Synergies between theoretical approaches to mathematics education with technology: A case study through a cross-analysis methodology

Mathematics education as a research domain is characterized by a plurality of theoretical approaches. Acknowledging the existence of such diversity and the risks of an excessive theoretical fragmentation does not mean to search for a unifying theory but to urge the community to develop strategies for coping with this diversity. This article is meant to show the potential of a “cross-analysis” methodology for establishing connections between different theoretical approaches to mathematics education with technology. Within the frame of the ReMath European Project, two Teaching Experiments were realized, centred on the use of a same ICT tool—Casyopée. Two distinct theoretical approaches shaped both the Teaching Experiments design and their enactments: the Theory of Didactical Situations and the Theory of Semiotic Mediation. The two Teaching Experiments have then been analysed from both theoretical points of view. In this article we will provide some examples drawn from this cross-analysis that show the synergy which can be established between the aforementioned theoretical approaches. Beyond contributing to a deeper understanding of the observed “didactical phenomena”, that synergy allows establishing connections between the two approaches that lead to their reciprocal enrichment.     

International perspectives on child abuse

This paper reviews an extensive sampling of the international literature on child abuse. The paper focuses on: (1) where the international research on child abuse is being conducted; (2) similarities and differences in definitions of abuse and violence; (3) the types of research methods and theoretical models used to study abuse; and (4) what we currently know about child abuse in other countries. The paper concludes with a discussion of how we can advance our understanding of child abuse by pursuing cross-cultural research. Awareness of child abuse, internationally, varies a great deal, often depending on the political, social, economic, and cultural milieu of the country. Also, despite noticeable trends within countries, the research techniques and theoretical models used to guide scientific investigations vary considerably from one country to the next. For these reasons, one must draw conclusions about the patterns, causes, and extent of child abuse around the world very tentatively. There is much variation as to the likelihood of children being abused, although western, industrialized nations report the highest rates of abuse. Explanations for the variation of child abuse from one country to the next emphasize cultural differences in attitudes towards, and values placed on children, and the cultural appropriateness of using violence as a means of social control.     

The Human Face Becomes Mapped as a Sensorimotor Reaching Space During the First Year

Although recent behavioral and neural research indicates that infants represent the body’s structure, how they engage self-representations for action is little understood. This study addressed how the human face becomes a reaching space. Infants (N = 24; 2–11 months) were tested longitudinally approximately every 3 weeks on their ability to reach to a vibrating target placed at different locations on the face. Successful reaches required coordinating skin- and body-based codes for location, a problem known as tactile remapping. Findings suggest that a functional representation of the face is initially fragmented. Infants localized targets in the perioral region before other areas (ears/temples). Additionally, infants predominantly reached ipsilaterally to targets. Collectively, the findings illuminate how the face becomes an integrated sensorimotor space for self-reaching.     

In memory of all the broken ones: catalytic validity through critical arts research for social change

The authors of this article use data produced in a collaborative community arts group in BC Canada as a way to think about validation in arts-based educational research (ABER). As Lather attempted to find middle ground between ‘rampant subjectivity’ and ‘pointless precision’ in research, she (1986) suggested that studies with an ideological or critical agenda might be validated by their catalytic potential – the ability to generate change. She has further argued that such work must be both conceptually and methodologically rigorous. With this charge in mind, the authors describe and discuss a memory box made by one participant in a two-year federally funded postdoctoral research project. They consider the catalytic validity of this artefact and reflect upon research methodology in ABER, in terms of triangulation, face and construct validities and member checks. They conclude with a challenge: What new and imaginative research methodologies might be invented for critical research in arts-based education?     

Training students to use elaboration learning strategies

The feasibility of creating a training program to facilitate the development of a generalized ability to use elaboration as an individual learning strategy was investigated. Seventy-five ninth graders were randomly assigned to a training/ experimental, control, or posttest-only group. Data analyses for the immediate posttest revealed significant mean differences favoring the experimental group on the free recall and Trial 2 of the paired-associate learning tasks. On the delayed posttest, significant differences favoring the experimental group were obtained for the reading comprehension task and Trial 1 of the serial learning task. These results provide evidence that students can be trained to use elaboration to enhance learning.     

