Thesis (M.A.)(Mathematics Education) -- University of Limpopo, 2010. / Culture has become a household name in research circles mainly due to different
interpretations that people come up with. How one defines it is relative to the discipline from
which one is reasoning from. My engagement with literature in trying to define culture was
limited to what happens in the mathematics classroom. What comes out as the operating
definition in this study is that culture evolves.
Classroom is about learning. As with culture, there are different interpretations of what it
means. In this study my discussions on this issue were limited to those that use
constructivism as a referent to learning. However, there are still a lot of debates within
constructivism in terms of what it means to learn. My discussions were then confined to what
it means to learn from a sociocultural perspective. From this perspective learning is
accounted for on social and cultural processes. In contrast from a constructivist perspective
the individual’s cognitive processes and the classroom culture are reflexively related. The
evolving classroom culture does not exist apart from the teacher’s and students’ attempt to
coordinate their individual activities (Cobb and Yackel, 1998).
Initially the study was aimed at collaborating with an intermediate mathematics teacher in
creating a constructivist classroom learning environment. However, the nature of data I had
was such that I developed interest in what constitute enculturation process. I had moved
between my classroom experiences and experiences with literature to establish what
constitute enculturation process. The following constructs emerged as attributes of what
enculturation process for both classroom and mathematics culture entails: language,
learning, and negotiation of meaning. / N/A
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ul/oai:ulspace.ul.ac.za:10386/386 |
| Date | 02 June 2010 |
| Creators | Muthelo, Dimakatjo James |
| Contributors | Masha, Kwena |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | vi, 70 p. |
| Relation | Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 7.0 |
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