Those Who Can: The Significance of Math Policymakers for Math Policy and Practice

This study addresses the effects that policymakers’ mindsets have upon equity in the policy and practice of math education. It looks beyond math education culture to the general culture, examining the way mindset is constructed and sustained through its discursive expressions in written and spoken language and identifying the positioning it entails and its consequences for learners, educators and policymakers. I explore the notion that due to their similar experience as learners, Israeli math education policymakers hold similar beliefs about math ability. Mapping the mindset behind these shared perceptions, I trace its existence within policy (where it gains authority), as well as its positioning of learners in ways that strengthen and support cultural perceptions while hindering equity. My research addresses complex issues at the personal, social, and political levels. Discourse provides the underlying methodological cornerstone for this study. Discourse analysis serves both for excavation and interpretation of dispositions and mindsets embedded in policy, as well as for the negotiation and re-conceptualization of identities, positions, and policy. Looking at policymakers’ commitment and passion for math education and its promotion, alongside the difficulty in addressing learners whose experience of math is very different from their own, there may be a need for special support in the process of policy and curriculum creation. There may be need for a greater variety of voices in the math education committees, voices that are as passionate about math education and the possibility of promoting it among learners of different dispositions, voices that should echo the position and outlook of different learners.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education Graduate Program – Educational Research

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Werklund School of Education

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Telem, Lihi

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Davis, Brent
• Sabbaghan, Soroush

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Renert, Moshe
• Francis, Krista

• math education policy
• mindset
• math education
• positioning
• equity
• discourse
• identity

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/38241

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/112581