January 1998, Vol. 29, Issue 1
The Construction of the Social Context of Mathematics Classrooms: A Sociolinguistic Analysis
Bill Atweh, Robert E. Bleicher, Tom J. Cooper
This study employed
sociolinguistic perspectives developed by Michael Halliday to investigate the
social context of two mathematics classrooms that differed in the socioeconomic
backgrounds and genders of their students. Our analysis focused on the
effects of these two factors on teacher perceptions of student needs and
abilities and on how these perceptions shaped the discourse in the classroom.
We argue that as mathematical knowledge is being constructed in the
classroom, the student participants are being constructed by the teachers
according to their ability in and need for different dialects of mathematics
that have different values in our Western culture.
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