UNB Scholar Research Repository :: Browsing by Author "Wagner, David"

Browsing by Author "Wagner, David"

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Appraising lexical bundles in mathematics classroom discourse: obligation and choice
(Springer Verlag, 2010) Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David
Working from a large corpus of transcripts from secondary mathematics classrooms, we identify patterns of speech that encode interpersonal positioning. We extend our analysis from a previous article (Herbel-Eisenmann, Wagner & Cortes, in review), in which we introduced a concept from corpus linguistics – a “lexical bundle,” which has been defined as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register. In that article we noted the prevalence of pervasive stance bundles unique to the mathematics classroom register. Because stance bundles communicate personal feelings, attitudes and values, we noted the importance of positioning in mathematics classrooms. In this article, we interpret the stance bundles as they relate to authority in mathematics classrooms by organizing them into groups that relate to the ways in which students are assumed to have choice in the discourse and to have obligations. Gradations of obligation and choice are important because they can help mathematics educators think about the ways in which they might open up or close down discourse in the classroom. We argue that it is important for university researchers, classroom teachers and even mathematics students to engage in conversations about issues of authority, as they relate to developing mathematical understanding in their classroom discourse.
Be innovative but don't be wrong: Are 21st century students experiencing 21st century mathematics education?
(University of New Brunswick, 2016) Anderson, Jennifer; Wagner, David
The 21st century has brought with it dramatic challenges through climate change, social and economic instability, volatile energy and food prices, and the consequent global vulnerabilities and inequalities. To meet these challenges, governments are responding by reviewing and reforming educational policy and implementing targets that focus on competencies such as creativity, innovation, collaboration, communication, character, culture and ethical citizenship, and computer and digital technologies. Despite these efforts, public education is still firmly embedded in the structures of an industrial age. This is particularly evident in assessment practices. Expectations for monitoring and uniformity are increasing at the same time as policies outlining the need to develop innovation. This dissertation investigates the impact of these policies and practices on students. This dissertation reports the findings of a study on the judgements made about teaching and learning mathematics and how those judgements reflect the values embedded in mathematics education. The data was gathered in two grade eight classes from suburban schools in an Atlantic province of Canada. For each school, the research included five recorded sessions of the regularly timetabled class, journal writing, a recorded focus group session of students, and an interview with the teacher. The recordings took place mid-way through a unit on graphing equations in one class and a study of integers in the other class. As with all research, the literature is selected to build a portrait of the context within which to present the information and frame the findings. As judgement is a highly contextualized enterprise, the review begins with an overview of the current sociopolitical climate within which teachers are expected to teach and measure their students’ understanding and within which students are attempting to succeed. In the literature section I explore the current environment of mathematics education and the theoretical frameworks that provide a means for educational researchers to investigate mathematics teaching in context. The study then turns to a description of the methodological tool and outlines the research design. The discussion is qualitative and interpretive. It is argued that, despite the fact that the classes were well taught, the students continue a legacy of a narrow concept of the nature and purpose of mathematics and mathematics education. Finally, some suggestions regarding directions for subsequent research are considered.
Behind the door: a critical look at the process of publication in Educational Studies in Mathematics
(Springer Nature, 2019) Mesa, Vilma; Wagner, David
To commemorate the 100th volume of Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM) we invited all past and current editors to reflect on the journal’s trends and internal processes. We complemented these discussions with comparisons of submitted and published manuscripts by countries of submitting authors. We found disparities in representation of articles from different countries and various attempts editors use to address such disparities. The analysis of internal editorial processes illustrates how editorial autonomy is exerted and raises questions about the necessity for higher editorial accountability, while maintaining the necessity of independent scientific judgment. We close the article with an open invitation to take up important questions about publication processes and their connection to the scholarship that is valued.
Conflict, hope, and mathematics education storylines: Pivoting away from a pathology-based orientation.
