CHAPTER 4 MATHEMATICS IN THE EVERYDAY WORLD AND AT WORK

摘要

Mathematical*~1 knowing, according to most approaches in the psychology of learning (including and especially in constructivist psychology), exists in the form of structures that the mind constructs as it engages with others and the world. Such theories, however, are inconsistent with many ethnographic studies concerning mathematics~* in the everyday world, which show that there is little carry over of school mathematics into the world outside of school (e.g., Lave, 1988). What people mobilize in mathematical~* doing is, to a great extent, a function of the resources and structures of the setting (e.g., packaging size, number of children at home, relative packaging size) and the larger goals and purposes of what people want, need, and must do. There is, therefore, a dialectical relation whereby "people and settings together create problems and solution shapes, and moreover, they do so simultaneously" (Lave, Murtaugh, & de la Rocha, 1984, p. 94). Whether certain mathematical~* representations are mobilized in particular settings and situations, therefore, is an emergent property rather than something to be expected. These differences between settings and situations also distinguish what mathematical* representations are used and how they are used, that is, their use in discipline-specific ways in discipline-specific practices.