of mathematics education (PME) Special Issue, 63(2), 209-226.
Evans, J., Tsatsaroni, A. & Staub, N. (2007). Images of Mathematics in Popular Culture / Adults’ Lives: a Study of Advertisements in the UK Press, Adults Learning Mathematics – an International Journal (in press).