(North American Study Group on Ethnomathematics, 2023-06) Gerbrandt, Julianne; Wagner, David
In this paper, we play with the ideas of conflict and hope in reported storylines from subaltern contexts of mathematics learning. The concept of storyline comes from positioning theory, which suggests that people make choices about communication acts according to known or familiar storylines. By drawing attention to aspects of conflict and hope within storylines, we identify pivot points that permit reorientation. By deconstructing several storylines from the Mathematics Education in Indigenous and Migrational contexts project, we noticed how storylines that feature conflict offer more opportunities to pivot than do storylines that feature appeals to hope. This process of reorientation resists the dominance of pathology-based storylines about mathematics education for students from minoritized groups and draws attention to the impact of orientation on storylines.
Discursive Authority and Sociocultural Positioning in the Mathematics Classroom: New Directions for Teacher Professional Development
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) de Freitas, Elizabeth; Esmonde, Indigo; Wagner, David; Knipping, Christine; Lunney Borden, Lisa; Reid, David
This article discusses findings from a two-day teacher conference focusing on discursive authority and socio-cultural positioning in mathematics classrooms. The conference was designed to study how research on classroom discourse could be transformed into effective professional development activities. We describe how the focus on discourse, positioning and authority was operationalized and made pragmatic for the teachers by focusing very closely on specific language use in classrooms. For each of the six workshops of the conference, we outline the goal of the workshop, the activities that were structured to reach those goals, and the theoretical constructs that were introduced to the teacher participants. We then draw on (1) transcripts of video and audio recordings, (2) material produced by the teachers, and (3) survey data, to discuss how these theoretical constructs were taken up and leveraged by participants as a means of reflecting on their own and other’s practice.
Facing the Mathematics: Students’ Critical Awareness of the Elusiveness of Mathematical Objects
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Wagner, David
What happens when mathematics students are invited to ask questions and make observations about the way discourse works in their classroom? This article describes my extended conversation with a high school mathematics class about a phenomenon that caught the attention of two girls in the class. Together we observed and reflected on the direction of one’s gaze during mathematics conversations. This discussion came about while I co-taught this class, prompting the students daily to become more aware of their language practices in class. This ‘critical language awareness’ effort aimed to address inequities in power relations within the classroom discourse by inviting student perspectives and resulted in drawing two students’ attention to the power of symbols.
From the screen to the page: a qualitative study of reading experiences of university faculty
(University of New Brunswick, 2015) Tryphonopoulos, Panayiotes; Wagner, David; Hunt, Russell; Whitty, Pam; Cull, Barry
This thesis explores the reading experiences of academics in various faculties at the University of New Brunswick. The project investigates how academics practice and experience reading through the two main media—that is, the digital medium (such as computer screens, tablets and e-readers) and the more traditional one of the printed word (such as books, journals and other paper documents). Using the qualitative method, I conducted interviews with eight professors representing a wide variety of disciplines across UNB. Investigating the reading behaviours and the choice of one medium over another for certain professional and personal activities, this study attempts to discover the rationale behind these academics’ personal reading preferences. This study offers strong empirical evidence that supports the claim that academics make decisions about the medium of their choice based on the type of activity they are engaged in and the general practicality and convenience offered by the medium itself.
Identifying authority structures in mathematics classroom discourse -- a case of a teacher's early experience in a new context
(Springer Verlag, 2014) Wagner, David; Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth
We explore a conceptual frame for analyzing mathematics classroom discourse to understand the way authority is at work. This case study of a teacher moving from a school where he is known to a new setting offers us the opportunity to explore the use of the conceptual frame as a tool for understanding how language practice and authority relate in a mathematics classroom. This case study illuminates the challenges of establishing disciplinary authority in a new context while also developing the students’ sense of authority within the discipline. To analyze the communication in the teacher’s grade 12 class in the first school and grade 9 class early in the year at the new school, we use the four categories of positioning drawn from our earlier analysis of pervasive language patterns in mathematics classrooms—personal authority, discourse as authority, discursive inevitability, and personal latitude.
