Post by Tamrin on Aug 26, 2008 11:29:48 GMT 10
Interestingly, once mathematics was considered to be one of the 'hard' subjects at which males 'naturally' excelled. Now that some structural inequities have been corrected in our educational system, teachers are searching for ways to improve what has become the disproportionately poor performance of boys!?
Abstract
Much of the literature on maths and gender takes either maths or gender, or both, as given. I use the work of R W Connell to argue that frameworks for describing and accounting for gender relations - particularly sex-role theory and categoricalism - have weaknesses as well as strengths. I adapt a framework developed by Connell for analysing gender relations within a theory of practice, and suggest that it can also be a useful tool for understanding mathematics as practice. I conclude by indicating how, after employing the feminist methodology of memory-work to collect data, I used the framework to analyse the mathematical practices of a group of women.
Much of the literature on maths and gender takes either maths or gender, or both, as given, unquestionable, categories. I want to consider here a framework for describing and accounting for both gender and mathematics that does not make this assumption, seeing them instead as historically constructed, changing and changeable, practices.
GENDER: given or made?
Much of the literature on maths and gender takes either maths or gender, or both, as given. I use the work of R W Connell to argue that frameworks for describing and accounting for gender relations - particularly sex-role theory and categoricalism - have weaknesses as well as strengths. I adapt a framework developed by Connell for analysing gender relations within a theory of practice, and suggest that it can also be a useful tool for understanding mathematics as practice. I conclude by indicating how, after employing the feminist methodology of memory-work to collect data, I used the framework to analyse the mathematical practices of a group of women.
Much of the literature on maths and gender takes either maths or gender, or both, as given, unquestionable, categories. I want to consider here a framework for describing and accounting for both gender and mathematics that does not make this assumption, seeing them instead as historically constructed, changing and changeable, practices.
GENDER: given or made?
Sexual difference is necessary for the continuation of the human race. Gender difference is not .... Social processes of differentiation and separation serve power, whether that of a class, a race or a sex. They are universal devices of oppression. (Cockburn, cited in Lee 1985)