Students often ask "when is this ever going to be useful?", "why are we doing this?", etc. when speaking about mathematics. If we take this as a question about 'meaningfulness', how can instructors respond and how do they even understand the terms 'meaningful' and 'meaning'? My dissertation looked at how college instructors see their instruction as meaningful or not. Drawing on social and cognitive perspectives of learning, I define four ways to think of what's 'meaningful' about mathematics. From a cognitive perspective, instructors can understand 'meaningful' as mathematical understanding versus understanding the significance of mathematics. From a social perspective where meaning is taken as the experiences of everyday life within communities, teachers can understand 'meaningful' as anything that engages students in practices the mathematics community engage in versus practices non-mathematics communities engage in (e.g. pushing computation or critical thinking as a means for maintaining social hierarchies). Using these four conceptions to categorize instructors' goals, this work focuses on how four undergraduate mathematics instructors thought of their instruction as meaningful and contextual and background factors that influenced those views. / Doctor of Philosophy / Students often ask "when is this ever going to be useful?" when speaking about mathematics. If we interpret this as seeking the meaning or purpose of their education, how can teachers respond and how do they even understand the terms 'meaningful' and 'meaning'? I wanted to look at how college instructors thought of this and how they addressed such a question in their classrooms. Drawing on different theories of learning, I outlined four ways to think of what's 'meaningful' about mathematics and then used these four ways to categorize how instructors think of their instruction as meaningful.
To meet this end, I looked at some accounts of instructors' goals. My data came from college instructors of different mathematics classes: math for elementary education, math for liberal arts, statistics, and calculus. One important thing I found was that experiences with underserved communities or of not being 'a math person' corresponded with instructors' ability to attend to different kinds of 'meaningful' goals. What this might suggest is that educators may not feel prepared to respond to students' pursuit of meaning in diverse ways unless they have also personally struggled with it growing up or have personally experienced the consequences of disenfranchisement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/103811 |
| Date | 11 June 2021 |
| Creators | Chowdhury, Ahsan Habib |
| Contributors | Mathematics, Johnson, Estrella, Norton, Anderson H. III, Wawro, Megan, Wilkins, Jesse L. M. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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