Language and communication in mathematics education: an overview of research in the field
(Springer Verlag, 2014) Morgan, Candia; Craig, Tracy; Schuette, Marcus; Wagner, David
Within the field of mathematics education, the central role language plays in the learning, teaching, and doing of mathematics is increasingly recognised, but there is not agreement about what this role (or these roles) might be or even about what the term ‘language’ itself encompasses. In this issue of ZDM, we have compiled a collection of scholarship on language in mathematics education research, representing a range of approaches to the topic. In this survey paper, we outline a categorisation of ways of conceiving of language and its relevance to mathematics education, the theoretical resources drawn upon to systematise these conceptions, and the methodological approaches employed by researchers. We identify four broad areas of concern in mathematics education that are addressed by language-oriented research: analysis of the development of students’ mathematical knowledge; understanding the shaping of mathematical activity; understanding processes of teaching and learning in relation to other social interactions; and multilingual contexts. A further area of concern that has not yet received substantial attention within mathematics education research is the development of the linguistic competencies and knowledge required for participation in mathematical practices. We also discuss methodological issues raised by the dominance of English within the international research community and suggest some implications for researchers, editors and publishers.
Lexical bundle analysis in mathematics classroom discourse: The significance of stance
(Springer Verlag, 2010) Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David; Cortes, Viviana
In this article, we introduce the lexical bundle, defined by corpus linguists as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 2006; Cortes, English for Specific Purposes 23:397–423, 2004). Attention to lexical bundles helps to explore hegemonic practices in mathematics classrooms because lexical bundles play an important role in structuring discourse and are often treated as “common sense” ways of interacting. We narrow our findings and discussion to a particular type of lexical bundle (called a “stance bundle” or bundles that relate to feelings, attitudes, value judgments, or assessments) because it was the most significant type found. Through comparing our corpus from secondary mathematics classrooms with two other corpora (one from university classrooms (not including mathematics classrooms) and one from conversations), we show that most of the stance bundles were particular to secondary mathematics classrooms. The stance bundles are interpreted through the lens of interpersonal positioning, drawing on ideas from systemic functional linguistics. We conclude by suggesting additional research that might be done, discussing limitations of this work, and pointing out that the findings warrant further attention to interpersonal positioning in mathematics classrooms.
Mathematics, making & materialism
(University of New Brunswick, 2021) Lingley, Jacob Matthew Raife; Wagner, David
Material rich learning environments, called makerspaces are becoming common in schools throughout New Brunswick. Previous research has indicated that these learning environments provide multiple opportunities for students to showcase curriculum knowledge. However, less is known about how student-constructed artifacts and the environments in which they were constructed influence a mathematics learner. This qualitative case study examines students' mathematical experiences, from K-12, during the construction of an artifact. The collected narratives were analyzed for curriculum linkages and interpreted in context with the new theory of inclusive materialism. This study presents three cases, from Grades 2, 7 and 10, each from a different area of New Brunswick, Canada. A student constructed artifact from each case was made from an assemblage of materials. Rather than conveying their mathematical knowledge through paper and pencil calculations, students' material-mediated decisions influenced their mathematical knowledge. It became apparent that it was the materials, both physical and non-physical, within the maker-centred learning environment that contributed to the students' expressions of mathematics. This research provides insights on how to foster a culture of making, mathematics, and materialism throughout a multi-grade level learning community, and how to use maker artifacts as assessment evidence for student mathematics competency.
Opening mathematics texts: resisting the seduction
(Springer Verlag, 2012) Wagner, David
This analysis of the writing in a grade 7 mathematics textbook distinguishes between closed texts and open texts, which acknowledge multiple possibilities. I use tools that have recently been applied in mathematics contexts, focussing on grammatical features that include personal pronouns, modality, and types of imperatives, as well as on accompanying structural elements such as photographs and the number of possibilities presented. I extend this discussion to show how even texts that appear open can seduce readers into feeling dialogue while actually leading them down a narrow path. This phenomenon points to the normalizing power of curriculum. For this analysis and reflection I draw on mathematics textbook material that I wrote as an alternative to normalizing text. I identify myself as a self-critical author and invite readers to be critical of their reading and writing of mathematics texts.