Understanding mother-adolescent conflict discussions: concurrent and across-time prediction from youths' dispositions and parenting

Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which the quality of parent-child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youths experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Nonetheless, there is relatively little empirical research on factors in childhood or adolescence that predict individual differences in the quality of parent-adolescent interactions when dealing with potentially conflictual issues. Understanding such individual differences is critical because the quality of both parenting and the parent-adolescent relationship is predictive of a range of developmental outcomes for adolescents. The goals of the research were to examine dispositional and parenting predictors of the quality of parents' and their adolescent children's emotional displays (anger, positive emotion) and verbalizations (negative or positive) when dealing with conflictual issues, and if prediction over time supported continuity versus discontinuity in the factors related to such conflict. We hypothesized that adolescents' and parents' conflict behaviors would be predicted by both childhood and concurrent parenting and child dispositions (and related problem behaviors) and that we would find evidence of both parent- and child-driven pathways. Mothers and adolescents (N5126, M age513 years) participated in a discussion of conflictual issues. A multimethod, multireporter (mother, teacher, and sometimes adolescent reports) longitudinal approach (over 4 years) was used to assess adolescents' dispositional characteristics (control/ regulation, resiliency, and negative emotionality), youths' externalizing problems, and parenting variables (warmth, positive expressivity, discussion of emotion, positive and negative family expressivity). Higher quality conflict reactions (i.e., less negative and/or more positive) were related to both concurrent and antecedent measures of children's dispositional characteristics and externalizing problems, with findings for control/regulation and negative emotionality being much more consistent for daughters than sons. Higher quality conflict reactions were also related to higher quality parenting in the past, positive rather than negative parent-child interactions during a contemporaneous nonconflictual task, and reported intensity of conflict in the past month. In growth curves, conflict quality was primarily predicted by the intercept (i.e., initial levels) of dispositional measures and parenting, although maintenance or less decrement in positive parenting, greater decline in child externalizing problems, and a greater increase in control/regulation over time predicted more desirable conflict reactions. In structural equation models in which an aspect of parenting and a child dispositional variable were used to predict conflict reactions, there was continuity of both type of predictors, parenting was a unique predictor of mothers' (but not adolescents') conflict reactions (and sometimes mediated the relations of child dispositions to conflict reactions), and child dispositions uniquely predicted adolescents' reactions and sometimes mothers' conflict reactions. The findings suggest that parent-adolescent conflict may be influenced by both child characteristics and quality of prior and concurrent parenting, and that in this pattern of relations, child effects are more evident than parent effects.     

Disenchanting secularism (or the cultivation of soul) as pedagogy in resistance to populist racism and colonial structures in the academy

This article explores pedagogic strategies for resisting the racism of contemporary populism and age-old coloniality through challenging secularism in the academy, especially in social theory. Secularism sustains racism and imperialism in the contemporary academy and is inscribed, in part, through the norms of social theory. Post-secular social theory has been positioned by some as the decolonial answer, but often replicates the most problematic aspects of secularism. Whereas post-secularism affirms the previously denigrated side of the secular vs religious dualism, I am more interested in unworking those classificatory schemas, setting the critical thought of religious teachers in relation to ‘secular’ social and political theorists such that boundaries erode. The ambition in this is to resist the hierarchical orderings of knowledge that pit Islamic, indigenous, feminised subjectivity as backwards, dangerous or intrinsically inferior to secular, Christian, rational knowledge. It is also to disenchant the secular gods (progress, money, growth, health) and hold open space for critical play in relation to the transcendental—to create a permissive, legitimising, space for students’ spiritual dimension, conocimiento or the ‘cultivation of soul’. The article draws theoretical inspiration from Gloria Anzaldúa, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Sylvia Wynter. It also draws on a practical experiment in disenchanting secularism through teaching an undergraduate module in social theory called Capitalism and Religion.