Safety in numbers: mathematics support centres and their derivatives as social learning spaces
Yvette Solomon
Tony Croft
Duncan Lawson
2134/8629
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Safety_in_numbers_mathematics_support_centres_and_their_derivatives_as_social_learning_spaces/9369017
This article reports on data gathered from second and third year mathematics
undergraduates at two British universities which have developed Mathematics
Support Centres, primarily with a view to supporting skills development for
engineering students. However, an unforeseen consequence of the support centres
was the mathematics students’ colonisation of the physical space, and the
development of group learning strategies which involve a strong community
identity. Drawing on a socio-cultural theoretical framework, based primarily in the
concept of a figured world, the article explores the students’ perceptions of
mathematics learning and their experiences of university-level teaching, focusing
on the ways in which they collectively build images of themselves as participants
in an undergraduate mathematics community, resourced by the physical safe spaces
that they have created, and which they now regard as essential sites of their learning.
2011-07-19 10:31:15
Mathematics
Identity
Space
Figured worlds
Community