Students' Language Repertoires for Prediction
(University of Montana, 2015) Wagner, David; Dicks, Joseph; Kristmanson, Paula
Communication about prediction is complex in a number of ways. First, language is by nature recursive — language is an indicator of meaning as well as a force that shapes meaning. Second, the same language used to communicate prediction in uncertain environments is used for other purposes. In this article, we describe how the recursive nature of language impacted the choices we made in a cross-sectional longitudinal study aimed at gaining insight into children’s language repertoires relating to conjecture. We then explore some Grade 6 students’ communication about prediction to develop insight into their meaning and meaning-making with prediction language. From this we raise questions about interpreting data from such contexts. Finally, we discuss implications for educators.
“They Don’t Teach You That in School”: Discovering formations of Funds of Knowledge among immigrant families in New Brunswick
(University of New Brunswick, 2024-02) Estallo, Zyrene Leonardo; Wagner, David
The study used the Funds of Knowledge framework, a conceptual model connecting household practices with valuable academic resources, to explore learning discourses within immigrant families. The research delved into Grade 6 students’ navigation of their household culture and the Canadian community, along with understanding the roles played by parents in their growth. Utilizing case study methods, participants engaged in guided art activities, focus group discussions, and parent interviews. Five themes emerged from students’ perspectives, including perceived influences, interests, activities, physical environment, and experiences, as well as culture/language. Additionally, parents contributed three themes: experiencing the new environment, preserving cultural identity, and influencing their children's decision making. The findings provide insights into the learning discourses within immigrant families, highlighting the interplay between household practices, parental influence, and students’ experiences.
Understanding the mathematical practices of kente weavers in Ghana
(University of New Brunswick, 2015) Aboagye, Samuel; Wagner, David
One of the current challenges in mathematics education is how to link school mathematics to students' everyday activities to improve the quality of the students' educational experience. Drawing ideas from scholarship in ethnomathematics, this study describes some of the mathematical practices of kente weavers and concludes with discussion of classroom implications that have the potential to enhance mathematics teaching in Ghana using kente weaving. The study employed the techniques of Yin's (2003) case study and Wolcott's (2008) ethnographic approaches to qualitative data collection to unravel the mathematical practices of the kente weavers. A diverse and purposeful sample of 15 kente weavers [10 from Bonwire Ashanti region and 5 from Agotime Volta region] and 5 mathematics teachers in Bonwire (Ashanti) were selected to represent a range of weavers as these helped expose weaving patterns. The various stages and weaving patterns were observed to identify mathematical choices and reasoning these choices conveyed. It was followed by both informal and semi-structured interviews of the 15 kente weavers in the kente industry. A series of meetings were organized for the 5 mathematics teachers in Bonwire to discuss some potential classroom implications of the mathematical practices of the kente weavers. As I described the mathematical practices of the weavers, I placed more emphasis on three of the six items on Bishop's list for identifying of mathematical practices in cultures - counting, measuring, and designing (Bishop, 1988) - because the data provided relatively little insight on the other three items in the list - locating, explaining, and playing. Evidence of mathematical practices of the weavers indicated that irrespective of the mathematical experience of the weavers, they all employed a certain level of informal mathematics (counting, measuring, and designing) in the discharge of their duties as weavers. However, the level of mathematics employed in weaving a particular pattern depends on the complexity of the pattern.
Violence in un-rooted mathematics
(FLM Publishing Association, 2016) Abtahi, Yasmine; Wagner, David
Warm Bodies Using Cold Mathematics
(Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, 2011) Wagner, David

Browsing by Author "Wagner, David"

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